“But you can’t tell me now?”

“No.”

“And you can’t tell me why you can’t tell me?”

“No. But I wish I could. So much, Rafe. So much it hurts.”

“You have to tell me something, Jay.”

Jeremy pointed at the armchair across from the sofa. Reluctantly, Rafe sat down.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I disappeared on you. There were a hundred news vans in the hospital parking lot when we got back. You remember?” Jeremy asked. Rafe nodded. “Mum wanted to get me out of there as fast as possible. There was no time for long goodbyes.”

They had said goodbye, though Rafe had convinced himself Jeremy was leaving for a few weeks. Two or three months at most. Not fifteen years. Back then they could barely go fifteen minutes without talking to each other.

“I get it. I do get it. But those vans were gone after a week. You could have called me. You could’ve written.”

“I could’ve, yes, but I had two choices. Either lie to you about what happened or say nothing. I don’t like lying to you. I hate lying to you. That left silence.”

“I’d rather you lied than give me fifteen years of silent treatment.”

Jeremy met his eyes. Then he smiled. “We were abducted by friendly aliens and had a grand old time flying through space and time. There were musical numbers and Orion dancing girls. How’s that?”

Rafe glared at him. “You’re right. The silent treatment was better.”

“Thought so.”

“I needed you,” he said. “You get that, right? I needed your help, and you never gave it to me. You know how many times they’ve put me in the psych ward?”

“Three,” Jeremy said simply. “Three times. When you were seventeen, you stole your dad’s truck while sleepwalking and drove off the road right before exit seven on I-68. When you were twenty, two people walking their dog found you wandering in a daze by Cheat Lake Road. And when you were twenty-two, you ran your car into a ditch and woke up in the backyard of my old house. Diagnosis—dissociative fugue states. You go to sleep in your bed, and you wake up miles from home. Do you really think it’s pure coincidence you keep trying to get back to the Crow? And apparently, if you hadn’t noticed, your subconscious wants to take me with you.”

Rafe was stunned into silence. Jeremy knew everything, all of it.

“How did you—”

“Mum,” Jeremy said.

“Right. Right.”

“Have you had one of your spells since your father died?”

Rafe looked away.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Jeremy said. He met Rafe’s eyes again. “Interesting you stopped running in your sleep when he was gone.”

“After Dad died, I moved out here. I sleep better in the woods. Don’t blame Dad when it was your choice not to come back.”

“Come with me. Help me find this woman in the Crow. And I swear on my life, you will know everything you want to know.”

“Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll help you.”

“It can’t work that way.”

Rafe sighed. “Then it can’t work.” His head was spinning from going around in circles with Jeremy.

“Would it help if you took a swing at me?” Jeremy asked. “One good hard punch. I’ll be the first to admit I deserve it. Go on. Stomach. Ribs. Jaw. Don’t care.”

Jeremy stood up and held out his arms, waiting.

Rafe almost did it, almost punched him right in the gut. Only fair. When Jeremy had disappeared from his life so suddenly, it had felt like a gut punch. Still did.

“You’re out of time,” Rafe said. “You can go now.”

Jeremy looked at him, then smiled and bowed like a knight to his liege.

“Yes, Your Highness.”

Storyteller CornerIn Fairness…

Imagine if someone from your past showed up on your doorstep after fifteen years of silent treatment and asked you to go into the woods with them? Would you go? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Chapter Six

Waiting for Jeremy to call took Emilie back to those terrible days of waiting for her mother to get medical results from this test or that test, tests that would answer the question, Would she have a mother in six months? A year?

Now she wondered, Would she have a sister in a day or a week? Ever? Or never?

A dozen times a day, she clutched her mother’s St. Agatha medal to remind herself that Jeremy had found it when she couldn’t. Physical proof of his abilities, yet she still struggled to believe that her sister, presumed dead for twenty years, was out there somewhere, alive.

She didn’t know what to do with herself while waiting for the call except pack. But what to pack? When she’d asked Jeremy what she should take, he’d given her a cryptic and somewhat terrifying reply.

“Imagine your house is on fire. Take only what you’d save.”

Then he’d driven off after promising to call her when he had news.

What would she save in a fire?

Pictures of her mother, of course. She had a thousand pictures of her and her mother on her phone, but her favorites were the framed photographs from her childhood, which hung on the walls and sat on the mantels all over the house. She chose two photos. The first one of her mother, a youthful-looking forty-nine, holding screaming baby Emilie on the day of her adoption. Emilie might have been crying in the photo, but her mother’s smile was radiant.

The other picture she chose was from her elementary school’s annual Fall Festival. Emilie had been in the fifth grade, and she and her mother dressed up as “Identical Twins” for the school’s Halloween contest. Matching pink dresses. Matching pigtails with pink bows. Matching smiles. They’d only won third prize, but the real prize was hearing so many people tell them how much they looked alike even though Emilie was a pale blonde and her mother a brunette.

Yes, those were the two photos she’d save in a fire. The only other things she put in her backpack were a change of clothes, a toothbrush, her makeup bag, and everything she could fit that had belonged to her sister. Shannon’s old books, her poem, her little toy knight, her moonstone in the velvet bag.

And, of course, she would take Fritz with her.

Finally, on the afternoon of the second day of waiting, Jeremy called.