I don’t want to wake up. I’ve got this slimy inkling that only trouble waits on the other side of my lids. I bob up and down between waking and sleep, trying to hold onto oblivion. But oblivion is a cruel tease, slipping out of my grip. Eventually I find myself groaning on the floor, wondering what the hell I could have possibly done to myself to feel this bad. If someone shoved all of my internal organs into a wood chipper and then stuffed the mush back into my gaping stomach cavity, I think it would be more pleasant than what I feel like right now.

  I jerk onto my back, and my arm, pinned underneath me, swings around and smacks me in the face.

  Apropos.

  My arm is dead as a piece of driftwood attached to my shoulder. I wait, blinking up at a pleasantly designed ceiling fan while the pins and needles start to shoot through my arm as it comes back to life. After a while, I get ambitious and hoist myself into a sitting position.

  Bad idea, and not just because apparently the entire WNBA used my brain for dribbling practice when I wasn’t paying attention. I also get a glorious view of some rather spectacular vomit art on the carpet.

  Memories begin trickling back.

  The pills.

  Shauna, greasy hair hanging down the sides of her face like the world’s least appealing curtains. She’d said the pills would take me for a trip. I’d shoved a wad of money into her eager little hand, not even asking what they were. Uppers, downers, didn’t matter as long as my frontal cortex shut the fuck up.

  Worked. Least for a while.

  Gingerly, I gaze around the room. Dead mounted fish on the wall? Check. Creepy antique dolls staring at me from the shelves? Check. Seems like I managed to get back to the rental house. Go me. Some basic animal instinct guides me into the bathroom where I pull myself into the tub and pull at the knob until a spray of water pours over me. Convenient that I’m mostly naked. My boxers and socks could probably use the wash anyway.

  The cold water hits my skin like a punch, and my right arm rings with pain all the way down to my fingertips. I open up my mouth to wash out the rancid taste.

  I sit in the shower for a long time, shivering, letting the water drown out my misery. My right arm finally gets with the program, and I bend and flex my fingers. I don’t know what to do now and don’t have the strength to do it even if I did.

  Turn the water off. This is Tarren’s voice, hard and steady in my mind.

  I have no reason to argue, so I lean over and twist the knob. The water stops. My teeth chatter.

  Brush your teeth.

  “Fuck you,” I mutter, but I stand up, wobbling a little, and walk to the sink. The toothpaste and toothbrush are both scattered on the floor, and when I go down on my hands and knees to pick them up, I have to grapple to the toilet to dry heave for a couple minutes, or hours, or maybe days. Sitting back on the slick tiles, I brush my teeth and spit the minty suds into the toilet.

  Dry off and then put on clothes, Tarren instructs.

  I grab the edge of the sink.

  “I know what you’re doing,” I mutter to Tarren as I haul myself to my feet. “You think you can fix me with orders. With disappointment. You’re going to tell me to be strong for Maya. But I can’t. I can’t do anything. You fucking blew yourself up. Why did you do that?”

  But I’m walking back into the bedroom, searching the cluttered heap of clothes on the floor for something decently clean. The fish and the dolls watch. My eye catches something on the bed. A small wrapped package with a glossy red bow on top.

  Weird.

  Dumb as a pigeon, I move toward the shiny bow and take the package in my hands. I’m more than a little surprised that it doesn’t evaporate in my grip. After all, I’ve been talking to a dead person for the last five minutes. My fingers poke through the thin silver paper, and I pull out a small frame. Inside is Maya’s completed cross stitch. Home Sweet Home it reads, mocking as all hell. I stare at her neat little stitches remembering the hours and hours her deft fingers moved, pulling the colored threads through the fabric. The picture shows a quaint little cottage, chimney and all. Lots of big, colorful flowers. A place where normal people might live. A happy little family. Stupid. And kinda sweet at the same time. Mostly stupid, though.

  I set it on the bed. Dead Tarren is right. I should be taking care of Maya. I flip the frame and see a little sticky note on the black velvet back.

  Open Says Me.

