As Luke gimped through the matted weeds behind the cabin in Stefan’s wake, he was wrestling with the unwelcome—and altogether too familiar—emotions that still jostled around in his chest from his fading dreams. Jealousy. Envy. Destructive, misdirected love. Everything he’d wanted to spare Stefan when he’d run all those years ago. I had enough of my own shit, thanks. Didn’t want to share anyone else’s.

“Surely you have some clue whether you painted or not,” he said, trying his damnedest to keep an open mind about Stefan’s amnesiac artist story.

Stefan paused with his hand on the studio door handle. “Nope. I just wake up the next day with a monster headache, a butt-load of hope and fear, and one of those, you know, feelings.”

“Yeah, but—”

Stefan tossed a glare over his shoulder. “Can you explain your nightmares?”

Not in a way I like. Luke eased the waistband of his pants away from the bandaged laceration on his back. “Well, I figured I was drunk—”

“Drunk.” Stefan’s tone held a ton of give-me-a-fucking-break. “Yeah. Let’s roll with that.” He opened the door and flipped a switch.

The solar lights were dim in the cavernous studio, but they cast enough light to reveal the easel in the center of the room, its canvas facing away from the door. The window reflected the bold colors and aggressive style of a classic Arcoletti. Luke glanced at Stefan, who’d stalled inside the threshold, staring at the easel with wide, haunted eyes. He grabbed Luke’s biceps, his fingers like ice through Luke’s borrowed shirt.

“You look. Please?”

Luke laid his hand over Stefan’s long enough to share a little warmth. “Absolutely.”

He circled the easel and faced the painting. Even in the dim light, the colors were vibrant, alive. Pretty fricking ironic considering the artist was dead. Luke glanced at Stefan, who was still hovering near the door as if he was about to bolt.

“You say you painted this last night?”

Stefan nodded, arms wrapped across his stomach.

“You sure?”

“I’m never sure. But if it had been here yesterday, Thomas would have taken it.”

Luke touched the lower corner of the picture over the signature. “It’s already dry.”

“They always are.” Stefan stopped one pace beyond the easel, his gaze fixed on Luke’s face. “Is it his? Arcoletti’s?”

Luke nodded. “It’s Last Chance Cafe. He described it in one of the Gordon letters. Here.” He pulled Stefan forward, draping an arm across his back and tucking him close to Luke’s side. “Look.”

The painting was a street scene. Night. Blues bleeding into reds and reds into greens and yellows, as if seen through a rain-drenched window. No cars. No people, except for a slender man in evening dress. Hatless, he stood on the wet sidewalk, his reflection double-distorted in the wavy glass of a cafe window.

Luke froze. He knew the curve of that skull, the sheen of that golden hair. Knew it as well as he knew his own. Or Stefan’s.

Luke pointed at the man. “That’s . . .” Luke hunched against the sudden agony in his chest, the memory of a monumental loss. He pressed a hand to his sternum until the phantom pain eased. “That’s Edward. Edward Franklin.”

Stefan jerked under Luke’s arm. “Franklin? Not Arcoletti?”

“No. Arcoletti was a big, raw-boned guy. Shaggy brown hair. Leonine.”

Stefan skimmed the canvas with one finger. “I’ve seen him,” Stefan whispered. “Edward.”

“You painted him before?”

“Not a picture. I’ve seen him.” Stefan swallowed. “He’s the man in the road. Last night. When I stopped the car.”

“Shit. Two ghosts?” Luke muttered, running a hand through his hair. “I’m still not sure I believe in the first one.” But he’d seen Edward’s face—that face—in his dream just now, staring up at him as the light dimmed in his eyes.

“Ghosts? What are you talking about? What ghosts?” Panic edged Stefan’s tone, and who could blame him?

“Possession, remember? Ghosts are kind of involved.”

Stefan nodded, a jerk of his chin. “Oh. Got it. But what do you mean, the first one?”

“Shhh.” Luke shifted his arm from Stefan’s shoulder to his waist, wanting to give comfort as well as take it. Ghosts. Possession. Goddamn, this shit was freaky. “This was Arcoletti’s studio. William Franklin claims his ghost haunts the place. That he’s . . . ah . . . using you to re-create his lost collection.”

Stefan sagged against Luke’s side, his shoulders shaking. Luke realized the rusty sound coming out of the man was laughter. “Wonderful.”

“Yeah, I know. Nuts, right?” But with the supernatural evidence piling up—his dream injury, the canvases Stefan couldn’t remember, the paint that should still be wet but wasn’t—Luke was ready to drop-kick his skepticism all the way to China.

“But why does he want to re-create the lost collection? What’s the point?”

“Good question. It can’t be because he wants to benefit Boardman. He hated his family.” Luke shrugged. “He painted them the first time because—”

“Don’t say that.”

