Aidan hands me two round pink pills and a microwave popcorn bucket with a bottle of water resting inside. Looped into the crook of his elbow is a plastic shopping bag full of other supplies from the convenience store. He dumps the bag into the back floorboard and then takes the water bottle out of the popcorn bucket that I’m just holding in both hands.
He twists off the cap some before nudging me with the partially-opened bottle. “Here,” he says. He watches to make sure I swallow the medicine, drink some of the water. My stomach cramps dangerously but accepts defeat now that my lunch ended up splattered into the parking lot already.
In between finding the photos of the accident site and then trying to explain to Cain, I choked on the words and it was a good thing we were stopped. Even if Aidan did try to keep me in the car at first when I bolted into the door, but soon as I started retching he almost shoved me into the pavement trying to help.
“I’m okay,” I tell him. “I feel okay now.”
“Do you want me to drive, or…?”
I shake my head some. I drink more of the water and rub the back of my hand over my sweat-slicked forehead. “I don’t know,” I say. “No, not yet.”
Aidan slides my laptop into his lap and brushes his finger over the trackpad to make sure it stays awake. He clicks cautiously on a few things before simply closing the lid. “Can you ask Cain about Deimos now?” Aidan glances over at me as he packs away my laptop.
“I think it hurts him to talk. He’s being sulky, um, I can try though, I guess. Cain –”
I can hear you, dumbass.
“Oh, right.” I pull my lip in to chew it, and Aidan comes closer to set a reassuring hand on my arm. “Um, at the exorcism. Did you see the pretty blonde with nice hair? The bossy one, Phobos, he said Deimos would want to come kill me because of you. Because you’re a demon. What do I do about that?”
Nothing. You get me a body, and I’ll handle Deimos if he comes around, all right? Listen up, Abel. Here’s what we’re going to do.
I press my knees together as I sit forward, my shoulders straighten. I’m ready for Cain to tell me what to do, and I hear the strengthened rally of his voice. He’s snapping the words at me in an assertive-brusque growl that’s masking his pain better than the sarcasm and anger he tried before.
I’ve been thinking it over, and the situation’s critically fucked. I’m throwing in the towel on this one. I’m going back to the Otherside. No point in sticking around for a mess this big. Good try, though.
His sarcasm is full-throttle, but I’m just so disturbingly relieved that Cain isn’t truly stuck in a headless corpse. I run my tongue over the scar on my lips and stir in my seat. “I can’t kill anyone. Cain, I – I couldn’t even kill a cat. I just can’t kill anything, I’m sorry. Is there another way I can bring you across? Or can you come inside me again?”
I hear Cain’s deep, rumbling chuckle and shiver as I realize just what I asked. “N-no,” I stammer. “That’s not what I meant.” I remember Aidan’s listening, realize Aidan’s watching, look up to see Aidan staring and feel my nerves turn molten fire with embarrassment.
Relax, sweetheart.
Cain purrs the words at me so that I squirm and shudder, gasp and moan as my scar seems to blaze and grow numb all at once.
You’re close, kid. You’re close. I’ve found you, but this one’s too messy. Try another. No witnesses, no police. Keep it clean.
“No, I can’t. Take me instead.” The words slip out of me, I can’t stop them. “Take my body instead. Would that work? Take me. I’ll kill myself, will that work?”
“Ethan, no!” Aidan vaults across the middle console and grabs my shoulders. He’d be loud enough to drown out Cain if the response wasn’t just a ruefully amused laugh. Bruises cut into me as Aidan shakes furiously to get my attention. “Ethan, you are not killing yourself! Ethan!”
It’d probably work, but you’d be a dumbass to try it.
“Okay!” I yelp. “Okay, okay, I won’t. I won’t.” I hold my hands up defensively and look reassuring enough that Aidan stops trying to cut off the circulation to my arms. I look him squarely so he knows I’m talking to him and not Cain. “I won’t.”
Aidan’s brow crushes together as he keeps his hands on me, he actually strokes at my forehead like he’s feeling for a fever. “You’re not killing yourself.” It’s remarkable how stern he sounds, considering how terribly I have terrified him. We are so beyond ghost stories in tents now.
“Ethan?” he prompts. I’d been looking out the window listening for Cain, my attention drifting enough that he noticed. “Ethan, look at me. You are not killing yourself.”
“Cain says it’s a bad idea anyway. I won’t.”
Chalk-white devastation floods Aidan’s face as he stares at me. He chokes a swallow that makes me think I might need to offer him the popcorn tub, the best thing Aidan could find in the convenience store in case I got sick again while he was driving.
