Return to the Darkness - Ripley Proserpina Page 0,27
a hand to him. “I’m alive. Touch me.”
His pupils were blown wide open as his eyes tracked from my hand back to my face. “Pass.”
“Oliver.” I stomped to him and smacked his chest. “Jesus Christ. I’m alive. Get your shit together.” I peered closer into his eyes. “And don’t tell me you haven’t taken anything. You’re clearly wasted.” He’d been smoking dope. Or he was coming off a bender.
“For your information, I work a night shift at the meat packing plant. So fuck off.”
Had he seriously just told me that? I lifted my eyebrows, and he had the good sense to drop his gaze. “I need your help.”
Placing his hands on his hips, he let his head fall back and let out a breath. “I can’t even fucking help myself, Lacey.”
Who was this defeated Oliver? It broke my heart to see him like this. “Oliver. I came here after trying to save your dad. He had some kind of—I don’t know—mid-life crisis and awoke Erdirg from the sleep I put him in. When he did that, he fucked with time. Everything I know to be true—it’s messed up.”
“What.” He stared at me, his gaze hard.
“Was that a question?” I asked. This Oliver was really hard to read. All he did was sort of stand there, stare, and brood.
“What’s messed up?” he asked.
I swallowed. “Well, I haven’t read a newspaper or gone to a library, so I don’t know if big things have changed or just everything around my life. But in my life, you are not this person, for example. You are not working nights and you haven’t been to jail. You’re not stoned.” I hadn’t bought his explanation about not being high, not for a second. “Or inked up.” Although that was kind of sexy, and if my version of Oliver wanted a few tats I’d encourage that. “The town isn’t a shit hole. Aaron isn’t living in this apartment. He doesn’t smoke.” I shot him a look. “And he’s a little OCD when it comes to cleaning.”
Oliver visibly swallowed. “What am I doing?”
“You own a veterinary practice. Co-own. With two other people. But these days you’ve been helping me. It’s a very long story.”
Blinking rapidly, Oliver paced to the window. “No. No. No. No.” It occurred to me for half a second that he might try to throw himself out of it. Aaron must have had the same thought because he grabbed his brother’s arm.
“Come sit down.” He motioned toward the couch for his brother. “It’s a lot to take in. She says she needs our help.”
Oliver put his head in his hands so that when he spoke, it was muffled. “For what?”
“Well, I want to go back and undo what he fucked up. I want to put things back the way they were.”
Aaron winced. “Essentially eliminating us. That’s what you’re saying.”
“No, not eliminating you. You’ll still be around. You’ll just be writing and published. Look, I get it. This is all very sci-fi, and that’s not my favorite genre. But I’ll admit it. I’m selfish. I want my life back. Who knows what happens? Maybe there’ll be two separate timelines. You can keep going. Just put me back in mine. Help me do that, guys.”
Oliver snorted. “And suddenly she goes Marvel.”
I didn’t know what that meant. “I have these stones. We can use them. I just don’t know how.” I reached into my pocket where I had put them, only they weren’t there. What the hell? I patted all over my body. “Oh shit.”
Oliver dropped his hands from his face. “Missing something?”
“Yes, the rocks. Sorry, stones, that your dad used. I had them. He was with me and then he vanished into dust. But I had the stones. And I didn’t think to check to see if they disappeared, too. I don’t understand. Why would they do that?”
Aaron sat down next to Oliver. “I don’t understand any of this, but then again I’m not very bright and I didn’t do well in school.”
It was like taking a bullet. He wasn’t very bright? He hadn’t done well in school? No, Aaron! I wanted to shout, but didn’t because some things just weren’t useful. Ranting at him was one of those things. In this world, maybe he really thought that about himself.
Oliver’s hands shook. He hardly seemed to notice. “Our dad vanished? Like poof?”
“Right. He didn’t even seem surprised.”
“Motherfucker.” With a hard kick, he turned over Aaron’s coffee table, then stomped on it, breaking it into pieces. Over and