“What?”

“‘The first time.’ I still don’t . . . I can’t—”

“Sorry.” Luke rubbed Stefan’s back. “He intended to use them to finance a new life, a new adventure. At least that’s what he told Ruth Gordon in the last letter he wrote to her. Now, though . . .” Luke’s gaze strayed to the painting. “I think he intended to use their sale to take Edward away. Although if that’s the case, and he and Edward are both here, why don’t they take off and stop giving us shit?”

“Maybe they’re not connecting for some reason.” Stefan’s tone was troubled. “Arcoletti is only half of the equation. What does Edward want? What if his needs aren’t the same?” Stefan pushed himself out of Luke’s embrace. “Can I show you something?” When Luke nodded, Stefan led him to a closet behind a circa 1970 brown plaid sofa. He fished a key out of an empty can on the floor and unlocked the door. “Thomas doesn’t know about these. I never showed him.”

He pulled a couple of two-by-three canvases out of the closet and propped them against the wall, then returned for two more, then another pair, although he kept the last one in his arms, facing his chest.

Each one was the same. A tree with a wide, brown trunk and feathery branches that drooped under the weight of water pearled on the needles. On the left side, a gnarled root thrust up like a tortured knee, skin removed, muscles and sinews brown and mummified.

Luke frowned. I’ve seen this tree. “The painting in the gallery. Edward, Reading. Same tree. Way different mood.” The pain in his back flared, and his fingers went numb. There’s more, and it’s bad. I know it. I feel it. But whatever it is, I don’t want to see. If Stefan was facing his ghosts, though, how could Luke do any less? He clenched his fists and nodded for Stefan to continue.

Stefan held the last painting facing his chest and jerked his chin at the row of canvases. “These are the first blackout paintings. Scared the piss out of me. Night after night, another painting of the tree, always the same. Until this one.” His knuckles shone white where he clutched the edge of the frame. “After this one, I stopped checking the studio for new paintings.”

He flipped the picture around and held it against his chest. Same tree. Same branches. Same trunk. But a crimson splatter arced across the bark and a limp hand lay across the root, palm up, the just-visible white cuff and black sleeve smirched with mud and edged with blood.

Images splashed behind Luke’s eyelids; stark, harshly lit, and disjointed. A bonfire on a rocky river bank. Fire rushing down the hill. Stefan’s face superimposed on Edward’s. Stefan’s head ringed with a halo of flame-like hair. Edward with blood blooming red on his white shirt.

He caromed off the sofa, backpedaling until he slammed against the wall, gulping air like a goddamn beached mackerel. “Edward. That’s Edward. Arcoletti, he . . . The fire. He couldn’t get away.” He swiped one shaking hand over a forehead suddenly damp with sweat, the memory of nightmare flames heating his skin once more, burning his lungs, threatening him with Arcoletti’s fate. He grabbed Stefan’s wrist and towed him toward the door. “We’re out of here. Now.”

Stefan hunched in the wobbly ladder-back chair at the dining table, his head in his hands, while Luke stormed around the living room, demanding a reason for the impossible, an explanation for the inexplicable. A cold weight settled in Stefan’s belly, the numbness seeping out along his veins, growing each time Luke tossed out another theory. Another why. Stefan had given up on why long ago. Because why didn’t matter. Only what.

The what Stefan had to face now? That he wasn’t painting. Not really. He was still as blocked as he’d been since Marius’s plane plowed into that hill.

Luke stopped pacing and propped his hands on his hips. “What did you do last night? Before the studio?”

“I was pissed at you, so I had a drink. More than one.”

“A drink. Of what?”

“Scotch. Beer wasn’t going to cut it.”

Luke paled. “Shit. The Scotch.” He grabbed the bottle off the sideboard. “Fifteen-year-old Glenlivet. This is the only thing Arcoletti drank—and he drank a fuck-ton of it. What if this is the . . . the conduit that allows him to break through from wherever the hell ghosts reside? It’s . . . it’s . . . What the hell do they call it? Sympathetic magic.” He set the bottle down like it was red hot, wiping his hands on his pants. “Like produces like. Set up the right conditions and bam—he’s got the key that let him into your head.” He carded his hand through his hair. “Hell, that let him into my head.”

Great. Luke had segued to how. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Shit, Stef, you painting Arcoletti’s lost collection doesn’t make sense. Me getting skewered by a spectral tree stump doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense, but it still fucking happened.”

Stefan glared at him. “I know that. I mean if it was only the Scotch, why didn’t you paint too? Why didn’t it have the same effect on you as it did on me? There has to be something else, some other . . . other hook that controls how we’re affected.”

