Page 36 of Into Ember

I open my mouth—

Outside I can hear voices — Gunnar’s, gone flat in a way I’ve never heard it, Brock’s doing its nice-morning thing, and a third one, deep and level and new.

That’s the something no one is saying.

There’s three heartbeats out there.

Three. Through a wall. Heartbeats I counted, without trying.

Not thinking about how I know that.

The third voice says Erik’s name, and the towel stops for good.

“What’s going to be great?” I finally say.

Rayner smiles down at me. “You’ll see.”

And I’ve seen this man happy. He walked three hours through a forest happy. This isn’t that kind of happy. This is almost giddy. This is a man saving a seat for his favorite part. Nothing else in this kitchen agrees with him, and I don’t know which of them to believe—

Boots on the porch. Fast.

The front door doesn’t open so much as surrender, and a man comes through it.

He’s enormous. That’s the first thing — they’re all enormous, I’ve recalibrated my whole scale, and he is still enormous. Silver hair, short. Black ink climbing up out of his collar, and the collar is pressed. All of him is pressed. He’s dressed like he’s on his way to run a meeting or a funeral and hasn’t decided which, and he is furious in the most frightening way I have ever seen a person be furious, which is quietly. He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t need to. The anger comes off him in one straight line, and every ounce of it goes past me like I’m not even here.

I’m just fine with that right now.

“Where is Erik?”

Erik sets the towel down.

He comes around the counter, unhurried, and stops.

And I notice where he stops. He stops in the one spot where a straight line from that man to me doesn’t exist anymore. I see him do it. I understand what it is. I don’t have time to have a feeling about it.

“Vick,” Erik says.

“Three years.” Vick’s voice stays level, every word measured. “Three years and not one word. Last night, six crossings hit my wards. Six. One of them a reading I have never seen in my life. I traveled through the night, and I learned you were alive because my son was standing in my way.”

His eyes never leave Erik. Not even when Gunnar and Brock slip in like bandits.

“So you will tell me where the hell you’ve been. Now. And what the fuck you brought back with you through that crossing.”

“Not here,” Erik says.

“That is not an answer—”

“Not in front of her.”

And that’s when Vick looks at me.

Barely. It is the fastest look I have ever been given — a flick, one line long, and he grunts like I’m not relevant — and his attention closes back over Erik like water.

Her.

I’m the thing Erik won’t discuss. Me.

Erik would rather take that man’s anger straight to the face than say one word about it while I’m in the room.