Trade Me (Cyclone #1)

“We need to renegotiate.” My voice feels hoarse. I wait, searching for the right words, but they don’t come. The house is dark around us. I can hear the muted hum of a server in a nearby room, the occasional creak as the wood settles overhead. “Not just the end date of us—the existence of an end date at all. I don’t want to let this go. I don’t want to let us go.”


I can feel her muscles tense. But she doesn’t turn away.

“I don’t know how this will work,” I say. “But…it’s working now.”

Her hand clasps mine.

“I don’t want this to end,” I tell her. “I don’t want to walk away from you.”

“I don’t know what to say.” Her voice is low. “I’m not good at taking risks, Blake, and you’re the biggest risk there is. I’m scared.”

I can’t tell her not to be scared. “I know,” I say. “But I think you’re wrong about the stars. There are no gods here. There are just mortals. There’s just you and me. We make our own light, and we can make it say anything we want.”

She turns away. And as she does, outside the edge of my consciousness, something registers. Something that draws me away from a moment that I didn’t think I could be drawn away from.

A chill runs down my spine. I don’t know what it is, why I give a quick shiver. I just know that something just changed—something big. There are no gods here.

“I don’t…I’m not sure,” Tina starts to say.

“Wait.” I set a finger on her lips. “Something is wrong.”

I hear another noise, this time coming clearly from downstairs: the shattering of glass. That, and then, a stark nothing.

It’s my dad. I can explain the noise. It’s well after midnight now, and despite his boasts earlier, he’s not finished yet. He was getting himself some coffee and he dropped a mug. It’s nothing.

But even though my mind is telling me to dismiss it, my body refuses. The hair rises on the back of my neck. I can feel it overtake me. My life just changed, and I don’t know how.

“Blake,” Tina says. “I…”

It’s nothing, I tell myself. I turn back to Tina. But that sense of wrongness is too strong, too powerful, like my subconscious is reaching out and shaking me awake.

Fuck.

“Hold onto whatever you were going to say.”

And that’s when I hear something else. It’s a low sound that I can’t classify. I try to tell myself that it could be anything: a raccoon in the backyard or a coyote slinking through from the hills.

But I know it isn’t any of those things. It’s instinct operating here, but I grew up in this house. I’ve fallen asleep listening to its creaks and moans all my life. And right now, the sounds all feel wrong. The moment isn’t just gone; it’s smashed to irretrievable bits. I push back the covers and pull on a pair of boxers and then jeans.

“Blake?” Tina’s watching me, her eyebrows knitting into worried lines.

“Something’s wrong,” I tell her, and that sounds right, even though I have no idea what is going on.

She doesn’t ask what. She doesn’t say anything. She just scrambles into jeans and a shirt and follows me downstairs.

A light is on in the kitchen; it casts a warm glow on the stairs, but for some reason, it just chills me. Something is wrong; I know it, even if I don’t know what. I hurry. Tina’s slippers slap on the stairs behind me, but I rush ahead.

Shards of ceramic greet me, spread over the marble floor. That’s when I realize how my subconscious knew something was wrong. There was something I didn’t hear. Dad’s a neat freak. If he dropped a glass, I should have heard him cleaning up afterward.

I didn’t. And I don’t see him now. Not at first.

Then I hear him. It’s a repeat of the second noise I heard—a low moan, followed by the catch of breath. I pick my way among the glass shards, making my way around the gleaming island of black marble. My heart is pounding. I don’t want to think what is happening. I can’t.

Dad is there. He’s lying on the floor.

For a moment, it doesn’t make any sense to me. Why the fuck is he on the floor? What’s going on? And then I see his hand, clenched hard. Beads of sweat are popping out on his forehead. His skin is pale; his teeth are gritted.

“Dad?”

Behind me, Tina comes into the kitchen. She looks around, slowly. “Oh my God,” she says. “Blake. Call 911.”

“Don’t.” Dad grates the word out.

She’s already looking around for some kind of a phone. “Don’t be an idiot,” she snaps. “Something’s obviously wrong.” Her gaze lands on his phone on the counter. She grabs it and swipes at the screen. “What’s your passcode? Oh, wait. Never mind. The emergency call still works.”

“No. Call my fucking doctor.” Dad pushes up to a sitting position. “He’s handled this before. There’s an emergency contact screen—you should be able to find his contact info without the passcode…”

“What the fuck, Dad?” I ask. “What do you mean, before?”

“I had a little arrhythmia a few weeks ago,” he admits. “Bad enough that I was a little shaken. Nothing like this, though.”

I stare at him. “You’ve been having heart problems and you didn’t tell me?”