The Three Fates of Ryan Love (8 page)

“I didn't realize you were so faithless, Ryan,” the man said in his father's voice. “Your father's dead. But the spirit never dies, Son. You know that. Your brother knew that.”

The tone matched every lecture Ryan had ever received from his dad and wiped him out in a deluge of memory.

Ryan left the reference to Reece alone and focused on what he could see. “You expect me to believe you're my dad's spirit?” he demanded.

“We can play twenty questions if that'll help.”

Ryan's jaw set hard. It was exactly the kind of thing his dad would have said.

He heard a sound and glanced over to find the black bird had returned and brought a few of his buddies with him. They lined the railing around the porch, some on the top, some on the second tier. They watched with curious eyes and quick head bobs. Brandy whined.

“I don't have much time,” the man said. “It goes without saying that I shouldn't be here at all.”

“Don't let me hold you up,” Ryan replied, swallowing the feeling of disrespect that was automatic. The man was not his father.

How can you be sure?

The question came from nowhere, filling his head. Confusing him.

The man who was
not
his father strolled to the windows that looked out from the front room. Cupping his hands, he peeked inside.

“Is Sabelle still sleeping?”

The sound of Sabelle's name on this imposter's lips snapped Ryan's attention back.

“How do you know Sabelle?”

The man who couldn't be his dad no matter what he said, no matter that his every movement awoke a memory so deep it hurt, moved to the next window. Ryan watched him, seeing the reflection of the birds in the glass. Their eyes glittered like shiny obsidian balls and the black gloss of their wings looked oiled. Something greedy seemed to fill the air, siphoning off the oxygen. Making it hard to breathe.

The man said, “She's probably faking it. She doesn't know how to sleep.”

Listen to your father. He wants to help you.

Ryan's head whipped around. The birds stared back.

“She shouldn't be here, Son.”

His dad had always been able to make a simple statement sound like a decree. It vibrated with power, authority. Challenging Ryan's doubts. Demanding respect. Years of obeying that voice goaded him now.

“Neither should you,” Ryan answered.

Hurt registered in the man's eyes when he turned, but he looked down before Ryan could understand it.

“I'm too late, aren't I?” he asked. “She's already beguiled you.”

“Beguiled?” Ryan gave a derogatory snort. “No.”

But the word stuck like a tiny barb in his mind.
Beguiled.
An image flashed in his head. Himself, standing over her as she slept, craving her like an addict craves his next fix. He shook his head. It felt heavy.

The man gave Ryan a disappointed look. “All right. I get it. She's like every stray you ever brought home. You feel protective of her.”

Ryan didn't like the comparison but he couldn't think of a feasible argument, not when his thoughts felt so
thick
.

“So what's your plan?” the man asked. He looked more like Ryan's dad with each passing second. Worry pulled his features and softened his eyes—another expression Ryan had seen a million times. One that felt too real to ignore. Too personal to be imitated.

What if he wasn't an imposter?

Yes. Open your eyes. See him for what he is.

“You gotta have a plan, Son,” he went on. “You don't even know what she is. Where did she come from?”

Ryan didn't have those answers, but he didn't let on. “You tell me,” he said blandly.

The man gave him a condescending shake of his head, a sardonic smile. Ryan's dad, head to toe. But there something important in the expectant silence. It tapped his subconscious and tipped his disquiet over a darker edge. All the moment needed was some creaking chains and screeching ravens.

Oh, wait . . .

Ryan tried to hold out and not be the first to speak. A tense pause like this—it could be read. That's how he knew a lie from the truth. Not the words the liar spoke, but the reticence of the silence in between.

The man gave nothing. His reserve was a cool pond that reflected, but never rippled.

“Okay,” Ryan said at last. “I give. Where's she from?”

A thin trace of lightning flickered behind the clouds and the air smelled rainy and sulfurous. Ryan looked at the birds again. The big one spread its wings in victory. What did it think it had won?

