53 Brydan

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Thank you all for your support on Expiration Date. 


Jonas~~

I park my car out front of Brydan's home. The clock on my dashboard says 5:17 AM. My head slumps against the wheel. Sleep. Even an hour of it. I need it.

I drag myself out of my car and up the steps to his front door. On my phone, I dial his number, and while it's ringing, he opens the door.

"Jonas . . ."

I step inside but I falter. Brydan grabs hold of me, steering me to the nearest couch. Letting out a low groan, I collapse in a heap, my eyes shut as my head lolls against the back of the couch.

"He took her. They all know."

Brydan shushes me. "Sleep first."

"There's not time." I try standing, but Brydan pushes me onto my back.

"You're no use in this state of mind. I promise once you wake up, there will be no delays."

Iris could already be dead. Erik could have already exposed us. No, I would have been called immediately if that had happened.

Brydan spreads a blanket over me.

A few minutes. A few minutes is all I need.

******

I wake up to my alarm.

Sunlight from outside fills Brydan's living room. I fumble for my phone, my neck aching with a crick in it. Maneuvering to slide it out of my back pocket, I grab the phone, my finger ready to silence the alarm. Only when I see the screen, I realize it's not my alarm but the caller ID for one of the Society's Veil.

"Hello?"

"Preeminence, we found the Tresais's car."

I sit up, ignoring every muscle that aches. "What do you mean? Were they not in it?"

"No."

That car is Erik's surest way of transportation. Why would he ditch it? What other plan did he have? "Where?"

Brydan appears on the stairs, wrapped in a housecoat.

"Outside of a small town called Lochland in Tennessee. Preeminence, his car . . . it was found in a ravine."

I can't think. At least I don't want to think. I don't want to take in the words he said. I don't want to connect the dots.

"Preeminence?"

"Send me your exact location. I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Of course, Preeminence."

I end the call and let my hand holding my phone fall limp in my lap.

"Who was that?" Brydan comes around the couch.

"A Veil." Before I left the Society, I called Brydan to tell him I was coming to Baltimore. I told him Erik left again, that things were now a mess, and I left it at that, thinking it would be easier to tell the story once the emotions weren't raw, to tell him in person that someone did live past their Expiration Date, but with the realization of what the Veil said means, the feelings are still just as raw, and how can I explain that Iris lived past her Expiration Date when she could now very well be dead?

There wasn't a body though. And Erik can't be dead.

Still, maybe her body was swept away, and it only hasn't been found yet.

Isn't it odd how we distance the person from the body when they pass away? It's not she was swept away, it's her body, and it's not she hasn't been found, but rather it hasn't been found. Maybe it's easier that way. Maybe it's easier to bury a body that's detached from being a person you cared for.

But Erik . . .

I turn my phone over and over in my hands. "That girl who Erik brought here—"

"Iris."

"She wasn't normal. She . . . lived past her Expiration Date. Colton found out and told my whole family. Erik threatened to expose us if we didn't let the two of them go." My throat tightens painfully. "They found his car in a ravine."

Brydan starts firing off a barrage of questions, and while I answer them and he asks more, I arrange our flight to Tennessee. I find myself telling him all about her. How she was always ready with a smart comment. She didn't let me being the Preeminence stop her from giving me a hard time, even when it would have stopped most everyone else. I describe the way her eyes would fill with wonder when she discovered another beautiful part of my home. I try to explain what it made me feel to have her look at me as Jonas, not the Preeminence. I tell him all of that and so much more. Even if it hurts, I keep going. If I keep talking about her, she can't be dead.

But a king of death should know that's not so.


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