Page 207 of The Wild Charge

Home, Ghost had said. He supposed that’s what it felt like, as his headlamp swept the driveway, and he killed the engine to the suburban Americana sounds of cheeping crickets, chugging AC units, and trilling night birds. There weren’t any lights on, save a faint blue glow through the drapes in the living room; it was easy to envision Eden tipped sideways on the couch, fast asleep, current project spread before her on the coffee table as she lost the battle to pregnancy fatigue.

An unwelcome surprise awaited him inside, though, when he approached the back of the couch, and found Devin’s profile limned in TV glow, awake and sipping a beer, eyes trained on the screen.

“Your woman went up to bed,” Devin said, by way of greeting. “Asleep on her feet. I told her I’d put away the dinner dishes.”

Fox craned a look over his shoulder, at the dishes drying neatly on the drainboard, tea towel hooked through the handle of the stove. Huh.

“Have fun, did you?”

Fox snorted and walked around the sofa to sit on the far end of it. Some sort of superhero movie with lots of flashy explosions was playing on the screen, the volume down low. “Tenny did, I think. Got to play butcher for a little while.”

Devin nodded – it would have looked sage and paternal if Fox hadn’t known him so well. “That’s what it takes, sometimes. We’re men of action, we are. It doesn’t feel good to sit back and watch someone else take your trophies.”

“Stop doing that.”

“Doing what?” he asked, all innocence.

Fox twisted so he faced him, that insufferably baffled expression. “Stop acting like I’m a chip off the old block. Stop talking like I inherited your fucked up personality.”

To his astonishment, and anger, Devin sighed. He leaned forward – wincing a little – to set his beer on the coffee table, and turned to face him, half in shadow, half glowing blue. “Charlie, why aren’t you a barrister? Or a banker? An insurance man?”

“What?”

“You could be selling hats at the Tower of London, or guarding the Crown Jewels inside of it. But instead, you went to train with Abe. You learned how to do the things I did as a boy.”

“That doesn’t–”

“The second you were old enough, you ran to join that club of Phillip’s. All of you boys did. Every son I have wears a Lean Dogs cut.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Fox said through clenched teeth.

“It meanseverything.” Devin leaned forward, eager. “There’s something in all of you that’s wild and doesn’t want to play by everyone else’s rules. You all hated me, you all had every reason to search out quiet lives, but you’re all little outlaws instead. You got that from me. That’s in yourblood.”

Theyhadall become outlaws, hadn’t they? Even Raven, who had the most normal career of them all, slipped easily into a second, covert skin when the occasion called for it.

And Devin…Devin sounded proud of the fact.

It felt like the couch tilted beneath him. “Are you…are you trying to take credit for the way we turned out?” Fox asked. “Seriously?”

“I’m–” For the first time in Fox’s memory, Devin faltered. He blinked, and then slumped back against the harm of the couch, face haggard in the blue light. He scrubbed at his jaw. “I am proud,” he said, quietly – seriously, for once. “Of how you all turned out. Even Tennyson, though God knows he had every opportunity not to.”

“If you’re so bloodyproud, why were you never around? Why did you take off last year after Pseudonym?”

Devin propped his head on his fist, eyes wet points in the semi-darkness, his expression inspiring a faint chill up the back of Fox’s neck. “Because I got ten children on ten different women because my government handlers told me to. And they turned one of them into a child soldier. Just like I explained to you last year.”

Fox’s anger boiled up, liquid and hot…and then died back just as quickly. He thought of Reese when he’d first come, expressionless and silent. Thought of Tenny pressing his wet face into Fox’s shoulder on top of a picnic table, bawling because he loved someone and he didn’t know how to process that.

Thought too of the sound of his own scream, on the thirty-ninth floor of the Beaumont Building.

Swallowing was an effort. “Did you want to do that? Sire ten children?”

“God no,” Devin said, easily. “Not that I don’t enjoy the siring process. Your mother, specifically–”

“Shut up about my mother.”

“Fair enough. But she’s always been my favorite, you know. Raven’s was beautiful, but what abitch, I tell you.”

“Devin.”

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