Total pages in book: 209
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
Elias peers back into the house before answering the door. He pokes his head into the kitchen, hisses out, “Kyle?” Goes to the bathroom, it’s dark. “Babe?” He’s not home. He’s not here. Elias rushes to his phone on the end table by the couch, calls Kyle. Straight to voicemail. Where the fuck is he?
After quickly pulling on a pair of loose sweats, Elias hurries back to the front door and opens it. “Cade?”
It’s only then that he finds Cade is not alone. Behind her is her daughter Layna in jeans and a peasant blouse, who herself is accompanied by her bleach-haired boyfriend Jeremy in a tight black tank top and shorts. He doesn’t need Kyle’s Reach to pick up the uneasiness among his visitors. None of them look okay. Cade and Jeremy are stiff and anxious. Layna is annoyed and looking as if she wishes she could be anywhere else on earth.
And Elias suddenly regrets not at least donning a shirt. “Is, uh, everything okay …?” he asks.
Cade winces. “Is Kyle asleep? This is really more of a Kyle thing. Well, I think it is.”
Elias parts his lips, unsure how to answer that.
Where the fuck would Kyle be if he isn’t home? Did he go out last night? He had to have, obviously. But where would he go? Surely not back to Las Vegas, not after the talks they had. Would Kyle really be so headstrong as to go there when they agreed to leave those people in the past where they belong?
“Elias?”
He blinks, coming out of his thoughts, faces Cade. “Sorry, but I … I apparently don’t know where Kyle—”
“He’s not here?”
Elias has barely had a minute to think. “No.”
“But the … the sun’s up. Obviously. Isn’t that a bad thing?”
Elias can’t keep up. He’s wrestling between being angry at Kyle for possibly running off in the night or being terrified that something happened. Lazarus could have returned and silently taken him away while they slept. Kyle could have taken a trip out to their special spot in the desert where he buried his brother’s ring and Brock’s hat, his bodiless gravesite, then been abducted by someone else entirely—a minion of Markadian’s, the tall, gaunt, and freaky George, or maybe even Tristan. He’s never trusted Tristan and wouldn’t put it past him to do such a thing, still in love with him, still possessive, still a liar.
“Well, wherever he is, we’ve got a problem,” says Cade.
Elias lifts an eyebrow. “Problem?”
That’s when Jeremy takes a step forward. He parts his lips, presumably to explain—only no sound comes out. Not even air.
Elias watches Jeremy struggle to speak for a disconcerting length of time before realizing he may in fact be demonstrating the problem itself. “So … you can’t, uh, talk …?” Then his gaze drops down to find Jeremy’s hands hovering shakily in front of his shorts, as if to conceal something. “What the f—?”
Cade comes close. “Really, this is better explained inside, in private, and with a very, very open mind.”
Calling himself confused wouldn’t even come close. Elias steps back as the three enter the house.
It’s on the couch that they gather, with Jeremy and Layna next to each other on one end, Cade at the other, and Elias in a dining room chair pulled up to join them. After Cade explains, Elias finds himself squinting and at a loss for words. He’s since donned a shirt. “Hold on, hold on,” he says with a spread of his hands. “You’re telling me your daughter—”
“I don’t have magic powers,” groans Layna, annoyed.
“Well, I do,” says Cade right back, “which Henry—sorry, Kyle—has more than confirmed, so it only stands to reason that the gift may have passed on to you … just like I feared it could. I have visions,” she explains to a bewildered Elias. “Even had a dream about how Kyle’s family passed, an accurate one. Well, according to him, at least.”
It wasn’t too long ago that Kyle revealed the dark truths of his past to Elias—including the night he took Tristan home in a rush of teenage passion only to wake to a bloodbath.
“Wait,” says Elias, lifting his hands. “What you’re trying to say is … Layna … somehow silenced Jeremy … magically …?”
“While they were making out on her bed, yes, like I said.” Cade sighs. “And also left him with a … a parting gift.”
Jeremy has been holding one of the throw pillows from the couch over his lap to mask the “other” problem.
Elias grimaces at him, leans forward. “Does it hurt, man?”
Jeremy’s silent parted lips is his only response.
“Oh my god, why are we all instantly assuming the worst?” Layna suddenly blurts out, red-faced. “He just needs, like, a pill from the doctor or something to take care of that, and maybe he’s just freaked out from everything going on lately, which is why he can’t talk. It’s, like, psychological or something.”