“What is there to talk about?” God, couldn’t Alistair just—just be quiet and leave him alone? Why did he have to drag this out? “You realized I’m your witch. You told everyone but me. For some God-forsaken reason, they thought we were going to bond, and so they had to be nice to me. Well the pretense is over, so you can all be relieved and go back to your lives.”
Alistair’s amber eyes widened. “Is that what you think? Because nothing could be farther from the truth. Honestly, I’m pretty sure my family likes you a lot better than me at the moment.”
“Don’t patronize me!” Sam flung the trousers on the bed. “I don’t want your pity.” His breathing was ragged, and his eyes burned, but he wasn’t going to make his humiliation complete by crying in front of Alistair. “You could have told me. I’m not stupid, you know. I would have known you wouldn’t want me.”
“I…” Alistair’s face crumpled. He looked away from a long moment: shoulders hunched, arms crossed over his chest. “It isn’t that.”
“Don’t lie to me!”
Alistair’s head shot up, and he let his arms fall. “I’m not lying! I’ve tried not to…not to feel anything. But it didn’t work. And as for bonding…” He shut his eyes. “I’ve already lost one witch. I don’t think I can stand to lose you, too.”
Sam opened his mouth, but his mind was blank of any coherent reply. Was Alistair telling the truth? But if so, what did he mean when he said he’d already lost one witch?
“You…had a witch?” he finally said.
Alistair nodded. His shoulders slumped, and his hair tumbled forward into his face. “Yes.”
“All right. Okay.” Some of the desperate tension and anguish drained out of Sam. “Tell me everything.”
16
Alistair sat in one of the chairs, across from Sam on the couch. He’d raided Eldon’s liquor stash for a bottle of Canadian whiskey, because there was no way in hell he was doing this sober.
When he’d come in and found Sam packing, he’d been convinced Sam was the one leaving, just as he’d always predicted. So it had been a shock when he realized Sam was throwing him out, that Sam meant to stay and confront Ursino alone.
He deserved to be thrown out. Fur and feathers, it hurt that Sam immediately assumed he was the one at fault, that Alistair couldn’t possibly want him. That no one cared about him, or even liked him.
It was that damned family of his to blame, Alistair felt sure of it. But Alistair hadn’t exactly helped, either.
Alistair poured a measure of whiskey, downed it, and refilled the glass. Then he sat back. “I’m not sure where to start.”
“How about at the beginning?” Sam asked dryly.
“Right.” Alistair drew a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “It started with a man. A boy, really; we were so damned young. Forrest Taylor. We were in love, thought we’d be together forever. The witch-familiar bond just made it that much more special. Then the Selective Service came calling.”
Sam nodded. “I remember reading in the newspaper about the need for magic on the front.”
Alistair took a gulp of his whiskey. They’d been so young, so stupid, believing all the nonsense about how the Americans were going to head to France and show the Europeans how it was done. “Everything was rushed. We were supposed to receive twelve weeks of training, but only got six before they put us on the ship. Some of the boys had never even fired their rifles before we got there, if you can believe it.”
He looked up and saw Sam’s slight frown. “Not how they depicted it in the papers, is it? To quote Senator Johnson, ‘The first casualty when war comes is truth.’ We were unready, unprepared. But worst of all, so were our commanders.”
Bitterness coated his tongue, and no amount of whiskey was going to wash it down. He tried, though. “The European Allies had been fighting this war for years. They knew the old rules didn’t apply any more. But the higher ups in the American Expeditionary Forces wouldn’t listen. We were trained to make frontal assaults, to attack in precise formation, as if the world hadn’t moved on since the end of the war with Spain.”
He stared at his drink, as though it might give him answers. “Forrest and I fought in the Meuse-Argonne offensive. The Germans had been dug in for years, fortifying every hill and ridge. It didn’t take long to realize marching in orderly formation wasn’t a good way to take on a machine gun nest.”
“I’m sorry,” Sam said quietly.
“So am I.” Alistair finished off his drink and poured a third. “If they weren’t shooting at us, they were shelling us. Day after day of mud and blood, diving into holes made by previous shells in hopes the next one wouldn’t get us. Of course, sometimes gas would collect in the bottoms of the holes, so that could turn into a death sentence on its own.” He could still smell the churned earth, see the red mist that had once been a man seconds before taking a direct hit from a shell. Still hear the screams of the wounded and dying. “Once I was talking to a friend, and he just dropped dead. A sniper had decided to take aim at him instead of me.”
He glanced up and found Sam watching him carefully. “It doesn’t sound very glorious.”
“It wasn’t,” Alistair said. “Maybe for the higher ups, the ones who gave the orders we had to carry out. We were wet and hungry and woefully unprepared. There wasn’t enough food, because we were somehow supposed to advance through nine miles of incredibly rugged, intensely fortified terrain in a single day, while also taking a lookout post atop Montfaucon. I don’t think anyone could have done it, but certainly not a bunch of boys who’d never faced battle before.” He rubbed tiredly at his face. “The point is, it was hell. And it changed us. I don’t think there’s a man on earth who could have gone through what we did and come away unaffected.”
“I wouldn’t imagine so, no,” Sam said gently.
“Forrest, though…he was so strong, Sam. So strong. He kept going and going, shouldering all the weight he could and never bending. But the thing about never bending is that eventually you just…break.” Alistair let his hands fall to his lap. “Shell-shock. But we were going home by then, so I thought things would get better. I’d be there with him, help him heal.” He shook his head. “In the end, I was too much of a reminder. He couldn’t look at me without seeing the blood and the death. So when we demobbed, he walked away. The man I’d meant to spend the rest of my life with told me he couldn’t stay and just…left. I never saw him again.”
Sam leaned forward, his brown eyes gentle and sad. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine.”
Alistair’s throat ached with emotion, and he had to look away before the tears started. “There was an article in the newspaper a few years back. A doctor. He said an average of two veterans a day die from suicide. I imagine it’s actually a lot higher, but newspapers and sympathetic doctors put the deaths down to accidents, for the sake of the families.” He cleared his throat. “Forrest killed himself September 26, 1921. Three years to the day the offensive started.”