So two truths could exist at once. He did protect me from his parents. He just also hurt me irrevocably when I discovered his affair and that his love was nothing but a fucking farce.
Who was to say that Lucien wasn’t doing something similar now?
Perhaps he wanted to get rid of me with or without the danger aimed at me because of him. Maybe, like Matteo, he realized I was attracted to him when he’d totally lost interest.
Maybe, like Matteo, he weaponized the truth as an elaborate excuse.
I had over ten new messages and about twenty missed phone calls.
About half an hour into the drive, when the silence started to become unbearable, yet neither of us seemed willing to break it, I took out my phone from my bag, wanting to play some online game to pass the time.
It hadn’t occurred to me until then that I hadn’t been on my phone since the morning, when I woke up, due to everything that was happening. Apparently, in the few hours since, people had started looking for me. Since I wasn’t exactly popular, I hadn’t really expected it. Aside from the occasional nasty nagging by my parents or requests from my editor, my phone was more often than not as silent as a graveyard.
I checked the call log first. One was from my editor atThe Hallowing Hour, Andra, and another one was from Ellie, a very distant friend from high school who insisted on keeping in touch with just about everyone from our former friend group.
The other eighteen calls were from Thayer.
My older brother.
Who hadn’t been speaking to me for a year.
My chest tightened when I saw his name and the number of times he tried to reach me.
It felt like a heavy weight landed on my shoulders when I opened the message app and began reading. I wanted to read Thayer’s first, but Andra’s text caught my eye.
The first was from a couple of hours ago.A few sponsors pulled out. We might not be able to publish this month. Will let you know what’s happening when I have more info.
My heart stopped. The sponsors she was talking about were the only things keeping our magazine afloat. Without them, there would be no magazine.
I swallowed hard, my hand tightening on the phone. My job was in danger. The job I poured my blood, sweat, and tears into. The job I had taken on to find out what exactly killed my sisters that awful dayeight years ago, through access to crime logs, and my attempt to draw the well-hidden supernatural to me.
Losing this job wouldn’t be just about losing my livelihood. It would mean I had spent the last few years wasting my fucking time.
Especially since Lucien wanted me “safe and sound” and far away from him.
I could feel the answers slipping through my fingers, as though I were trying to hold water. My frustration was growing, and along with it, a deep, never-ending grief that whispered in my mind that perhaps I would always be left hanging as to what really happened eight years ago.
With a trembling finger, I returned to the messages log, and since I only had one text from Ellie, I opened it, hoping it would bring me some levity.
Hey, Drew! I’m moving to LA next month (can you believe it?!) and I wouldLovehanging out with you and catching up! I’ll let you know once I’m settled and we can meet for coffee or something!So Excited!
The tightness in my gut relaxed slightly. At least one thing never changed, and this was Ellie. She was the brightest, most charming person I’d ever known. Charming enough to keep in touch with me, the outcast of our former friend group, from time to time.
Her moving to my city actually made my chest tighten.
Ellie had been the only one who hadn’t abandoned me after everything that happened to my sisters. She’d been the only one to sit with me during lunchtime in our senior year of high school; she’d often stood up for me when classmates called me crazy and stupid and far worse things.
She’d been the only one who hadn’t entirely dismissed me when I insisted that what I saw happen to my sisters couldn’t possibly be human.
However, when I moved to LA after high school, I wanted to start anew, and I’d cut her off. It wasn’t her fault she was a reminder that I had become an outcast, but knowing she was still in touch with the otherpeople I had once upon a time thought of as friends, that she refused to change her people-pleasing ways, made it easier for me to let go.
Especially since my sole priority in life was to find out what really happened to my sisters eight years ago.
Because I knew what I saw. There had been a shadow mark and also a sigil, or rather, a Spellscript, at the crime scene.
And while Ellie never told me that I was wrong, she always had that doubtful look in her eyes.
Feeling the sudden gloom falling on me, adding to the weight on my shoulders, I took a deep breath and moved on to the messages from Thayer.