Julian closes his eyes on his inhale. When he finally responds, his voice sounds waterlogged with sorrow.
“Be honest with yourself, Sean,” he says. “When has anyone ever been able to tell you what to do?”
Several hours later, I startle awake to the crunch of gravel under our tires; we are in the middle of the woods, heading up an unpaved road. I’d tried to stay up to keep some idea of where we were, but last night’s sleep had been less than restful, and after two hundred miles of flat cornfields and barnyards, I must have dozed off.
“Are we there?” I ask.
“Soon,” Julian says. We bounce up a hill, then pull into a clearing.
There’s another car waiting for us. It’s a silver SUV, totally unremarkable except for its tinted windows. We haven’t finished parking before both the driver and front passenger car doors open, and two people in black hop out.
I freeze in trepidation as they approach, not even daring to breathe. It occurs to me that I’m alone with three people in an unknown location in the middle of the woods, and I’ve come here somewhat voluntarily, like the women in the beginning of every true crime documentary.
“Trust me,” Julian says softly. “Please.”
He doesn’t know the enormity of what he asks, because then he wouldn’t ask it. Doesn’t know how stupid I feel, that the only two men I have developed strong feelings for have both put my life at risk. That I seem to have a thing for monsters, even if they are of different varieties. That even now, when I face him like this, I have to fight back the urge to smooth the tortured crease between his brows.
There’s a simultaneous tap at our windows, and I swing to mine to find a face smiling down at me.
A familiar one, though I’ve never seen it smile.
“Ritika?” I say, stunned. Julian unlocks the doors with a click, then steps out on his side. I swallow a gulp of air, then do the same.
“Long time no see,” Ritika says when I step out. “You’ve had quite the last few days.”
“That’s an understatement,” I say a little awkwardly. I turn questioningly to the other stranger, a reedy young man who has Ritika’s nose and thick eyebrows.
“Aditya. Ritika’s younger brother,” Julian provides, as if he’s in my head. “He’ll be taking our car. Ritika will be accompanying us to the safe house.”
“I’ll guess I should add ‘mind reading’ to your list of abilities,” I grumble.
“Julian can do a lot of strange shit, but he can’t read minds,” Aditya says in a voice with a bit more bass than I expect. He swings to him, suspicious. “Wait. Can you?”
“No,” Julian confirms. He tosses Aditya the keys to his Audi, and he catches them, grinning like he’s just won the lottery.
I stand, bewildered, as I try to process what I’ve just observed.
“Hold on,” I say. “Theyknow?”
Aditya shrugs, leaning against the door of the Audi and swinging the keys around his finger.
“What, that your immortal boyfriend has weird dream powers?” he says. “Yeah. It’s sort of a family secret.”
I’m gaping as Julian sighs, grabbing my bag from the passenger seat.
“The Ghoshals have been working with me for generations,” he supplies, throwing our duffel bags over his shoulders and heading for the other car.
“He actually scooped our great-grandparents out of India during the Bengal famine and helped them resettle in the UK. When he decided to move to the States, our parents decided to follow,” Ritika explains. She barely lets me process the fact that Julian was present during a historic atrocity that I last heard about in my high school world history class when she adds, “Working for him is tradition, at this point.”
“First you have to go through that creepy-ass initiation, though,” Aditya groans.
If I had questions before, I have a thousand more now.
“Initiation?” I ask, stuffing my hands into my pockets to keep warm.
“Not my idea!” Julian yells from the other car.
“He’s right. Our dadu came up with it. He’s very dramatic,” Aditya says with a snort. “Two lucky Ghoshals are chosen, through some mysterious selection process that definitely has something to do with our SAT scores and how many times we’ve visited him for tea over the years, toadventurewith this one. On our eighteenth birthday, they show us this weird old tapestry with that guy on it”—he gestures to Julian—“then give us an offer we’d be dumb to refuse.”