“She's from the Beyond, Son,” the man said gently. “Surely you've figured that out?”

“The Beyond,” Ryan repeated, while inside a montage of Sabelle rolled across his mind. Her naked appearance in the parking lot, the openmouthed wonder, the big-eyed lies.

No. He hadn't fucking figured it out. Not even close.

Suddenly everything made sense in a too-fucked-up-for-words way. He should have known, but Sabelle didn't look like the kind of thing he expected to come from that terrible place.

The Beyond, from what Ryan had gathered the last time it had intruded in his life, was a euphemism for some parallel universe that demons and reapers called home. A few weeks ago, some of those demons had escaped the Beyond and paid the Loves a visit. Ryan's baby brother and sister had been caught up in stopping them and Reece had died trying to send them back where they belonged. Roxanne had survived because of what he'd done. According to her, the
world
had survived because of it. But Ryan was never really able to put that into perspective. The world was a pretty big place.

“I thought the Beyond was supposed to be all sealed up now,” Ryan said in a tight voice.

“Parts of it are. But there will always be ways.”

“Reece died to keep all the monsters out of our world. Are you saying he died for nothing?”

“I'm saying that there are a lot of monsters in the keep. Some smarter than others.”

Ryan stared at him, nonplussed. He wished he could be incredulous, but he couldn't even fake it. Like it or not, the Beyond was real. The things that came out of it were real. He'd lost his brother to the Beyond. Roxanne, too, in a way. Ryan couldn't doubt its existence.

“What kind of monster do you think Sabelle is?”

The man leaned forward, green eyes so intent that Ryan couldn't look away. “Does it matter?”

No. It didn't.

“She's from the Beyond. You know that means she's dangerous. Nothing good ever came from there. But she blinded you and then she let you dip your stick and suddenly you're thinking with the wrong organ. Isn't that right?”

Ryan said nothing, using his silence as a weapon. But the man who might be his father used the same tactic back, watching Ryan as the quiet folded in on itself. After all, he was the one Ryan had learned it from in the first place.

After a moment, the man smiled. “Okay. You don't want to share. Your prerogative. But tell me something. How did she know what was going to happen at Love's?”

There was a trap in that question. Ryan sensed it even if he couldn't see it. “You'd have to ask her,” he replied cautiously.

“Because you don't know?”

“Because it's her story to tell.”

Cunning moved through the man's eyes. Ryan replayed his last words, looking for the source. He couldn't find it, but his thinking felt sluggish. Too slow to track the nuances of the conversation.

“Her story,” the man repeated. “See, that's what worries me, Son. Her
stories
. I think she has a lot of them. Did she tell you she sees the future?”

Ryan nodded before he could stop himself.

“It's a lie.”

“You don't know that.”

“Think it through, Ryan. She knew about Love's because she made it happen.”

“It was a gas leak.”

“A leak no one can explain. It's true. Watch the news.”

Don't fight. Believe, Ryan. Your father will help.

Ryan eyed the man who wasn't his dad. Could he be right?

“Ask her to tell you what's going to happen tomorrow. She won't be able to, but she won't tell you that. She'll just make you forget you asked.” He gave Ryan a sly look. “She's good at that.”

In his head, he heard Sabelle say,
No one can know their own future . . .

Ryan kept his thoughts to himself, but he was remembering last night . . . this morning . . . Sabelle had, indeed, made him forget his questions.

Yeah, as distractions went, that one had done the trick.

Ryan pushed his fingers into his hair, wishing he knew the way out of this conversation—of this whole encounter. He hated ambiguity. He liked black and white. Straight from the hip. No fancy footwork. His head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. He swayed and braced himself against the railing. The black birds fluttered with annoyance.

“Ah,” the man said. “I think you understand.”

Ryan wished he'd explain it, then. He didn't understand anything.

“She'll always have a ready answer. If she can't bluff her way out, she'll just tell you she hasn't seen it yet. Visions come when they want to come. Must be very convenient for her. She has a superpower she never has to prove. That would alarm me some, if I were you.”

