Page 159 of Skalterra By Nightmare
“Then I guess it’s a good thing I don’t care much for it to begin with. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get to work.”
I stood defeated as he stepped around me and walked to an old sedan parked outside Gams’s front door. His key fob beeped, and I kept my eyes forward on the peeling, wooden siding of the shop.
“I saved you,” I reminded him. “I could’ve let you die in that rotsbane’s mouth.”
“Then maybe you were never cut out for Skalterra to begin with.” His car door slammed behind me, and he peeled out of the parking spot and up the hill towards the highway.
Liam didn’t try too hard to interrogate me on my interaction with Stanley. Either he knew me well enough by now to know I wouldn’t tell him or he was harboring hurt feelings over my missing posters remark. And yes, I did feel bad about that particular jab, but not enough to distract me from my simmering anger.
Because discovering Titus in my grandmother’s general store was the doomsday-flavored cherry on top of what had already been a terrible twenty-four hours.
Galahad was dead, Orla and Fana would soon follow, the world was about to be overrun with power-hungry Magicians, and there was a chance to stop it if it weren’t for the fragile ego of one mediocre man.
Despite my crappy mood, Liam pulled fresh bandages out of his bag at lunch and silently changed the gauze on my hand as we sat on the back deck, each stewing in our own thoughts and worries. There was an odd comfort to the silence, like neither of us expected the other to break it, and that was okay.
After we closed shop for the day, Liam hung around long enough for dinner. I scrubbed at dirty dishes in the sink while he stood over Gams’s shoulder at the dining table, helping her navigate the internet as she fretted over our train tickets and hotel rooms.
My interview with Von Leer felt so pointless now. By the time Fall Semester started, there might not be a college there anymore thanks to Ferrin. However, the thought of the weekend trip made my heart race for a different reason.
At the end of this week, if all went according to plan, I would be meeting my birth father.
Yes, my plans to figure out what he knew about Skalterra were the priority and more important than ever, but after spending eighteen years secretly searching his name online, I harbored a selfish anxiety at the thought of meeting him at long last.
“I think that one’s clean, dear,” Gams murmured behind me. I hadn’t realized I’d been violently scrubbing at a single plate. “How’s this room look, Liam?”
“There’s only one bed,” Liam said. I whipped around to glare at them, but both their backs were to me as they surveyed hotel rooms on Gams’s computer. “Though it looks like the couch might be a pull-out.”
“I’m not putting Wren on a pull-out.”
“I’m not either. That’s where I would sleep.” Liam laughed softly and looked over his shoulder at me. I turned back to the sink, scrubbing harder than before. “What about that one? It’s got two queens.”
“Sure, sure. Where’d my wallet go?”
Liam came up behind me and took my sponge and plate away.
“Let me,” he said.
“I’m fine,” I protested, but shifted over to give him room at the sink.
“I don’t want you getting your bandages wet, though they probably need changing anyway.”
I balled my hand into a fist, closing my fingers over the gauze and bandages.
“It’s okay. I can change them,” I said.
Liam’s eyes softened, and he chewed on the inside of his cheek. He glanced back at Gams, and then swallowed whatever words he’d been holding back.
“We’re going to have fun this weekend,” he said instead. I nodded with a tight-lipped smile, knowing neither of us would be in the mood to have fun.
I passed the next few days on edge. Every ring of the bell above the shop door made me jump. I watched the windows, waiting for Stanley or even Ferrin to pass by. My phone battery puttered out before lunch every day after I subjected my browser to constant refreshes. I wasn’t sure how obvious Ferrin’s arrival in Keldori would be, but there were sure to be signs in the news.
It was hard to know what to look for, however, and more often than not, I ended up back on the video Linsey had posted of Mom. It had surpassed a couple million views, and now that my initial mortification had subsided, there was a strange comfort in watching Mom shatter potted plants.
Apparently book sales had never been better in the wake of the video, and while I wished that meant she could come home from Europe early, I figured this was her summer to make up for all the vacations and opportunities she’d canceled so she could stay home with me.
Still, though. The world had never felt so impossibly big as it did when I wanted nothing more than a hug from my mom.
Not to mention, I was about to betray her. As far as she was concerned, I didn’t have a biological father. I’d simply sprung into existence. Maxwell Brenton was a taboo name under our roof. He had given us nothing, so we would give him nothing, not even a passing thought, in return.
