Prodigal Son (Orphan X #6) - Gregg Andrew Hurwitz Page 0,48
to knock on the hotel wall to beckon his sister in the connecting room.
No oxygen in his lungs.
Muscles strained to the breaking point.
A graininess in the dead-of-night air, pixelated with hyperclarity.
Eyes bulging to pop.
Sheets already kicked down, briefs clinging to him, air hot-cold on his bare chest.
He felt the vein squiggling across the front of his neck surge with his heartbeat—still alive, still alive—and the heat of his face purpling.
He strained and strained but couldn’t produce a twitch of a single muscle.
Like being buried alive inside his own body.
And then it began.
Someone scraping on the locked door.
It bulged inward like rubber, fingernails splintering through, lifting the paint.
The door opened, hinges moaning.
She was there as always, framed in the doorway. Those long nails silhouetted at her sides, manicured to bitter-housewife perfection.
Still couldn’t move.
But blood was shoving through his veins—still alive, still alive.
Not real. Not. Real.
Now she was over the bed, looking down at him. She didn’t move, just teleported here when he blinked.
A pure-black cutout. A-line dress and hair done up in a bob, even her curves somehow anachronistic. She reached out, fingers splayed. Didn’t even have to touch him. She just mimed the clawing.
Gouges rose on his arms, his neck.
No air. Lungs nothing more than deflated bags. Muscles knotted, the arches of his feet crocheted into stitches.
Her head cocked, that neat bob bobbing, the Virginia Slims–sanded voice, deep and sexy and rageful: Not going to raise you to be like him.
Cigarette burns sizzled to life on the insides of his thighs.
Running around to prove he’s still a man, and all I get left over is that little-boy temper.
She leaned closer yet, those womanly cheekbones, eyes glowing white as bone.
No matter how spotless a house I keep.
Fingernail scrapes flared to life on his chest—
No money, two kids underfoot, and still looking like I do.
—drifting down the hollow of his sucked-tight belly, lower, lower, lower—
Teach you what he won’t learn.
At last breath came in a screech.
“Queenie!”
Declan choked out the word and then curled up, fetal and shuddering.
He heard his big sister’s feet hitting the carpet one room over, the connecting door flying open, the heel of her hand striking the light switch.
And then he was back in the world, unclouded, the apparition gone. Panic sweat cooled across his ribs.
Queenie was on the bed, cradling him, his head limp in her lap. She wore a red silk chemise, and his cheek was against her bare thigh, her breasts pressed to the top of his head, but it wasn’t fucked up and weird, it was just comforting, and she was rocking him, rocking him, her lips pursed as she shushed him like shushing a child.
They were Irish twins, Declan born eleven months after her, and sometimes it seemed they could communicate telepathically.
Like now: I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.
The warmth of her flesh, like his own. The sway of her arms.
Breathing. Oxygen catching up to his head, his bloodstream. Transforming him from child to adult.
He kick-shoved himself so he was leaning against the upholstered headboard. She moved to sit at his side, both of them staring straight ahead. Her fingertips gently traced up and down the underside of his arm, calming him.
The Four Seasons on Doheny was one of his favorites, with its plush furnishings and Beverly Hills–obsequious service. He stared at the fringed throw pillows, the textured cream walls, the plush bath sheets visible on the warming rack through the bathroom door and let the luxury soothe him. Let it seep into his bones and warm him back to life.
He could taste his breath, sleep-stale and hot. His inhalations still came in jerks. He willed them to slow, to steady out, and finally they did.
They sat in silence, breathing.
After a time Queenie said, “Mom?”
He nodded.
“You caught all of that,” she said softly. “And I caught none.”
“Thank God for that.” Sweat beaded on his chest. He smeared it across his slick skin. “She wanted to make me different than him. And she did. Can’t take the blessing without the curse, right?”
Queenie nodded. She smelled like sugar, a candied overlay to her nightly lip gloss. “Mom did adore me.”
Declan said, “Dad, too, when we saw him.”
“But Mom, she really tucked me under her wing. Flesh of her flesh. Shaped me right down to the thoughts in my head. She’s still in there.” Queenie rolled her lips. “Sometimes the blessing is the curse.”
She was right. There was no way to get through a household like theirs without damage. Pick your poison. Pick your medicine. And bury