“What are you going to do?” he asks me. “Ethan? What’s Cain telling you to do?”
“I don’t know. Cain says he’s going back to the Otherside. I need to kill something else, or, I mean, find another dead body. Um –” Each word that I utter makes Aidan flinch and squirm as if struck. I feel bad he has to listen as I ask Cain, “What kind of rules are there? How soon after them dying can I show up? How close do I need to be? Can I just walk up and down the hospital hallway maybe? Sit in the waiting room? I’m not sure I can get into the I.C.U. or the O.R. but –”
No. Fuck that. Miraculous recoveries aren’t clean, and it hurts like a motherfucker to piece a body together.
“You did it to mine.”
I did it for you. There’s a difference.
Knots twist through my stomach at the tone Cain uses, snarky-soft something that makes me think about kissing him, the scar, worse — I think immediately of Cain fucking me. I curl my knees into the passenger seat with me to try escaping Aidan’s clutches a little. It works enough to get him slowly eased back to his side of the car. He doesn’t take his hand from me, he keeps it on my back in a way that suggest he’s ready to dig in for a fistful of sweatshirt if he needs to.
I try to speak quietly. “You have a body on the Otherside. Can I bring it across?”
Aidan wants me to talk to him again. I can tell by the way he strokes a hand over my back and calls my name, but I turn my head aside so he knows I’m listening for Cain. As I wait I drink more of the water and shake the condensation from my fingertips.
I finish the water and toss the empty bottle into the backseat. “I’m okay if you want to drive,” I say. “I think I’m okay now.”
“Okay,” says Aidan. He doesn’t move toward the wheel but instead keeps his hand fisted into my sweatshirt hood. “What are you going to do?”
I shrug, which is at least genuinely honestly even if it’s not helpful for Aidan. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.”
I do. Get someone alone, choke them out quick. Simple and clean. That’s how you do it. I’ll handle the rest.
“I can’t. I won’t. No, I’m not killing anyone for you. I can’t do that.”
From Cain I get a furious snarl that’s like nails on chalkboard, like nails raking hot coals over my heart, I push my forearm against the glovebox and hunch into myself with a moan. Aidan grabs the popcorn tub and frisbees it to floorboard between my ankles. I scrunch my eyes shut until Cain’s anger is less intense, less palpable over the flare and burn of the scar he left me with.
When he speaks again it’s a measured warning full of dark promise, dire threat.
I could compel you, Ethan.
The breath leaves me in a rush. I know he could. I gave him my name. I gave him my body. He owns me now, this demon. “Don’t,” I whisper. “Please.” The laugh I get from Cain is rumbled cruel amusement, playful torment like when he fucked me, and I wish Aidan wasn’t in the car within literal arms reach.
I press my body against itself, bury my face in my knees. I ball together around the hard-pounding throb from the scar and my cock. I remember everything about Cain fucking me and feel the overwhelming desire to find him, I need him, I need to find Cain. If that means killing —
“No! No, I won’t. I don’t want to. I’m not killing anything!” I clamp my hands over my ears and curl tighter. “I don’t want to!”
I’m sobbing when Aidan tugs me apart, gets the top half of me pulled into his lap. “You don’t have to,” he tells me. “You’re not going to. Ethan, you’re not going to kill anything.”
I never should have started listening to Cain. I knew it’d be like this. I don’t know what else I thought to expect, I don’t know why I thought to do this at all. I feel possessed again except my body is mine, Cain’s just a voice I can hear — not in a voice in my head except I can’t make him stop.
You dumb stupid kid.
Cain’s seething anger caresses smooth the jagged cuts he ripped into me, his snarky raw roughness affectionate in its familiarity. It has to be because Cain’s a demon that the rolling heat of his voice sets my nerves on fire.
Sure, why not. Why the fuck not, sweetheart. We do it your way. We do this the hard way, because fucking Princess Abel can’t kill anyone. You are the dumbest fucking necromancer.
A warm huff follows, an ethereal sigh like sparks and hot smoke escaping a vent. I’m not sure if there are words tangle into the exasperated noise. I hiccup a sob into Aidan’s thigh, press the hem of my sleeve into my eye to stop crying. The grey fabric comes away dark and wet in a long oval.
“I don’t want to be a necromancer.”
Tough shit. I don’t want to be dead. You ready to stop sniveling and get to summoning?
“No,” I mumble. Aidan’s hands tighten over my back. I’m whispering this into my sleeves, I know him only hearing my half of every conversation makes it awful. “Tell me what to do though.”