“Whatever. The paranormal investigator charlatans can figure that one out, because I’m not signing on for another experimental Scotch run and neither are you. I thought Franklin was loony with his haunted studio talk, but he was spot-on. Pack your shit. We’re leaving.”

“Why?” Christ, now he was the one asking that stupid, useless question.

Luke stared at him as if he were insane. “Because this shit is off-the-charts repulsive. To have that guy in your head—”

“I never remember it.”

“Fuck me blind, it’s all come back to me. I wish it hadn’t.” Luke closed his eyes and swiped a hand across his forehead. “He rode my brain as if it were a broken-down nag. Nothing’s worth a repeat of that.”

The numbness invaded Stefan’s lungs, and he struggled to force in a breath. “When you . . . in the bedroom . . . when we . . . Was that you? Or was that . . . him?” God, sometimes who mattered, too.

“No.” Luke stumbled on the rug in his rush to get to the table. “That was me. You. Us. Swear to God.”

“How can you be sure? Maybe it was Arcoletti getting his spectral rocks off.”

Luke sat in the other chair and scooted it close, his knees bracketing Stefan’s. He gripped the back of Stefan’s neck with one hand, thigh with the other, thumb stroking the inseam of Stefan’s jeans. “I’m sure because it’s been building since the day I was a fucking idiot and left you. That was us.” Luke leaned forward and kissed him, a brush of lips, a hint of tongue. Nothing too hot, but warm enough to chase the ice from Stefan’s chest. “Definitely us.”

Stefan leaned his forehead against Luke’s. “Thank God.”

“No shit.” Luke brushed a thumb across Stefan’s jaw, rasping against Stefan’s three-day stubble. “So how about it? You ready to get the hell out of Dead Man’s Dodge?”

Stefan tensed and pulled back far enough to look in Luke’s eyes. “It’s not that simple.”

“What do you mean?” Luke scowled and dropped his hands to his knees.

“I have debts, Luke. More than you can imagine.”

“Try me.”

Stefan clenched his hands between his knees. “The day Marius died, when I was so angry with him forcing my hand by cashing that Vegas commission check . . . I didn’t need to tell him I was leaving right before he took off. I could have waited until he got home. Had it out with him face-to-face. But instead—” The lump in his throat reduced Stefan’s voice to a croak.

Luke took his hands, gently pried them apart, and laced Stefan’s fingers with his own. “You think he crashed his plane on purpose?”

“Marius loved the grand gesture, and that was pretty freaking enormous.” Stefan tried to pull away from Luke. He didn’t deserve comfort. He needed to take responsibility.

“Stef. You didn’t kill him. Okay? He was the pilot. Not you.”

Stefan tucked his chin toward his chest and managed to nod. “I know. But I owe the Vegas hotelier. I never fulfilled the commission, and all the cash burned along with the plane. If I leave here, I’ll be back on their radar and I’m not ready. Not until I have the means to pay them back.” Stefan ran a shaking hand through his hair. “And then there’s Thomas. I have an obligation to him, too.”

Luke sat up, anger chasing the concern from his face. “Bullshit.”

“I’ve been living on his dime for four months. I can’t afford a single paintbrush myself, let alone everything I’d need to set up my own studio. Thomas’s generosity is the only thing giving me the least bit of hope I’ll be able to paint again. I owe him for that chance, not to mention four months’ worth of rent, food, and supplies.”

“You don’t owe him your life,” Luke growled.

“My life.” Stefan pushed away and stood up, tipping his chair backward against the corner of the island with a thud. “You want to know about my life? I hadn’t painted anything for two years. I was living in my fucking fifty-dollar car. Nothing,” he said, staring Luke down, deliberately mimicking his earlier tone, “is worth a repeat of that.”

Luke met his stare, eyes narrowing. “He sold two of the forgeries. Boardman. He mention that little detail?”

Stefan’s breath stalled, and his stomach plummeted. “No. He said—”

“One point two million for the set. Do you suppose that’s enough to offset the cost of these princely accommodations? And the Scotch. Let’s not forget that. You definitely want to reimburse him for the fucking Glenlivet and the joy rides on the supernatural super-highway.”

“It’s all over then.” Stefan sank onto the sofa in a crackle of ancient leather, his knees unable to hold him. “I’m officially a forger. When will you turn me in?”

Luke cracked a laugh. “Are you nuts? I’m not turning you in.”

“But the sale—”

“I’ve skated along the razor’s edge of my professional ethics before. I can do it again.”

“You’d do that? Compromise another dream?”

“It’s been more like a bad trip the last couple of years. Don’t worry about it. Stef.” Luke’s voice was low, its hard edge softened. “Come away with me.”

“And what?” Stefan’s fingers twisted together as if his hands belonged to two different people, each desperately seeking comfort. “You’ll take care of me? Like Marius? What if I don’t want to be taken care of? What if I never did?”

