Hell or High Water (Gemini Book 3) (13 page)

“Our neighbor, a rock troll by the name of Seamus, spotted someone at our house.” Her tone gentled. “We asked him to call if that ever happened. We had to know if we were being hunted, and it made sense the first place a tracker would start was at home.”

“So you haven’t been kidnapped?” A man shot me a strange look as he passed. “You’re okay?”

“We’re all fine.” She hesitated. “You went inside the house.”

My fingernails pierced my leg through the fabric of my jeans. “Theo and I did, yes.”

“Then you know.”

“I don’t know anything anymore,” I admitted.

“I didn’t want you to find out about your sister that way.”

A filament of anger snapped free of the ball of guilt roiling in my gut, and I growled, “It seems to me I was never supposed to find out about her at all.”

She didn’t contradict me.

“I’m glad you called,” I gritted out. “I was worried.”

“We need to talk,” she said in her best mom voice. “In person.”

The possibility Charybdis was yanking my mother’s strings occurred to me, but I wanted to see for myself, with my own eyes, that she was safe and undamaged. Then I could call the conclave and arrange protection for them. Even with my job in jeopardy, they would do that much for me. I hoped.

I met her demand with one of my own. “I want to see her.”

I would never believe this was real if I didn’t. My parents had run before, and they might run again. This might be the only chance I got to figure out exactly how massive their betrayal was before they vanished from my life again, possibly for good this time.

“I expected you would.” She made her peace with my requirement. “Here’s the address. Make sure you aren’t followed.”

I wrote it down and ended the call. I was still sitting there, staring at my phone like it might sprout fangs and bite me, when Theo swaggered into the hall with a young woman on his arm.

“Are you serious?” I cocked an eyebrow at him. “This is how you handle what we just saw?”

“Who are you?” Baring rows of needlelike teeth, the woman snapped her jaws at me. “He’s mine. I saw him first.”

“I doubt that.” I snorted, amazed to find an ounce of humor left in me. “I’ve known him all my life, so I’m pretty sure that means I saw him first.” I flicked my wrist and rose. “By all means, Theo, do what you’ve got to do. Whatever that is you’re doing.” I jabbed the elevator’s down button. “I’ll catch you later.”

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” He peeled the woman away from his side and grabbed my upper arm. “You’re in no shape to be out there alone.”

“I’m going to meet Mom.” I broke his grip and stepped into the empty booth. “You coming or not?”

Casting a final glance at his date, who pouted prettily despite the dental nightmare in her mouth, he gusted out a sigh and adjusted his crotch. “I guess not.”

After blowing her a kiss, he stepped into the elevator with me. The door closed in her face, and her frustrated roar shook my eardrums. I scrunched up my nose and glanced at my cousin. “Really?”

“She’s a rarity.” He shrugged. “I was curious.”

And hurting as much as I was.

We all had our coping mechanisms. I wasn’t about to shame his when mine was often equally as self-destructive. What a pair we made. He and I were more alike than I had ever imagined.

T
he address Mom
gave me took all of thirty minutes to reach. Part of me expected her to return to her Gemini roots now that the going had gotten tough, but no. She had chosen what I assumed was a rental home in yet another cookie-cutter subdivision. The gleaming pickup in the yard was the same as the one the pixie had described, a throwback to the lifestyle they had abandoned, and that one detail hammered home this surreal moment.

“Are you ready?”

I started at the sound of Theo’s voice and whipped my head toward him. “Yes?”

“It’s going to be okay.” He patted my thigh. “Whatever’s in there…” his throat worked, “…you’ll be okay.”

Pasting on a smile, I nodded. “Yeah.”

Not buying it for a minute, he pressed me. “It’s better to know, right?”

“Yes.” It came out stronger that time. “I want the truth.”

Or the lies would haunt me as surely as Lori’s ghost had all these years.

