Hell Bent

Chapter 31

I walked down the street with two coffees in my hand. Sunglasses, beanie, fingerless gloves, and heavy coat. November had arrived with ice in the wind. Not that I felt it.

I hadn’t slept much in over a week since we’d fought Eli and Krogher’s blank-eyed, magic-wielding drones. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Dessa. Every silence was filled with her voice.

She wasn’t haunting me. Not like Eleanor. But her absence was a shadow across my soul.

I’d fallen for her too hard to stand up again easily or quickly. She’d left me bruised on the inside. Touched me in places I didn’t even know I had. Places where only pain remained.

I walked up the stairs to Terric’s place. Rang the bell with my elbow. Waited.

Heard his footsteps. A little stronger than when I’d visited yesterday. And while the doctors were stunned with the rate of his recovery, I knew without magic to support him, he might not have made it through the surgery at all.

The door opened.

“Morning, Shame,” he said, stepping aside to let me in.

He was dressed, showered, his hair left to fall with the male-model perfection that he achieved with annoying ease. But the dark circles under his eyes against the sallow pale of his skin gave away his injuries.

I handed him his coffee as I walked in past him with this new morning ritual I’d fallen into. “Morning. Brought you coffee.”

I headed to the living room. Stopped on the threshold to it. There was a fist-sized hole in the wall by the fireplace.

“There’s a fist-sized hole in the wall by the fireplace,” I said.

He walked up behind me, sighed. “Jeremy stopped by last night.” He moved by me, over to the couch where he preferred to sit.

I worked on reminding myself why I hadn’t killed Jeremy yet.

“You still like him?” I asked, covering some of the anger with a gulp of coffee.

He pushed a couple books to one side so he could sit, and placed his coffee next to the lamp and the bottle of antibiotics and painkillers. Then he looked up at me. Gave me that stare that all of my friends seemed to use around me now. Like he was seeing a new person. Someone he wasn’t quite comfortable with.

“He’s funny,” Terric said carefully. “We have the same taste in movies. He’s good in bed.”

I just raised one eyebrow. “Don’t need the details.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t like him like that anymore. He came by last night to tell me he was in trouble again. That he had promised people I would do things for them. Life magic. I told him I wasn’t a currency he could bargain with. Things got heated.”

“Did he hurt you?” I asked calmly. “Did he touch you?”

Terric paused, gave me that cautious look again. “Sit down, Shame. You worry too much.”

I said nothing. Walked to the chair across from him, sat. “Did he?” I asked again.

“No. He yelled for a while, but then, so did I. He punched a hole in my wall.” He shrugged, took a drink of his coffee.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You never liked him.”

“No, I didn’t. Still.” I took another drink of coffee. “Did you break it off with him?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to do it for you?”

He paused. “No. I can do it. Just . . .”

When he didn’t pick up that thought, I tried again. “Let me be there when you do.”

“Shame . . .”

“That’s all I’m asking.”

He exhaled. Looked as tired as I felt. “I think it’s a bad idea. But okay.” Then: “Did you drive over?”

I nodded.

“Do you want to take your car or mine?” he asked.

“We’re going to see him now?”

Eleanor stopped studying a photo on his wall, which was when I noticed all the art was removed and a few of Terric’s pictures were back in their place. She drifted closer to me.

He frowned. “No. Allie and Zay invited us over. In an hour. I told you yesterday. And the day before that when I got the invitation.”

I didn’t remember him talking about it. “I can drop you off, but I’m not—”

“You’re going.” He pushed up off the couch, something he did with a fair amount of grace to cover the fact that it still hurt like a mother to move so quickly.

I knew, because I could feel his pain.

We were closer now, since the fight. I didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing.

“We need to stop off at the store,” he said as he picked up his coat from the back of the chair and pulled into it very carefully. “I promised I’d bring flowers.”

It didn’t make much sense to me why we were going, nor why we’d need flowers. But then, a lot of things just seemed . . . beyond me this last week or so. I could not muster the energy to give a single damn about any of it.

He handed me his keys, so I guessed I was driving his car.

Did so, stopping at a florist that Terric insisted had the best bouquets this time of year. I walked with him, my pace shortened for his.

By the time we’d bought a bunch of flowers of which I only recognized two—lilies and the pink ones—and had made it back to the car, the sky was filled with black clouds and it was raining hard enough to back up the gutters.

Terric was breathing heavily from the hurried pace he’d managed on the way back to the car.

“I’m going to be so glad when I can move again,” he said. “Really move.”

I think he talked about flowers or maybe it was salsa dancing while I drove to Allie and Zay’s house. I listened, heard each word, but they all slipped away as quickly as they came, leaving no impression of their passage behind.

Then we were there. And we weren’t the only ones. Cars lined the alley behind their house.

“What is this?” I said right in the middle of his discussion on the nasturtium, which could have been a flower or a dance move for all I knew.

“What is what?” he asked.

“Why are we here? What are we doing here?”

He paused, watched me. I was staring at the cars, trying to remember what he’d said we were going to do.

“It’s just some of us getting together in honor of Victor,” he said calmly. “It’s not a meeting. It’s not business. Just a low-key gathering of friends.”

Frankly, I think it would have been easier if it were business.

“You don’t remember me telling you about it, do you?”

“No.”

“Let’s go in.” He opened the door. I got out too, and we walked through the pouring rain to the kitchen-side door.

Terric didn’t knock, he just walked right into the house. “And here I thought we’d be early,” he said, holding out the flowers for Allie.

“You are just in time. Both of you,” she said, giving Terric a quick kiss on the cheek. “Shame, if you stand on my porch dripping any longer, I will pin you to my clothesline in the basement.”

I didn’t want to do this. Enter this houseful of caring faces, warmth, love. I wasn’t what they thought I was. Not anymore.

But they were waiting for me. Waiting for me to come home to the living.

I dug down deep, down beneath the darkness, looking for the shreds of me that were still Shame. Held that up like a familiar mask.

“You have a laundry line?” I asked. “How eighteen hundreds of you, Beckstrom. What’s next? Indoor plumbing?”

And for the first time, I realized the extent of my disconnect over the last week. Because everyone in the kitchen let out the breath they’d been holding, and chuckled.

It was not that funny of a joke.

But it was a start.