Page 47 of Threadbound

But then why does this keep happening to me? All this shit, and there’s only one common denominator.

Jamie sighed, ate more oatmeal, forced himself to swallow, and took another gulp of rapidly-cooling coffee.

The weather was going to be hot again, and his tiny apartment didn’t have air conditioning—most of Edinburgh didn’t have air conditioning, either, so it wasn’t like that was a particularly sad feature of his living accommodations.

It would have been a good day to go hike the Crags, take his lunch outside, or hide in the actually air conditioned library with the manuscripts that didn’t change on him from one day to the next. They might puzzle him and resist his ability to interpret them, but every time he looked, they always looked the same back.

The same thing was frustratingly not true of people.

Beside him, his phone buzzed, and he picked it up.

You okay?It was Trixie.

Yeah, he sent back.Long story, but life emergency. Nothing I can’t handle, and I’ll tell you everything when I come back. He’d texted her yesterday to beg her to take his shifts or pawn them off on someone else. Usually there weren’t quite enough hours to go around the staff, so it wasn’t a huge problem if someone had to call out—somebody else would take over the shift. The only problem was that if he wasn’t working, he wasn’t getting paid, even if it was fine from the Museums’ perspective.

You sure you’re okay?

He wasn’t, not in the slightest, but he didn’t want to violate Bran’s privacy by explaining. If Bran didn’t want him to talk about it, he’d make something up. Or just use some previous crisis he’d had to handle with Billy or Nora. Ginny and Tommy were still young enough that they hadn’t hit their full rebellious stages, yet.

Just need a few days, he sent back.It’ll be fine. Even he wasn’t convinced by that.Promise.Then he sent a smiley face. It was still weak, and he knew it, but he wasn’t sure how to convince Trixie that things were fine because they weren’t, and he was a terrible liar, even in text.

Call or text if you need anything, okay?

He sent a thumbs up.

And then he finished his now-disgusting oatmeal.

Jamie had carefully retrievedhis research notes and spread them out on the bed so that he wouldn’t accidentally back up in his office chair and run into the extended end of the recliner where Bran was still sleeping. So now his notes were strewn across the bedspread—because at least he could be civilized enough to make the bed before covering it in papers—and Jamie had a crick in his back from sitting awkwardly bent over them,stilltrying to identify the goddamn thistle-burdock-knapweed-sea-holly and not feeling any closer to figuring it out, despite looking up all of them, repeatedly, and then trying to sort out what the stupid recipe wasforand seeing if that would help him to eliminate any of the possibilities.

It didn’t, for the record, because he couldn’t make sense of several of the written-down ingredients, either. He knew what the letters said, but four of them weren’t things that he could find in any of the three compendia he owned copies of. Hefigured if he could get into the library, he might be able to match some of them up there.

It was making him seriously question whether the thing he’d thought was bog myrtle actuallywasbog myrtle, and whether the dandelion-thistle was actually either of those things. It was definitely puffier than the thing he had no clue about, and the bog myrtle had the right shaped leaves and pine-cone-like flowers, so he was still pretty sure that was it.

There were a few herbs whose names Jamie did recognize, although none of these had drawings—heather, hyssop, yew berries, and elderflowers.

Added to the plants were milk and honey, which were common enough ingredients; some kind of blood he couldn’t really make out, and although blood was less common than some other things, it wasn’t that strange; and a crust of bread, also fairly common in folk magic. Why, Jamie had no idea. Probably because people had bread, and if it had gone stale, they could give it to the fairies or spirits or gods and get some use out of it that didn’t break anyone’s teeth. Ground pearl was less readily available, at least in terms of what ordinary peasants would be able to have on hand.

He sighed, tapping his pencil against his cheek. Maybe the person who wrote this goddamn thing was completely mad and had no idea what they were saying, which was a fairly accurate description of how Jamie felt.

He squinted a little across the room, making sure—for what must have been the thousandth time—that Bran was still breathing. The gentle rise and fall of his chest told Jamie he was still alive, but Jamie was starting to worry, again, at how much Bran was sleeping. And at the fact that he looked extremely pale. And not just pale, because Bran’s skin was very fair, but that kind of unhealthy, waxy pale.

Like a corpse.

Jamie shut his eyes and shook his head and told himself to stop that line of thought immediately.

The last thing he wanted to be thinking about was Bran dying on him.

A quick check of the time told Jamie that he probably needed to start dinner and wake Bran again—there was more pasta, and ground turkey, and tomato sauce, so Jamie’d been planning on that with some beans mixed in, because beans were hearty and cheap.

Jamie ate a lot of beans.

He got up and crossed the room to his kitchen counter, bringing the plate that had held his lunch sandwiches with him so he could wash it. Although he felt a little guilty that his puttering around in the kitchen might wake Bran, he also knew that Bran needed to eat, and it would honestly be less awkward if he woke Bran accidentally than if he had to go over there and shake the smaller man awake again.

As Jamie cooked, he kept checking over his shoulder for any sign that Bran was stirring, or even aware that Jamie was making noise. And then he started deliberately making more noise than was strictly necessary, and even that didn’t stir Bran.

With the meatballs in the oven, the water heating up to boil, and the jars of tomato sauce simmering with dry spices—because Jamie couldn’t afford the fresh tomatoes to do it right—he paused, standing with his hands on his hips and staring at Bran as he continued to sleep.

Then he went and looked upcan’t wake up someone who is injuredon his computer to see if the internet had any helpful advice. Jamie sighed. He really should know better than to ask the internet medical questions. Because all he got back was information on comas and head injuries, but as far as he knew, Bran didn’t have a head injury. Or Alzheimer’s.

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