  My fingers are thick and stupid as I fumble with the latches. I pull the back off the frame, and beneath, hidden between the cross stitch and the frame backing is a glossy sheet of photo paper. I take the paper out, turn it over, and stare at a collage of pictures.

  Maya must have scanned in all of the photos my mother kept on the bookshelf in her room. I touch my parents’ wedding photo and then the picture of me, little fatty, sitting on my mother’s lap trying to grab at her hoop earring with my chubby hand. The collage includes new photos, too. I laugh at the one of Dr. Lee looking grumpy as hell, probably by something I did. And Francesca, my beauty, smiling broadly caught in the motion of tucking her dark hair behind her ear. My eyes bounce around, drinking in every photo. There’s one of Maya, obviously turning the camera on herself, screwing her face up into a silly expression. Tarren. His face in profile as he turns in the passenger seat of the SUV. That pic was obviously taken without his knowledge from the back seat. And finally, one of the larger photos at the bottom captures Tarren stretched out, asleep on the park bench.

  That night seems like a dream. Could it only have been a month ago? Maya had laughed, and we’d spun in giddy circles on the merry-go-round and looked up at the stars. It hurts, looking at all of these pictures. And that’s how I know that I am still alive.

  This collage is a dangerous thing to have, but I immediately prize it over anything I own in the world. I’d choose any one of these pictures over that sleek private jet that took us to Pennsylvania.

  My stomach grumbles. I stare at the pictures. Let the pain burn inside of me.

  I make a decision.

  “Okay,” I say to Tarren, to Maya, to the fish and creepy dolls, and all the pictures tearing me open. “One hour.” I’m going to be alive and real and a functional human being for one hour. I’m going to live in a world where Tarren is dead for one hour.

  I make a bold choice to start this magical hour. I put on pants. Then a shirt. Then I walk down the stairs, over scattered bottles of booze. The kitchen is a wasteland of broken everything – glasses, dishes, bowls. I try to remember doing this, why charming dishware was apparently my mortal enemy at some point, but my mind draws a blank.

  “Sorry,” I mutter to all the shit I broke and to the homeowners who are definitely due for a big supplemental check after I pack my bags and move out.

  I carefully make my way to the fridge and am surprised to find actual food inside, until I vaguely remember Maya making me a sandwich a while ago. We’d yelled at each other. I can’t even remember what the fight was about. Probably every decision I’d made since bringing her here.

  I find a brown coffee mug that survived the dishware massacre, fill it with water, and grab an apple from the fruit bin. Every movement takes concentrated thought, real effort, because I want to slide back into nothingness. I want to grab whatever bottle still has some alcohol to give me, plop down in front of the TV, and forget again.

  But I said one hour.

  The apple isn’t enough. It only reminds me that I haven’t eaten in forever, and I puked up all that nothing on the carpet in the bedroom. Which reminds me…

  As I gnaw on a few slices of bread smeared in peanut butter, I turn on Starbuck, check the dates of the AirBnb contract in my email, and confirm that I have almost a full week left before I have to answer for the reason this beautiful house looks like it started moonlighting as a meth den.

  I start by sweeping up all the shattered glass and broken porcelain on the kitchen floor. My hands are shaking. I walk through the house and collect the empty alcohol bottles, both impressed and disgusted with my capacity for self-destruction.

  Bad stereotype, that’s what Maya had called me.

  She was right. The bottles rattle against my chest as I pad into the humid garage and drop them with a crash into the recycling bin. Might as well save the planet while I’m being all responsible. When I come inside, I check the clock. Ten minutes left. Longest fucking hour of my life. I can’t stand the thoughts pinging through my brain, the memory of that explosion, all the charred pieces of wood and insulation raining down on me. We didn’t even have time to look for Tarren’s body. It’s not worth going back, either. The police will have combed through the scene and collected all of the human remains. My brother’s bones are probably boxed up in some CSI freezer, maybe even jumbled together with a few bits and pieces of Mr. Lego and the other angels trapped in the house.

  And isn’t that the perfect image to ignite a new drinking binge. I spot a half-filled bottle of vodka tilted dangerously between the couch cushions. Its open rim is inviting.