“So what’s your plan?” Luke spread his arms, encompassing the dreary cabin, his voice sharp again. “Stay here and play Arcoletti’s bitch? As the one plastered on his drug of choice last night, I can tell you it will not end well.”

Stefan stared at his hands, touching the place where a spot of cobalt once taunted him. “But if all he wants is to paint . . . Shit, if I could re-create the last four pictures I’d painted before Marius died, I’d jump at the chance with both freaking feet. He wants to reclaim what he lost, Luke, and I can totally understand that.”

“Yeah? Well, he didn’t want me to paint, Stefan. He wanted me to die.” Luke’s voice broke on the last word.

“Maybe it wasn’t you he wanted to die.” Stefan kept his voice low and even, because Luke was obviously three heartbeats away from a total freak-out, and Stefan was about to up the ante. “What if it was himself? And you were just his . . . I don’t know . . . avatar?”

Luke swayed in the middle of the room, his hazel eyes wide and fingers twitching. Stefan had witnessed the same behavior before, the day Luke bolted from their apartment. And as he watched Luke’s gaze dart from shadow to shadow in the shabby room, it hit him like a punch to the heart.

Luke’s choices, his actions—this isn’t trivial. It’s monumental. Not only because he’s being forced to challenge his beliefs and accept uncanny possibilities. He’s on the brink of compromising his integrity.

For me.

If Luke went through with this, hid the truth about Stefan’s forgeries, he’d be sacrificing his reputation, the career he’d found to replace the first one Stefan had stolen from him, for Stefan’s sake. A professional suicide—maybe not as final as Marius’s death, but devastating and irrevocable nonetheless.

Sweat broke out on his forehead and between his shoulders. Marius had laughed at his warning and gotten into the cockpit anyway, confident of his own invincibility. Luke wasn’t as arrogant, but he was ten times as protective and fifty times as stubborn. He’d never leave Stefan behind, never believe that Stefan didn’t want the sacrifice. And Stefan refused to cause the death of anyone—or anything—ever again.

That meant he had to force Luke to leave. Drive him away. Destroy the connection they’d barely rebuilt. Unfortunately, he knew exactly how to do it.

“One point two million you say?”

“That’s right.”

“With my cut, even after I repay Thomas, I can pay off the Vegas guys and disappear.”

Luke stilled in his latest patrol of the room and stared at him, unblinking. “You’d do that? Run?”

“Why not?” Stefan forced himself to meet Luke’s hard gaze without flinching. “You did.”

He shot off the sofa and grabbed Luke’s coat from the peg by the door, hugging it to his chest. It smelled of damp wool, wood smoke, and Luke. Stefan clutched it tighter, inhaling the scent one more time because it would have to last for the rest of his so-called life.

“If you can’t take the heat, go.” He thrust the coat at Luke. “I’m staying until I can collect.”

Luke’s jaw dropped, and the hurt in his eyes almost changed Stefan’s mind.

“You’re shitting me.”

“No.” Stefan swallowed and straightened his spine, pulling himself to his full height, two inches taller than Luke. “With what I’m painting now—”

Luke grabbed the coat and flung it on the floor. “Fuck that. It’s not you. It’s Jeremiah fucking Arcoletti.” His words flew like stones, like knives, and Stefan flinched as each one found its mark. “His style. His vision. His paintings. Not. Yours.”

“I know. That’s the point. His vision pays. I can get off the mountain and on with my life.” Stefan shook his hair out of his eyes, met Luke’s furious stare, and pushed the never-fail Luke-eject button. “I can finally get the Rolex and ring out of hock.”

When Luke’s face twisted into the familiar mask of disgust, the one he’d worn so often when they’d fought over Marius’s money, the one he’d worn when he’d tossed out the forgery accusation last night, Stefan knew he’d won. If you call losing everything winning.

“You’re delusional if you think Boardman’ll come through with the cash.”

Stefan clenched his fists, his nails driving into his palms. Somehow, he kept his chin from trembling as he met Luke’s gaze. “He will if I tell him I’ll paint another.”

“You—” Luke pressed his lips together as disgust bled away into something more like impossible grief. Christ, please don’t look like that. I’m not worth it. For an instant, Stefan was afraid Luke wouldn’t take the bait. But then he bent awkwardly, snatched his coat off the floor, and limped out the door, slamming it behind him.

Stefan took a breath and blew it out, collapsing onto the sofa. The awful foreboding faded from his chest, leaving it hollow, as if Luke had dragged his heart down the mountain behind his car.

Stefan hadn’t saved Marius, but he’d learned to live with the specter of that guilt. But to be haunted by the death of Luke’s hopes, his dreams, maybe Luke himself? That Stefan couldn’t face.

It would fucking kill him.