Eleri watched as Donovan's eyes widened at the sight of the book she’d set between them.
“I found it in the attic,” she said. She waited a moment for her friend to absorb everything. They sat on his couch, on opposite ends, which was about as close as she was able to get to human contact right now. That hug had been everything she needed, but then she’d stepped back again.
“You made it to the attic?”
She was nodding as he continued.
“In my mental image, you sat on that couch and stared out the large picture window at the grass waving for days on end.”
Unable to help herself, Eleri threw her head back and laughed. She felt as good as she had in a long, long time. She didn't even have to say it.
Donovan smiled, too. “Shit. I nailed it, didn't I?”
“For the first several days, yes. Then I realized I'd been sitting on my ass and staring at the grass growing for too long. And I decided to try to take control of things.” She sucked in a breath before making her admission. “I could either do nothing or I could figure out how to do this right.”
Donovan nodded, smiling at her comment, and something about that twisted a key or opened a door inside her, but it set her free. The words came more easily than she’d expected. “I didn't mean to kill him.”
“I know.” Two simple words spoken in a clear, plain tone let her know that he wasn't just speaking. He understood.
She breathed easier again. “But I decided that I can't bring him back. So I have to go forward.”
Donovan nodded again, and then he—as he sometimes had over the past several years—offered some very insightful thoughts. For someone as quiet and self-isolating as he often was, he must have always been watching everything around him, because he understood far more than he'd ever let on. “Would you bring him back if you could?”
It was an interesting conundrum and one she hadn't thought about. She would have to go back and change it in time… make things such that she hadn't killed a person she hadn't intended to. It took a moment of her sitting on the couch, curled into a small ball and thinking, to say, “No, he's not worth the effort. I can't promise that if I hadn't killed him then, I wouldn't have had to kill him later on.”
“I'm honestly not sure you didn't have to kill him then. I get that it wasn't what you intended, but I don't doubt that it was the right thing to do. He was coming after us. He was coming hard and with skills we weren't prepared to fight. And you saved us all.”
Eleri loved that Donovan didn't say it with any kind of gushy I-owe-you-my-life tone. He said it as a statement of fact. Because, somewhere along the line, with no spoken agreement, she and he had come to terms with the fact that they would save each other's lives over and over and over.
She had told herself many of these same things already, but it was impressive how hearing them from Donovan somehow loosened the knot in her chest. She could tell Donovan anything. He wouldn’t always agree and he might even judge her, because he wouldn't ever let her go batshit. But he would always have her back, right or wrong.
As she pondered this, it was Donovan who cracked the silence.
“So help me out with this Bodhi issue.”
“He's not here.” Eleri waved her open hand as though to demonstrate the empty room around them.
“That's the problem. He came here, and I can't figure out what he did.”
Eleri felt slow, but she was catching on. “So you’re saying we know Bodhi well enough—not well, but well enough—to know that he doesn't go anywhere or do much of anything without a purpose.”
“Exactly.” Donovan stood up and paced, his anxious stride giving her an insight into just how much his brother’s visit had bothered him. “So, there are two options, I think. One—he came here and did something to me or to my house, but I can’t find it. Or—two—he was interrupted and left before he got it done.”
This time, it was Eleri nodding along.
“There’s another big problem,” Donovan added. “He never came inside. At least I can't smell him in here. But I can’t smell anything different in the yard, either. And we're still missing some Dauphine sisters. We know that Bodhi was in league with them. They have powers I can't detect.” He left the last part hanging.
More like me, Eleri thought, but didn't say out loud. She realized he was asking her to stay.
“You were alone for a while,” he continued. His words were truthful, but she wasn’t ready for decisions. He offered them anyway. “Maybe the work is what you need now.”
It was plausible, she thought. She sure as hell didn't know what she needed. So she changed the subject. “I've been practicing out of the book. It’s been pretty good to be at Bell Point Farm and be far away from everything. Now if I blow something up, no one calls the fire department on me.”
He laughed. This time it was his turn to sweep his hand in a grand, encompassing gesture, but directing her gaze out the window. “There are tens of thousands of acres of National Forest out there.”
“And what if I screw up and burn it to the ground?” she asked, a laugh underpinning her words.
“Can you really not put it out?”
“Maybe not! It depends on what kind of fire it is or … if I’m out cold.” She realized only after she'd said it how much she’d given away.
“Jesus, El,” Donovan said. “You definitely need someone around.”
She realized he was right. The time she'd awakened on the floor with a bowl of her spellwork still burning had been a turning point. Even though she'd been out for several hours, the flames had continued to burn, telling her she wasn’t as skilled as she thought. She could have used another hand.
Maybe she should stay.
The idea had barely cleared her thoughts when both their phones buzzed simultaneously. And that could only mean one thing.