We exited the vehicle and took the tidy path up to the front door. Fingers trembling, I kept missing the doorbell. I ended up smacking it with the heel of my palm, which caused Theo’s lips to tic upward.

The door swung open on a breath of air smelling of herbs and growing things. The woman who stood in the doorway was a tad shorter than me, a little blonder than me, and more beautiful than I remembered. Her blue eyes—clear of Charybdis’s soulless influence—filled with moisture that leaked over her cheeks, and she blinked to clear her vision.

“Step lively, now. Get in here.” She peered over our shoulders down the empty street, her gaze lingering on the windows of her neighbors’ homes. Her paranoia reassured me that she was in control of herself, at least for now. “We don’t have much time.”

We hustled inside, and she shut the door and sealed it with a charm so powerful I sneezed as the magic activated.

“We can’t be too careful,” she said with an apologetic smile. “Please, follow me into the kitchen.” She opened cabinets and pulled out four glasses. “Can I get you something? Tea? Lemonade? Water?”

“Where did you get the magic?” I kept to the tiled entryway. “I doubt Aunt Dot could manage the spell you just activated.”

“Your aunt hasn’t lived through what we have.” A line puckered her brow. “My sister isn’t the only Cahill with witch friends and enough power to ignite a multitiered ward.”

“Maybe if you’d stuck around,” Theo drawled, “we would know what you were capable of.”

I don’t think I had ever loved my least-favorite cousin as much as I did in that moment.

“I heard voices,” a masculine baritone rumbled. “Is she here?”

Dad rounded the corner and joined us in the hall outside the kitchen. “Cammie,” he whispered, throwing his arms wide and not waiting for me to decide to step into them. He scooped me up and crushed me to his chest, his arms just as strong as I remembered from all the great big bear hugs of my childhood. “I’m so glad to see you.” He set me down and wiped his cheeks dry. “You’re so beautiful—and tall. The pictures Dot sent didn’t do you justice.” He laughed. “You’re as lovely as your mother and as tall as me. Gods be praised, what a blessed sight.”

“And you brought Theo?” He stuck out his arm, fingers splayed. “I would have expected Isaac. It’s good to see you kids put the past behind you.”

“The past never stays in the past, does it?” Theo made no move to accept the forearm clasp Dad offered. “I’m sure Isaac would be here if he hadn’t been taken by the same fae who attacked you.” He placed a hand over his heart in mock sympathy when Mom gasped. “I’m sorry. You didn’t know? Maybe if you had reached out to tell us what had happened to you, we could have avoided meeting here like this.”

“Theo.” I touched his forearm, grateful his lashing out meant I got to play good cop to his bad cop. “We’ve come this far. We might as well hear them out.”

Dad shoved his hands in his pockets and ducked into the kitchen. Mom was right behind him, so we let them guide us to the table and took our seats while she poured sweet tea into familiar glasses neither of us wanted to lift.

Mom sat across from me and fidgeted with the tassels on the edge of her placemat. “You have questions, I’m sure.”

Ice water flowed through my veins. “You told me Lori died.”

My parents exchanged a glance saturated with dread and an emotion perilously close to…relief.

“The Lori you knew did die that night,” Dad answered, anguish thick in his expression. “Your sister…”

“We revived her.” Mom’s voice warbled. “It was too late. Lori suffered massive brain damage.”

I leaned back in my chair, fingers worrying the drops of condensation on my glass. “Is she…?”

“A dryad acquaintance of ours enchanted a few items, most of which we had to leave at the house after the attack. They keep her free of any pain she might be feeling and resting easy.” She picked at the strings until one came off in her hand. “She never woke up, not really. She doesn’t speak or blink. Her body is alive, but her mind—her soul—they left us that night.”