“But you're not me. Are you,
Dad
?”

The man stiffened, the gesture so reflexive, so much a part of Ryan's father's makeup, that Ryan almost blurted an apology for his rudeness. The fog in his head thickened. Why did he feel this way? What did it have to do with this man who was not his father but knew too much to be disregarded?

“So none of this sounds crazy to you, Ryan?”

“Oh, it's crazy,” Ryan agreed, his words slurring. He felt drugged, but he hadn't eaten or drunk anything since he'd woken up. There was no way this stranger had dosed him with something without his being aware. There'd been no chance. No method available.

“And crazy doesn't concern you?”

“Things have changed since you've been gone, Da—” Ryan stopped before he said it. “Crazy's the new normal around here.”

“But it's got to raise your antenna, a beauty like her, landing in your lap, here to save your life. All by herself. From the
Beyond
?”

Listen to him. Let him help. You can't do it alone.

Ryan narrowed his eyes and focused on what he wanted to say. “Get to the point or get out of here.”

“You can't trust the Beyond, Ryan.”

“Not all of it.”

The man who maybe
could
be his dad stared at him with blazing eyes. “Not any of it. Do you think Roxanne and that abomination she's run off with are in a consensual relationship, Son?”

That one hit hard enough to break through. Roxanne and her
boyfriend.
She'd met him a month or two ago, just as everything had gone south.

While Reece was battling demons—personal and ­otherwise—a reaper . . . a fucking
reaper . . .
had disguised himself as a man and seduced Ryan's sister. Nothing Ryan had done or said could convince her to leave the bastard. She said the reaper was changed now. That she loved him. It made Ryan sick.

His dad spoke again, voice icy and hard. “Does that make sense to you? Roxanne? Sweet little
Roxanne
? Fucking
a reaper
?”

The profanity made Ryan blink. His dad never cursed. Ever. And God knew, there were many times when he should have. His dad was the kind of man who made up swearwords like
sugar beans
and
dog biscuit
and, if he was really pissed, maybe an occasional
dod gammit
.
Fuck
? Not in his lifetime.

The wrong of that burned. His dad was
dead.
Buried, long ago. It wasn't his lifetime anymore.

Yet, only his dad would share Ryan's biggest fear—that Roxanne hadn't chosen to be with the
man
who kept her from home. The man who wasn't even human.

“You think, when she tells you she's happy, it's Roxanne talking? Your ‘lie meter' doesn't work with beings from the Beyond, Son. You can't trust it. You can't trust
her
.” He jabbed a finger toward the house, where Sabelle slept. “She's got your johnson in her hand and she's using it like a damn leash.”

Ryan felt like he had at thirteen, when his dad caught him in the backyard with his hand down Tammy Kincaid's pants and the other up her shirt. It had him off balance. There was too much
right
in everything the man did, at odds with the great big
wrongs
—like his being here at all
.

“She said she was a prisoner.”

His father nodded solemnly. “All the better to play your heartstrings, Son. She's a creature who's gone rogue. A runaway. She'll do whatever she needs to get what she wants. She's using you. She
told
you she's using you. And you agreed to it. That doesn't sound like the Ryan I know.”

Ryan was nodding. He stopped and tried again to clear his head. “What does she really want?” he asked without meaning to.

His dad leaned closer, eyes brilliant, blazing. Even the birds watched with interest. “What did she tell you?”

Answer him, answer him, answer him.

Sweat broke out on Ryan's brow as he fought for control of his own mind.

“Come on, Son. I always believed you were the smart one.”

“Yeah. I could never figure that out.”

“You wouldn't be doubting if you didn't know I was right.” He nodded at the house. “She's bewitched you.”

The word
bewitched
startled a laugh out of Ryan. It was such an improbable thing, being bewitched. The fog in his head receded just a little. Not enough.