  Ten more minutes. Enough time to thank Maya for her belated birthday gift. God, why haven’t I asked her how she’s doing? She only almost starved to death, locked up in that horrible room by her worst enemy in the world. What kind of shit brother am I? I wander through the house, looking in room after room and then even in the closets just in case she decided to play hide n’ seek with herself while I was riding the pill express.

  A recent memory nags at me. I remember staggering down the sidewalk, my shirt sticking to my back in the afternoon heat. I’d found the gas station eventually and the strung-out cashier behind the counter. Shauna on the nametag. I guess something about the quantity of the alcohol I shoved over the counter or my evident allergy to showers told her I might be interested in something off-shelf. She was right. I was all for the little baggie of pills and the fun tongue stud that she let me explore free of charge.

  Getting off track. I rewind the memory. Back to the part of me walking down the sidewalk. Walking? Did I randomly grow a conscience and decide not to drive? Hardly likely.

  The car. The blurry memories click into place. My beautiful Mustang was gone. I walk to the big windows in the living room and push aside the curtains. The sun – asshole – sears my retinas. I squint. No gorgeous muscle car in the driveway. I walk through all the rooms again, this time looking for Maya’s duffle bag or any evidence that she is still here.

  I find plenty of creepy dolls, lace dollies, and thick quilts. No Maya. She’s gone.

  I sit down in the hallway, forehead heavy on my kneecaps, and spend the final two minutes of my not-being-an-utter-failure-at-everything hour resenting the hell out of Tarren and his suffocating judgment.

  “I know, I know,” I tell him.

  My hour is up. I march downstairs, grab the half-full bottle of vodka, and walk into the kitchen.

  “I’ll find her. I’ll apologize. Then I’ll take care of her,” I promise Tarren as I send all that sweet oblivion down the sink.

  Chapter 42 – Maya

  Rain whips open the front door of the small house the moment I step out of my rental. He doesn’t even try to pretend that he wasn’t sitting by the window watching for me. Already, his fast strides are coming toward me, always the slight dip of a limp with every other step.

  His aura. It is a wild thing, exploding with colors. It scares me, how much he feels, how obvious it is in the complicated matrix of colors around him. He stops short in front of me, finally remembering that I need space.

  Here is the face I still love, those sleepy brown eyes with the flecks of green within them, that wild brown hair, longer than it was the last time. I’ve been practicing words on the long, long drive up from Lo’s mansion but as we stare at each other, they all fall away from my mind.

  “You look so much better,” he blurts, then recalibrates. “Not that you…but when Gabe pulled you out of the house, you were so…Gabe took you away, while I was at the hospital with Bear.” Rain pulls in a short breath. “He wouldn’t tell me where you were, if you were even alive. Wouldn’t answer his phone at all.”

  “I’m alive,” I say softly and don’t add all of the caveats. “I’ve been feeding with the Prism every day.” The massive doses of concentrated sunlight have been helping me to fill back out. After three weeks, I can mostly fit into my old clothing as long as I cinch my jeans with a belt.

  “Why is Bear in the hospital?” I ask.

  “He took a hit when he rescued you. The vest saved him, but the impact ruptured his kidney. He had to go in for emergency surgery to take it out.”

  “Bear only has one kidney now?” I say dumbly. I’d had no idea that any of the Totem members were part of my extraction team. How many people put their lives on the line for me? They must know then, must know what I did to Tarren.

  Yet, when I read the colors of Rain’s aura, I only see the bright greens of relief and the swell of deep purples. Love. But how can he?

  I don’t really care. The colors guide me as I willingly step into his embrace, let his arms and his warmth and his energy envelope me. Every loud emotion echoes from his body into mine. I squeeze my eyes shut tight and hold myself in utter control.

  “Ahoy, Buffy,” he says into my hair.

  “Ahoy, Lancelot,” I whisper back. I used the Prism just an hour before coming here, engorging myself on sunlight, but still….I remember the taste of him.

  “Why aren’t you scared of me?” I ask, laying my head against his shoulder. I feel the laugh in his chest.