“When the rogue agent came after us, we packed the necessities and made arrangements for what we couldn’t carry to be brought here to this bolt-hole.” He indicated boxes of medical supplies left open on the counter. “Lori depends on a tube in her throat to help her breathe. She’s fed through a separate tube in her stomach. There’s also the catheter to consider.” His laugh was tired, bitter. “Mundane medical supplies are easy enough to come by, but we rely on magic to keep her as comfortable and as safe as possible. This breach, or whatever it was, with the conclave has forced us to make do, and that’s not a thing I can abide much longer.”

“How did the conclave get involved?” I had heard Vause’s side of the story, but I wanted theirs.

“The conclave performed an intensive background search on you before you were allowed to enter the marshal academy. She found us within weeks; she even came out to visit with us and your sister.” Mom set her jaw. “She refused to allow you to join unless we accepted their offer of ‘help’. She knew we had no one else to turn to, so she pressed us hard. Eventually we agreed with Magistrate Vause and allowed her to place an agent with basic medical training on the premises in case Lori went into distress.”

“Vause was protecting her investment.” That sounded about right. Her knowing about my sister made a lot more sense than her posting guards with my parents when we had no interaction, and any genetic information could have been gathered with a swab to the inside of their cheek. “She didn’t tell me she knew, but it doesn’t surprise me.”

Not much Vause did shocked me. She was a magistrate, a law unto herself, and she had proven too many times she was willing to bend me until I broke. This time, she just might get the satisfaction of hearing me snap.

“We had already cost you so much.” Dad shared a look with Mom. “We refused to be the cause of you not getting the career you wanted. Even if it meant climbing in bed with the conclave.”

“It wasn’t all bad.” Mom noticed my frown. “The agents assigned were very polite and knowledgeable, eager to help and willing to get their hands dirty.” Her lips tipped upward at the corners. “They gave us a glimpse of the person you might have become.”

“That’s why you left Cammie with us?” Theo spoke up for the first time since entering the kitchen. “To hide all this from her?”

“We had no choice.” Color leached from Mom’s cheeks. “The danger was too great if she stayed.”

A frown puckered my brow. “What do you mean?”

“Gemini die in pairs for a reason, baby.” Mom reached for my hand, thought better of it and tucked hers under the table. “Twins have a special bond. Even human twins share a psychic bond, a sense of awareness of the other. In Geminis, it’s more than sixth sense, it’s a survival mechanism. No Gemini can survive without the psychic feedback from their other half.”

Meaning I had never been a survivor. I was just defective in a different way than I had been led to believe.

“We look to our twins for our reset,” Dad elaborated. “We share blood and magic with them on a regular basis. The truth is that each pair is an equal in their relationship. Siblings are linked mentally, magically and physically. Cut that off, and a Gemini is crippled. The magic goes out, seeking a receptor, and is expended instead of bouncing back to you. Slowly your body will drain itself trying to latch on to a circuit that doesn’t exist. Eventually you will die. It’s only a matter of how long it takes.”

No one had told me this in as many words. Had they been worried it would frighten me? Or that I might figure this out? Even now I had goose bumps thinking of how close I had come to death. Before I thought there was a sliver of hope, that stubbornness counted, but all the battles I had imagined fighting for survival had been petty skirmishes instead.

“That doesn’t explain why you dumped her on Mom.” Theo’s jaw flexed. “Nothing you’ve said so far excuses that.”

“The connection keeps us all alive, but it can also do us harm.” Mom tucked a loose curl behind her ear. “A connection with a twin fighting a long-term illness is dangerous. Their magic will seek out the healthy energies of their twin in an effort to heal themselves, draining their sibling until they both weaken and die.”

I risked a glance up at Mom’s face. “So you thought if you put enough distance between us that I would last longer?” Had I not been looking at her, I would have missed her nod. “That’s why you left me with Aunt Dot.”

“Yes.” A brittle smile broke across her mouth. “We tested our theory, first a week or so at a time and then for longer periods. Staying with Dot, and away from us, kept you healthy. You got sick within hours of coming home.”

