“This is such a bad idea,” says Aidan. “Tell me we aren’t going to do this.”
“I’m doing this,” I say quietly. I clench my hands into the beach towel currently taking up space in my lap and stare forward out the front windshield at the dark-rippling water. Aidan has the heat going full blast in the car because I’m sitting in a pair of swim trunks and flip-flops, the temperature outside is somewhere just above freezing, and I’m about to go fishing for trouble in a very literal sense.
Aidan rubs his hands into the steering wheel and then rests his forehead into the plastic curve. His eyes close as he sighs. “What if it doesn’t work?”
He pulls his head off the steering wheel and looks out at suddenly and grabs his phone out of the console. I lean toward him and put a hand on his arm to drag the phone screen nearer until I see he’s looking up how to give CPR.
”This is such a bad idea,” he says. He scrolls over the screen as he reads the article, looks at the pictures. His eyes are intense on the small screen, he’s going to memorize every word like prepping for a test.
“Most of Cain’s ideas are.” I offer Aidan a smile, but it’s not surprising he doesn’t return it. He ignores me as he taps into another article on his phone. “This’ll work though. I’ll be okay.”
Aidan’s expression twists, but he doesn’t say anything. He thumbs off his phone’s screen and then tosses the device back into the console. He looks out at the choppy waters of the lake and sighs. “Are you doing this no matter what?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m doing this.”
“Okay,” he says. Resigned, like that was the answer he expected. “Then let’s do this.”
Aidan grabs two fleece throw blankets out of the shopping bags in the backseat and rips the price tag off one before tossing it at me. I pull it around my shoulders as I stare at the water and try not to think about how cold I’m about to be soon as I step out of the car. I try not to think about what I’m doing, so I can focus on doing it.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Aidan says to me. He’s arranged the extra towels and other blanket in the back, he’s popped open some instant hand warmers and has them sitting piping-hot ready. I try not to think about how cold it’s going to be outside the car.
I curl the blanket under my chin. “Yeah, okay. I’m ready.” I keep sitting there a minute longer before grabbing the door handle and bursting into action.
The cheap flip-flops snap into the bottom of my heels as I dash over the pavement and then down the wooden pier. Aidan catches up to me when I’ve tossed the towel and blanket both aside, climbed over the rail, and started lowering myself down into the water. My shivering turns violent as the icy cut of the water line finds my toes, ankles, the rest of my legs, I force myself to let go of the wood and fall into the frigid lake. It sucks the breath from my lungs, pulls a yelped curse from me. I shiver, my teeth chatter, I try not to think about it.
“You okay?” Aidan asks. He sits with one arm braced through the rail and dangles his feet and other arm toward the water. My chauffeur turned bodyguard turned attack dog is now pulling double duty as a ladder and lifeguard.
Swears whisper over my shivering lips as I huddle into the submerged support beam, the slimy-slick wood somehow marginally warmer than the surrounding dark water. I force myself to let go and stutter my arms into the water to paddle from underneath the pier.
“It’s so c-c-cold!” I nearly crush my tongue on my chattering teeth as I speak. I try not to think about what I’m doing. I plunge under the water to check the depth and know it could be deeper, have no idea if this is going to work, feel terrified and rocket back to the surface.
Icy tendrils drip from my hair when I resurface, and I wipe a hand over my face to clear my eyes. “I’m not sure I can do this,” I call to Aidan. I jerk my limbs to tread water, I’m shivering so impossibly hard that it’s all I can do move in ways that aren’t spastic twitches and flails.
Aidan leans toward me looking relieved. “Okay. Give me your hand, I’ll pull you out.”
I shake my head. “No. No, I have to do this. I can do this.”
I drift back from the pier, swim out a little ways until I hear Aidan call nervously after me. He grips the rail as he stands. It’ll take a swan dive and several hard breaststrokes for him to get to me now, but Aidan’s always been a better swimmer than me. It’s oddly reassuring to think about all the times I’ve gone swimming with Aidan, seen Aidan swimming, I know he’s a strong swimmer.
My parents have a lake house, couple hours away, where they keep the boat, where Aidan and I spent a lot of time in the summer, I should have made Aidan drive me out there. I could have done this during the daytime had a lot more privacy than this lake in the center of town where people go jogging in the mornings, where teenagers make out on the playground equipment, and where apparently I’m going to summon a demon from the Otherside.
“Okay. I’m going to do it.” I take several deep breaths and then slip under the water. I hear Aidan call after me just before cold oblivion rushes into my ears, so I miss the words. Knowing him it was ‘okay’ back or maybe ‘be careful’ or possibly ‘hurry’ because I might freeze to death before I can find Cain.
I dive with a hand outstretched until my fingertips brush the mud and muck at the bottom of the lake. I pull my hand back and try to forget exactly where I am, try to think only about Cain. The cold crushes my chest, it’s so cold it hurts, and I try not to count the seconds as I hold my breath. I don’t think this is going to work, I don’t see how this can work, Cain couldn’t be serious when he suggested this as an option. This has to be punishment for not wanting to kill anyone.
The first uncomfortable twinges I can relieve by letting a trickle of bubbles escape, but it doesn’t seem long at all before panicked pressure builds and builds. My body twists and thrashes, my lungs feel like bursting, I claw into the mud as I struggle not to let natural buoyancy take over. The cold helps, it makes it hard to move, my eyes open and then scrunch close. It’s so impossibly dark under the water, there’s nothing to see except my own panicking limbs, all those bubbles.
I need to focus on finding Cain and not pay attention to the desperate jerk and shudder of my cold, submerged body. If Cain can’t find me, is Aidan going to be able to find me? How long is he going to wait before jumping in after me anyway? I told him to wait twice as long as he thinks this should take and then to wait a minute extra to be sure, but he knows I can’t hold my breath more than a minute anyway. He’s a better swimmer than me. It’s pitch black under the water, Aidan’s going to have a hard time finding me.