  “Who says I’m not?” He takes my gloved hand and leads me into the house.

  I know this is Sunshine’s house right away. Rain doesn’t even need to tell me that it belonged to his murdered sister. The décor is just so happy and bright, like the previous owner couldn’t find one little thing wrong with the world. The walls of the living room are lemon yellow, and the colorful hanging abstracts are soft and welcoming. I can almost feel Sunshine living in here. Everything about the room seems so purposeful, from the little cartoonish figurines propped around the television, to the soft blue couches chosen for the plush comfort they offer rather than any type of sophisticated taste.

  An orange puff ball with a head attached to one end and a tail to the other hisses at me and lumbers its impressive bulk behind one of the couches.

  Rain gives the cat a disdainful look. “Daisy hates everyone,” he says.

  I turn to him. “You should hate me, too. I hurt you.” I killed Tarren, and I would’ve killed you too if he hadn’t stopped me.

  Rain gives me his easy grin, the one that used to make my knees melt like butter, but today I’m appalled at his kindness, at the love so clear and vulnerable in his aura.

  “It was an accident,” he says.

  “That doesn’t change what I did.”

  “I’m not afraid.” He puts a tentative hand on my shoulder. “I swear, Maya, I’m not afraid of you.”

  And he’s not. His aura proves his words, and I think that he is such a foolish, such a gallant, such a lovely man. Slowly, I put my arms around his neck and pull him down into a soft, lingering kiss. I spent over forty minutes in front of the Prism before I came here, so that I could stand against whatever emotions Rain threw at me. I expected fear. Disgust.

  Not this. Not that torch of love, still burning strong.

  My lips part softly as his aura burns across my skin. I hear a noise, feel a nearby aura spike. Chain pushes his chair back from the kitchen table and turns toward the stairs, tablet held in the crook of his arm. Rain doesn’t notice him at all, but I see the anger in Chain’s aura.

  I lay my head against Rain’s shoulder again, feeling his aura, testing my own strength against it. My need is steady and powerful, but not overwhelming.

  “Want to sit down?” He gestures toward the couch.

  We have a lot to discuss. I should ask him about my rescue, finally find out what happened; how he and the Totem got involved, how they were even able to find me. But I don’t want to talk about blood or bullets or Tarren’s last day on earth. I could ask Rain how the Totem organization has grown over the past two months since we last saw each other…or at least since I last saw him. He could tell me all about the missions his teams pursued, whether anyone else has been drained or maimed or arrested. No, not that either. I see enough worry already in his face and playing in the middle layers of his aura. We can talk about life then, about this house, that horrible cat. But this is Sunshine’s house, and these lemon-colored walls probably remind him of her lemon-colored personality, and the only reason he’s here must be because of the STYX protocol, because of me.

  “No,” I say to sitting down. We only have sad memories to replay, sad lives to compare. Something small and desperate is opening inside of me. “I want something else.” I take his hand and pull him toward the stairs.

  I expect him to be excited, expect to see his smile grow and grow, but he frowns instead and resists my pulling.

  “What’s going on?” His voice is soft, wary now.

  “I think I can…” I bite my lip, feeling a rush of awkwardness spread heat in my chest. I waiver, almost let go of his hand, but that pit of desperation and hurt inside me yawns open. “I can do it,” I tell him, “without hurting you…if we go slow.”

  Rain still doesn’t look happy. “You just got here. I thought, maybe we could…” he looks at the couch again.

  I’ve been a tumble of slippery emotions since I woke up three weeks ago with a dozen ties digging into my arms and legs. That little room with the slanted roof and the tiny window is never far from my mind. Sometimes when I blink, I’m there for just a moment.

  “I don’t want to talk,” I say simply, and then I walk up the stairs.

  Rain hesitates behind me. This is going to get real uncomfortable real soon, since I don’t know which bedroom is his. All the doors at the top of the stairs are the same. I feel Chain’s angry aura buzzing behind one of the doors, but that only eliminates one of four options. I could just as easily dramatically throw myself into a bathroom or hall closet as Rain’s room.