I didn’t want tea either. I wanted a drink, cos I knew if this was the moment Folk talked, it was going to be fucking hard. But he didn’t have the luxury of taking the edge off, so I left Decoy’s beer stash alone and made myself a Rubi-style builder’s brew.
Folk was still on the couch, elbows on his knees, staring at the spot on the skirting boards my little brother had burned with battery acid twenty years ago.
He took the tea, blowing out a breath. “Thanks.”
“It’s all I have, brother.” I folded myself onto the sofa beside him. “I rebuilt my house trying to get rid of these fucking nightmares, and they still get me from time to time.”
“How often?”
“I don’t keep track. That way I don’t know when they’re getting worse.”
“What are they about?”
I cupped my hands around my tea. “Lots of things. But they started when I got spiked with ket. Before then, my nightmares had always been real.”
“That’s what I thought.” Folk studied his tea. “I’ve seen some of the worst things you can imagine—men burning alive, dead kids at the side of the road, but I never got PTSD, even when I demobbed and took a break from killing people.”
“What changed?”
“Rocco went missing. I knew he was dead before Embry told me, but I never saw his body.”
A chill rattled my spine. Folk hadn’t seen Rocco’s remains, but I had, and it wasn’t a sight I wanted to relive. I thought about my best friends, the brothers I’d grown up with. Rubi. Nash. Would I have survived it if I’d seen them like that? Or would taking someone else’s word for it have killed me just as much?
Either way, Folk had been right about there being no easy fix. It wasn’t as if I could go back in time and make a different decision about who got told what and when. Or if I’d even change my fucking mind. Rocco was dead regardless, and I couldn’t see how laying eyes on his rotting corpse would’ve made Folk any better.
“I’m sorry.”
In the dark, Folk almost smiled. “I’m sorry too.”
“For what?”
“For being hard on you these past few months. I know you’re doing your best.”
“Yeah, well.” I drained my tea and set the mug on the table. “If that ain’t ever good enough, I need people to tell me. So don’t worry about a fucking thing.”
We lapsed into silence. Folk drank his tea while I tried to be subtle about watching him.
I wondered if he’d go to bed.
If he thought I’d leave.
Neither happened and I fell into a drowse again until my phone roused me with a text.
Viktor.
Frowning, I swiped the screen. Despite the day of fun we’d spent together last week, we weren’t in the habit of texting on our personal phones, but the message he’d sent chilled my blood.
I glanced at Folk.
His innate calm had returned to him, but the shadows I wasn’t used to seeing in him lingered. He leaned back, stretching his legs in the dark. “When you talk to Doherty, I’m going to be there.”
* * *
Doherty didn’t keep Folk waiting long. Maybe he’d got wind half the council were away on the road or whatever, but that cunt called me up four days later and I set the meet with bile in my throat.
That evening, I lurked in the chapel, reading through the mad-cap email Rubi had sent from the passenger seat of the Bone Rattler, full of grand ideas for Crow Land. “What’s he talking about fucking hashtags for?”
Folk glanced up from the health and safety audit bollocks he’d been helping Locke with. “Who?”