Page 210 of Primal

Hope’s a stubborn parasite. Even when you know better.

Her mug hits the counter as I step around her. She jerks back. As if she knows.

Her elbow knocks over the pumpkin spice air freshener. We both freeze as the plastic bottle rolls—her breath’s sour with vodka, mine with the effort of not driving my fist through the drywall—until it wedges against the fridge.

“Kade, hurry up,” Max shouts from the garage. “The strobe light just fried a spider. Now it’s twitching!”

Mom laughs. I pretend not to notice how the damn mug trembles in her grip.

The woman’s already tearing into a second bar when I head off to find Max.

Fuck her nostalgia. Fuck Robert for cheating on Mom. For driving her to the booze every night. For the bruises he left on Max. And fuck whatever ditch he’s rotting in.

And most of all, fuck Dad. For dying too soon. For leaving me his eyes. Every time I look in the mirror, there he is.

The garage is a disaster. Sawdust everywhere. Max never sweeps up.

“Think it’ll last the night?” he asks, elbow-deep in the fog machine, testing the controls.

At eleven, he’s already better with tools than his deadbeat dad ever was.

“Either it works or we tell them it’s haunted when it dies.” I yank the power cord taut. “More authentic that way.”

Mom’s in the living room. Laughing. Or whatever you call it. Already parked in front of the TV, working her way through another bottle. Three years since Robert’s gone, and she still gets wasted every October like it’s some fucked-up anniversary.

“She’s worse tonight,” Max murmurs without looking up. Too perceptive for a kid his age—just like I was, standing outside that room in the hospital while some doctor explained why Dad wasn’t coming home.

“Always is when the Great Pumpkin fails to show.” I toss him the spare extension cord. “Here. In case your dad finally sends that postcard.”

Max flips me off, but he’s grinning. Kid’s got my sense of humor. Shame he got stuck with everything else too.

He picks at the fog machine’s cord. “Think he ever misses this stuff?”

“Not his style.” What the hell else do you tell a kid? That some people aren’t worth missing? That the world’s better off when trash takes itself out?

Max tests the switch, sending eerie blue light crawling across the walls. “Is he ever coming back?”

Not in a million years.

“Would you?” I nod toward the house where Mom’s singing off-key again to the song Dad used to hum while tightening my training wheels.

Max watches me pry open the panel on his fog machine then changes the subject. “Payton gonna check out our haunted garage?”

The wrench slips, skinning my knuckle raw. “Nah.” Blood wells, thick and mean. “She’s got better shit to do.”

Like getting hunted through the woods. Like letting some faceless bastard pin her down while she—

The wrench hits concrete with a loud clang.

“Bummer. She’s cool,” Max says, picking it up. “For a girl.”

I ruffle his hair when he hands it back. Sure. The Verge. The chase. Dumb fucking plan.

We work in comfortable silence—me rigging up the motion sensors for the jump scares, Max carefully arranging the fake cobwebs. He’s got an eye for detail, this kid. Always has.

“Kade?”

“Yeah?”