I don’t need Aidan to find me, though, because I’m going to find Cain. Except I’m not sure this is going to work. I told Aidan it would, promised him this would work, I have to believe this is going to work. Cain said he’d find me, and how can I be hard to find? I’m right where I said I would be — alone, dying, submerged in darkness, oblivious to everything that isn’t this moment and my thoughts of Cain.
And then I hear him, I hear this beautiful soft voice that makes my heart leap.
Gotcha.
Suddenly I don’t feel cold anymore — I feel hot. Heat flows over me, a warmth that starts at my lips and spreads. I reach desperately, strain my hand into the void with the same desperation as my lungs strain for air, and then I feel a hand clasp into mine.
Breaking to the surface is like all the lights going on at once. First thing I hear once the water drains from my ears is Aidan, shrieking. Black void takes shape into shadows, city lights, the choppy break of the water. Cold air slaps my face, I choke mouthfuls of the lake over my chin and rake hard with my lungs to snatch at the chill.
“Quit your screaming!”
The rumble and vibration of Cain’s voice sears into my chest, traces into the spots on me he’s holding. I’m cinched under his arm, pulled into him, this can’t be happening. I can’t believe it worked.
Cain tugs me along as he swims, it’s his same body as I saw on the Otherside except he’s wearing nothing but water. I feel nothing but water and Cain, not even the cold. It has to be because he’s a demon that it’s hot where Cain holds me.
That or I have hypothermia, I think I might be half-drowned. All I do is cough and choke trying to breathe as Cain swims back to the pier where Aidan is waiting.
“I remember you,” says Cain. His brusque rude tone borders on hostile. “You’re the friend too good to fuck.”
White gleams all around the frightened circle of Aidan’s eyes. His hands tremble as they snatch fistfuls of me away from Cain. He hauls me into the railing. I drape half my body over it trying to hold on with the numb weight of my arms.
Aidan notches his foot into the wood and vaults over. He pulls me onto the pier and gets the towel around me, envelops me into the blanket, I’m moving on my own enough to nudge blocky-cold feet into flip-flops even if it takes three or six shivering attempts.
Half this shaking isn’t me, I realize it’s Aidan shaking me and hissing softly, “Ethan, go to the car! Go back to the car!”
“C-Cain,” I shiver. I’ve started to shake and shudder, I think that means circulation’s returning. Aidan frisks his hands over my arms, my back, trying to rub warmth into me even as he’s trying to shove me into motion.
He gets me moving forward despite the way I keep twisting to look back for Cain. I stare over Aidan’s shoulder at where a completely naked Cain climbs up the side of the pier. Aidan glances and then turns his whole head to start staring. His fingers grip into me with a gasp.
A sneering toothy grin spreads over Cain’s face as he strides toward us, completely unabashed to be nude. He stalks likes a panther approaching prey. He looks demonic, a handsome devil of a young man, some punk prankster dripping wet and shivering. I can’t believe he’s shivering. I can’t believe this worked.
“Fucking freezing out here,” Cain says. He looks to the parking lot where the old sedan’s advertising loudly that it’s warm and waiting. “That your car?”
He barely waits for the affirmative stammer from Aidan. Cain slings his arm around my shoulders to drag me forward. Aidan grabs hold of my hand like it’s going to be a fight only until he realizes Cain’s taking me to the same place he wants me to go anyway.
“Backseat,” I tell Cain. “Towels there.” It’s teeth-chattering cold again, wracking shivers with pins-and-needles replacing the leadened numb. I assault the uncontrollable waver of my hand toward the door handle only to have Cain beat me to it. He throws open the car, shoves me inside, and then immediately follows in after me.
Hot air fills the car, I hear Cain groan appreciatively and remember that he was shivering. What kind of demon shivers? I find myself staring at him, I just cannot stop staring at Cain and not just because he’s naked. I am mesmerized by the way his fingers flex and bend to pick up the towel off the seat. Blunt-edged nails cap the slender lengths of dusky-tan skin. Shouldn’t a demon have claws? Cain only has fingers, normal human-looking fingers.
I slowly remember to rub the towel into my hair only because Cain does it with the other towel. I’m already wrapped in a blanket, but I remember as well to stop dripping water into the second blanket and offer it to Cain. “Here.”
The driver door flies open long enough to let Aidan tackle the seat like he’s expecting to fight. He grabs at the keys and the wheel, one in each hand. The door closes after him. He stares at us both in the backseat and lets out a held breath. “This is Cain?”
“Yeah,” answers Cain. He rubs the towel down from his hair to let it drape over his shoulders.
Aidan’s works together another calm breath and then nods. “Okay,” he says. He turns around long enough to fasten his seatbelt before deciding he doesn’t want to keep his eyes off Cain either.
With all the doors closed the car goes dark again except for the glow of the dash. Aidan has the headlights off, the car’s idling at a low purr, Cain’s dark eyes surely cannot be glowing either as he watches us both just stare at him.
Cain shifts and says, “I’ll drive.”
“No. No, nope. I’ll drive.” Aidan snaps around in his seat and throws the car into reverse. I see him look wildly to double-check that I’m in the car, and then he jerks us back with a loud squeal of rubber on pavement. He wheels hard to the right and starts to brake but not all the way. The car’s still rolling as he shifts into gear. “I’m driving,” he says firmly. “This is my car, I’m driving.”
Aidan glances back in the mirror to check on Cain, but he’s lost interest now that we’re moving and the matter established. This demon I pulled from the Otherside simply sits in the backseat of my best friend’s car, entirely too real, not wearing more than a blanket and towel.