“We had to make a decision.” Dad squared his shoulders. “The hardest one of our lives.” He took Mom’s hand and held it to his chest, over his heart. “We let you go so that you could survive.”

“You could have visited, written, called. Something.”

“The risk was too great. No one else knew about Lori. We couldn’t ask another Gemini for help, or word would travel back to you eventually. We didn’t have friends we could trust with her care, and we couldn’t bring her with us without getting you sick.” Dad shook his head. “We made the right choice, the hard choice, and cut ourselves off from you. We would rather have your hatred than have to watch both our girls wither in front of us.”

Throat tight, I took a drink of tea before I could speak again. “I don’t hate you.”

Hope sparked in both their faces, and it drove a sharp spike of regret through me. This visit was a balm to old wounds, but it wasn’t a solution. It wasn’t a happy ending. It was a short visit, and then it was right back to us living separate lives.

“We wouldn’t blame you if you do,” Mom murmured. “You don’t have to spare our feelings.”

“I’ve had a good life.” I cut a glance at Theo. “Aunt Dot raised me right, and I had cousins that might as well have been my brothers for company.” Gods knew Theo had tormented me in ways only a true sibling could. He had picked up right where Lori left off. “I wish you had trusted me with the truth. I understand why you did what you did, and I’ll make peace with it eventually. Even if you had waited until I turned eighteen, I deserved to know about Lori—about why you cut yourselves out of my life—but you didn’t step forward then either, and that’s what hurts most.”

Heads bowed, my parents held on to each other as if I were a storm they had to weather. Hurting them hurt me too. All of us were scarred up and broken by Lori’s… I wasn’t sure what to even call it anymore.

Somewhere in the house a timer dinged, and Dad got to his feet. “Sorry, I was working on something for Lori when you arrived. I’ll be right back.”

“Wait.” I stood when he did, and Theo rose beside me. “I’d like to see her.”

“Okay.” He reached for Mom’s hand and drew her to her feet. “This way.”

This house was smaller than their last and much less tidy without the conclave cleanup crew wiping up after them. This place was lived in. Open medical supply boxes littered all the counters. Bags of chips and snacks awaited Dad in his favorite spots. Books covered every surface, the topics varied. Mom read three or four at a time, always in different genres. I spotted a cookbook, a science fiction novel, a contemporary romance and a guide to motorcycle repair.

My parents stopped in front of the last door in the hallway, and Dad wrapped his large hand around the small brass knob. His chest rose and fell, gathering courage was my guess. His other hand flattened against the raised panels. With a twist and a push, he opened the door in the total silence all parents were capable of when checking on sleeping children.

This room wasn’t the comforting bastion of childhood memories the other had been. The plain white walls and khaki-colored carpet lent a sterile quality to a room that already lacked personality. A new hospital bed occupied the center space, and machines were arranged around the head of the bed. Subtle beeping, the hiss of oxygen and whir of electronics combined to create ambient noise.

I jumped when Theo clasped my shoulder. I glanced at him, but he wasn’t looking at me. His gaze was fixated where mine had yet to roam. Coward that I was, I allowed myself to waste a few extra moments searching the room with a bland eye before focusing on the reason I was here.

The scene from
Snow White
came to mind, the one where she rested in her glass coffin, dead but not. Bespelled. Frozen in time. Perfect. Except no true love’s kiss could dissolve the tubes keeping Lori suspended in this moment.

Crossing to her took an eternity. And when I reached her side, I had to try several times before I covered one of her hands, both folded over her middle, with mine. Her skin was soft and warm, her hair parted in the middle and French braided so that each twist trailed down the pillow under her head and almost down to her hips. Our faces and builds were so identical that I could have been staring down at myself.

“Hi, Lore,” I whispered. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“Give them a minute alone.” Theo entered my periphery. “We’ll be outside when you’re done.”

“What about you?” I caught him by the wrist. “Don’t you want to visit with her?”