“I wanted to impress a girl,” Custo continued. “You took the blame.”
“You’d have been thrown out of school.” If Custo were trying to distract him, he was doing a piss-poor job. Memory lane was not exactly where Adam wanted to be.
“That’s part of why I did it, too. If I had been thrown out, maybe my family would’ve taken notice of me.” Custo had been dumped in a boarding school at nine. No visits. No communication.
“They never realized your value.”
Custo shook his head. “What I’m trying to say is that my family did take notice. My family was with me. I knew it the moment you told the cops that you stole the boat.”
Adam looked over at Custo. His right arm. His friend. In every way that mattered, his brother.
The anger inside Adam cooled somewhat, abated to a few degrees above that six-year-old steady burn. It allowed him to gulp at air and smooth his expression. He could live with this trade. Hell, he had been living with it, working toward answers because of Custo’s dogged support.
“Are we done being sappy yet?” Custo punched the elevator button.
“Yeah, I think so.” Adam fought to bring his shakes under control. Flexed the last of the tremors from his hands.
The door slid open. Custo glanced back as he entered. “By the way, if ever there was somebody who needed to settle down with a bunch of brats, it’s you.”
Bring children into this world? Never.
Through the peephole in the door, Talia watched Spencer swagger back to the elevator. She had to do something. Give Adam something. He might appear calm and controlled on the surface, but she’d felt the grief and pain that roiled beneath, and how close he was to becoming overwhelmed by the bright white fury that laced his being. He couldn’t go on like this for much longer.
And with Spencer spouting nonsense about how wraiths might be an evolutionary step up? No wonder Adam was sick over his brother.
The elevator pinged, Spencer stepped in, and the doors…finally…closed.
Talia eased out of her apartment, took a sharp right, and opted for the stairs. She coded herself into the stairwell and hurried down to the main level of the hotel portion. She exited by the kitchen, where the stairs terminated, and chanced the elevator—yes, empty!—to the office and laboratory subfloors.
If Adam already knew so much about her anyway, he might as well know what she’d discovered about Shadowman, her father. The research that had almost cost her life in the heat of Arizona.
None of it suggested how Shadowman could help kill Jacob and set Adam free. She didn’t even know what Shadowman was. A ghost, like Adam suggested? That didn’t feel right, and it didn’t account for her abilities either. And why would Jacob fear a ghost?
Talia coded into her office and headed directly for her laptop.
A thought niggled in her mind: What Adam needed—though she’d never tell him, no way never—was that other dev il, Death, the dark thing with the red eyes inside the black wind of her scream. The monster. The one who slaughtered the wraiths with a sweep of his scythe, and took Melanie down, too. Then had the perversion to—Talia shivered with the memory—to caress her cheek.
That monster could kill Jacob. Easy. Jacob should fear him.
She selected the file of images she’d been amassing, her research on Shadowman. ctrl A. Opened them all. She could give Adam this much at least.
They blinked one by one, layering onto the screen. As she waited, her mind turned inward, shifting the puzzle pieces of her origin around:
Jacob feared Shadowman, whom she’d met upon her momentary death, who likely had her ability to alter perception. But it was the monster who could kill him, called by her scream.
Two entities, and she was connected to both. One desired effect.
The heuristic rule of Occam’s razor said the simplest theory was the best.
Why two entities? It made no good sense. Not unless…
Her stomach turned. The room suddenly warped around her, and she clutched the table before her. It couldn’t be, could it? Was her heritage so horrible? Her birthright so despicable?
Yes. Somehow she’d always known. It’s why she was alone.
If she tried, she knew she could probably fit the puzzle together now. If she could summon the courage to face the truth, she could probably name Death. He was her father, Shadowman.
Adam left Custo in the elevator and headed to his office, grim anticipation redoubling in his blood. If Jacob had chosen to become a wraith, then someone must have offered him the choice. Jacob was never going to give away the identity of this individual, but perhaps the algorithms of The Collective tracking program could be modified to isolate the general location of the source.