Brendan shook his head as he heaved one last time. “No.”
“Maybe you’re sick from being exposed to the rift? It’s not like it’s an exact science,” Cordelia suggested.
“Banshee,” he whispered, wiping at his mouth.
Her blue eyes went saucer-wide. “You saw someone dying?”
He stood to his full height and nodded.
“Who?” she gasped. “Shouldn’t you go inside and warn them? Maybe they can go to the hospital or—”
“I told you, that’s not how it works, darling. It’s a sort of sin among the banshees to do anything beyond the song. It’s not my purpose to prevent death. Death is a part of the cycle. The balance has to be kept.”
“I know you said that. It’s one thing to say that in the abstract, it’s something else altogether when it’s a real live person standing in front of you. Is it Zed??” she demanded. “Or Clarissa?”
“Trust me, this is a natural, enviable death,” he said. “I can’t go around preventing every death I see. If every banshee did that, the world would be over-run with people who had missed their fates.”
“So you’re going to do nothing?” Cordelia cried.
Karl ambled out of the restaurant, a concerned expression on his craggy face. “Your dinner hit you wrong, fella?”
Brendan cleared his throat. “It’s just all the traveling, doesn’t agree with me.”
“Well, a hot shower and ham and cheese sandwich always puts my wife to rights after she has to go to New Orleans for the day,” Karl said.
Brendan nodded shakily. “That’s good advice.”
“Well, speaking of the little lady, I better head home. We’re having the whole brood over tonight for gumbo. If I’m late, no gumbo for me,” Karl said.
Brendan could feel the understanding and then disapproval rolling off of Cordelia. “Well, be sure to tell all of them how much you love them. Your family can never hear that enough.”
Karl grinned at him. “Sure will. Have a good night, you two.”
Karl climbed into his truck and drove off, with loud country-western music blaring out his open windows.
“I don’t even know what to say,” Cordelia sighed.
“Would you rather your loved one die a peaceful death in his sleep after a big family dinner, where he was able to give everybody closure by telling them he loved them? Or in a hospital bed after a prolonged fight against incurable heart problems?” Brendan asked.
Cordelia considered that for a moment. “The peaceful death, I suppose.”
“If you think seeing the past is difficult, Cordelia, try seeing the inevitable.”
She sighed. “I know, I’m sorry. I’m not being fair.”
“I’m not either. I know this has to look cold. It’s not that I don’t feel anything, trust me. I feel it all,” Brendan said.
She leaned forward and brushed her lips across his cheek. He turned to her, tempted, so tempted to press his mouth to hers. It had been so long since he’d had even a simple kiss on his face; he didn’t want that sweet warmth to leave him. The smell of fresh-baked biscuits wafted up from her hair and his hands itched to comb through it. His forehead bumped against hers as he bent his head to press his lips to hers. And then suddenly remembered that he’d just thrown up.
Not the best time for a mouth-based romantic gesture, then.
“I think I’m just going to walk home,” she murmured as he pulled away.
“I’ll come with you,” he said. “I think I’ve had enough for one night.”
“So, do you always throw up? Because if so, your gift sucks on a lot of levels,” Cordelia said.
“Only when I try to hold it in,” Brendan said.
She kept her arms wrapped around her waist as they crossed the street, as if warding off a chill they knew wasn’t there. As they approached the court of trailers, they spotted a group of League employees playing a boisterous card game at one of the outdoor tables. They were laughing, yelling at each other in a way that only close friends could. Brendan followed her line of sight and the look of longing on her face just about broke his heart.
“You know, maybe if you kept your gloves on, you might be able to join them,” Brendan suggested.
She chuffed out a laugh, shaking her head. “Oh, no. I really don’t want to play. It just reminds me of how I grew up. The best parts of it, anyway.”
He waited for a beat, for her to give him some context, but she just smiled sadly and turned away from the sight of the game table. “So, you’ve never said anything, when you see something like that?”
Brendan grimaced. “Not once.”
“OK, well, do me a favor, if you see me dying in some embarrassing way, like missing the step on my trailer porch, please tell me, so I can plan something more dignified,” Cordelia said.
“I will keep that in mind,” Brendan promised.
5
Cordelia
For the first time in years, Cordelia slept in. She slept past her usual alarm, all the way to eleven a.m., until her body ached with the heaviness of sleep. And then when she woke up to see the mid-morning sun streaming through the trailer window, she pulled the covers over her head and slept some more.
The artifact had sucked the energy out of her in a way she’d never experienced before, like a kiss that stole her breath and overwhelmed her—but not in a good way. Like her improbably brief date with Jack Newsome when she was twenty, just after striking out on her own. Jack had seemed so safe, and she’d been so hopeful about a man she’d met in such a normal way—shopping at the grocery store. It took her just a few seconds after he’d picked her up before she realized she wasn’t safe at all; she’d made a mistake and she needed to run. The moment she’d put her hands on Jack Newsome’s shoulders, she’d seen him slipping a vial labeled “Rohypnol” into his jacket pocket just before he left for their date. He’d planned on dropping it into her drink at dinner. It had taken her a very long time to block the rest of his intentions from her mind.
Now, she realized she’d become complacent over the years. She’d grown accustomed to managing her life and her gift with her routine and her precautions—rise, go to work, lock herself in her apartment, go to sleep, repeat. But Mystic Bayou and whatever was in that black stone casket had thrown her out of that safe little loop. And so, for the next few days, she retreated into her usual shell of solitude. She told herself she deserved it after braving the rift in the universe and the pie shop.
As delightful as Siobhan’s pastries had been, Cordelia’s head had been swimming with psychic sensory overload the entire time she sat in the booth. And while Clarissa—and Zed, darling, goofy Zed, with his safely communicable emotions—were perfectly sweet people, Brendan’s hand in hers was the only thing that kept her from losing her mind. It had been a stupid risk to take after collapsing at the rift, but she’d stubbornly wanted to prove to herself that she would be able to do this job. It wasn’t the first time her stubbornness had come back to bite her in the ass.
And then, of course, she’d seen the full extent of Brendan’s gift, which had thrown her for a whole new loop. So she burrowed in again, creating her safe space with Netflix and food and isolation. And just when she thought maybe she could leave the trailer, she’d looked outside to see Karl Bruhl’s incredibly long funeral procession driving through town and felt a horrible flash of guilt.