Mom wanders away to talk to some of the other parents. I watch her approach an older couple and introduce herself as Gideon Blake and Marcus Walker’s mother. That’s a first, but not surprising. Marcus and my mom had a bond from day one. She loved him about as quickly as I hated him—in the beginning.
Mom didn’t ask a single question when I brought both him and Jode back to Half Moon Bay with me, straight from Wyoming. She’d just lined us up and asked us what we liked to eat. Then she’d broken up the chores between us. Laundry, trash, dishwasher. Like, Fall in, children. You can either belong here or you can belong here. And by the way, I’m choosing for you.
Greatest woman in the world. Well. Right at the top.
The three of us spent the first few weeks on self-imposed lockdown. We played a million hours of video games. We ate a hundred of Mrs. C’s olallieberry pies. We started praying together, for Bas. I taught Jode and Marcus how to surf, while I figured out how to surf with one hand.
Jode hit on Anna. Anna hit on Jode. They both drove me crazy.
And Mom took care of us all.
After a couple of months, Jode shipped back to Oxford but Marcus stayed behind. One of the things I learned about him is that he grew up in foster homes. Lots of kids have great foster families, but he wasn’t one of them. He struck out on his own as soon as he turned eighteen, which was right before everything started happening. He didn’t say so, but my sense is that things went from bad to worse pretty quickly.
I still don’t know how he died. Why he was beaten to death. Someday that story will come out. I hope it will. But I’m okay either way. Whatever he wants is good with me.
Jode, Marcus, and me—we haven’t told anyone what happened. Before we left Wyoming, we signed contracts. We promised we’d never talk about the Kindred, or the key, or Jotunheimen, or any of it. We were given a cover story to explain how I lost my hand and how the three of us met.
The cover story goes like this: I can’t tell you anything.
It’s been effective.
I don’t like keeping the truth from Anna and my mom, but it’s not like I want to talk about what happened, either. That would only make it worse. Sharper. More real, the fact that two of us are gone.
Sebastian should be here. He’d be so proud, seeing Marcus do this.
So would Daryn. I think she’d also be proud of me.
I watch as Marcus hugs the guys in his class, as they take pictures and laugh, commiserating over their last weeks together. He’s congratulating them, but he’s also saying good-bye, even though no one else knows it. Tomorrow, the rest of the class will report to one of the Ranger Battalions, but he won’t.
He’ll be reassigned immediately to a newly formed regiment of the US military. A unit specializing in occult warfare, about as classified as you can get. Pretty small. Comprised of Suarez, Low, and myself. And a few other soldiers who were there in Wyoming. We report directly to Cordero, who’s turned out to be pretty cool. She doesn’t wear any perfume anymore. I think she does that for me.
We even have a British liaison if we need him. It takes some pull to get Jode out here—Oxford’s pretty clingy about its students—but Cordero’s up to the task. She got him here for this.
It’s been half a year now, just about. And I feel different. I’ve gotten closure on my dad. I’m definitely carrying around less anger. But there’s a new gap inside me. There are more people to miss. New images to try to unsee.
Bas, on the brink of death. Sacrificing himself to push Samrael into that spectral hell.
And Daryn. Wedged right next to me around our stone circle in Jotunheimen, her cheeks gold with firelight. Daryn a hundred other ways. Memories of her blurring with dreams of her, and yeah. She was right. We made some unwanted history. It’s all I have left of her.
Jode comes back with a bottle of water. He twists the cap off and hands it to me.
“Don’t tell me you already lost my sister?” I say, taking it.
He grins. “Queue for the women’s loo.”
Marcus comes over and joins us. A couple of the cadre instructors who knew me when I was in RASP come over, too. Suarez and Low wander over with a few guys I don’t know. I wish Cory could be here but he’s deployed, like most of the guys in my class who made it through.
The training stories start coming out. One after another. I laugh, listening to my brothers-in-arms. And I imagine what it would be like if I could add my story.
Man, you guys don’t know anything. Talk to me when you’ve taken down a dragon.
Marcus looks at me like he’s read my mind and smiles.
From the corner of my eye, I see my sister. She stands alone in the shadow of a building, watching me with a strange expression on her face.
I go to her right away.
“What’s up, Banana? You look like you just saw a ghost.”
“No … not a ghost,” Anna says. “A girl just came up to me. She looked familiar, Gideon. She said she knew you.”
Adrenaline moves through me in a hot wave. “What was her name?”
“She didn’t say.” Anna holds out her hand. “But she told me to give you this.”
The silver key—the one that hung around Daryn’s neck—rests in her palm.