Adam tried again. “He got to my mom first. Killed her before we even knew what was happening. When Jacob went after my dad, I grabbed the fireplace poker. I was too late.”
Talia whimpered.
“But when he came after me, I hit him across the eyes. I was lucky. Wraiths still need their eyes to see. Once I blinded him, I trapped him in a concrete cellar on our property. Then I shot him.”
The gut-twisting, almost hysterical, fear of the time washed over Adam. The first time he’d turned the gun on his brother, the abrupt report, the smoking hole just left of center in Jacob’s forehead. If Adam’d had darkness to hide in, he would’ve very likely stayed there, too.
“I can still hear Jacob, Shadowman can’t get me. He killed our parents and made a game of it.”
“Must have been horrible. You loved them,” she said, her face lined with grief. She’d stopped fighting and instead bowed her head, her forehead just grazing his chin. “The pain of their loss never goes away, does it? It’s always there, behind what you do. You keep going for them.”
So she did understand. “I have to. I can’t let go until this is over. Until Jacob is dead.”
“But it’s not my fight.”
She wanted the truth. He was going to let her have it. “It’s everyone’s fight, now. The world’s. Most just don’t know it yet. Besides, a researcher looks for answers, and if this isn’t the most practical application of your field of study, I don’t know what is.”
He dropped his arms in frustration. She leaned back onto the wall and faded into shadow.
“Why aren’t you afraid of me?” she asked. “I could be just as horrible as Jacob in there.”
Ah, a latent fear. She was just as afraid of herself as she was of Jacob. That alone took her out of the threat cate-gory. In contrast, Jacob embraced his inner monster and relished it.
Adam sighed. “I doubt it. You are as set against wraiths as I am. You tried to save my life in the alley. You were nice to Patty even though you were mad at me. And here we are in my personal hell, and you hate it as much as I do. I think you’re safe. Further, I think we have a lot in common.”
“I don’t know what you think I can possibly do to help you.”
“Let’s find Shadowman,” Adam pressed. “He’s got answers for both of us.”
Jacob shrieked; Adam filled with hope. The key was right here, at last.
He reached out to her in the dark. Found the slope of her neck, the curve of her jaw, just where he had left it. The shadows bled away from his vision. Tears streaked down Talia’s flushed cheeks. He needed to get her back in bed, and soon.
“Listen to him, Talia. Listen to Jacob.”
His brother whined in rocking rhythm, a small, scared sound.
“We can stop the wraiths together. My brother first. Come out of your shadows. Face him.”
“I don’t want this. Any of it.”
“Neither do I. When it’s all over, we’ll go on a nice, long vacation. Anywhere in the world.”
Her black eyes filled with tears. A moment passed.
“I’d like to live to see the pyramids,” she said, voice clogged with helpless fatigue.
“Egypt it is.”
“Maybe the Great Wall.” A fat drop slid down her cheek.
Adam laughed, wiping it away. “And China.”
“The Eiffel Tower?” An edge of her mouth tipped up, streaking more tears down her cheeks.
“Paris. At New Year’s, when the whole city is lit,” he promised. “Come out, Talia.”
The darkness dissipated. Jacob’s keens took on volume. Talia’s gaze was trained on the monitor, staring as Jacob bared inhuman jaws better suited to a shark or a piranha or a multifanged snake.
The guard gripped the counter for dear life, sweat running off the side of his face.
Talia trembled, dark eyes huge in a ghost face. “Where do we start?”
SIX
TALIA went with the west-wing apartment, haunted with a view. She had managed two months on the run from wraiths. She could handle this.
She shut herself into her new place, anticipation of some kind of woo-woo event crawling over her skin like creepy spiders. Waiting, breath-bated and twitching at every noise (damn vent rattled every time the a/c came on) was agony until she succumbed to exhaustion.
The bedroom light overhead glared when she woke in the morning. Perspiration pricked at her forehead and dampened her neck under hot, heavy hair in need of a ponytail elastic. She disentangled herself from her twisted sheets and blindly padded out of the bedroom.