The Stars Over Bittergate Bay

Chapter 40

40

J onas’s chest felt empty. Heartbreak shouldn’t have been so foreign to him. It was simple: Sidney loved him, and Jonas had betrayed him by lying about who he was. And Sidney had lied about loving Jonas; if he’d really been that quick to climb onto some other man’s lap, he must have been lying.

Or he was lashing out. Hurt changed people, Jonas knew. After Edmund, Jonas had withered. He had become someone wholly different from who he was before, doing things he hated just to feel disgust. Locking himself away to revel in the loneliness. The thought of Sidney scrambling to feel something other than Jonas’s betrayal shouldn’t have been so repugnant to him. Shouldn’t have made him so feral and furious. But that wasn’t real disgust. It was jealousy. And grief.

Jonas had loved Sidney. And he’d been stupid not to act like it.

He gripped the steering wheel tight and tried to focus on the road and not the throbbing ache in his chest.

The sign for The Silver Platter was a slash of red in the sky. A motorcycle was stopped in the turn-in for the diner, its front tire half in the roadway. The back tire was flat. A driver stood beside the bike, waving for help.

Jonas pulled onto the side of the road, and took a deep breath, grateful, almost for another person’s problem to occupy his time. He put on his flashers. He might still have that tire repair kit in the glove box.

No. He’d used it, or removed it, but he’d already stopped, and the motorcycle driver had taken off his helmet. Dom was recognizable by the long hair that spilled down from a loose topknot on his head.

“Are you alright?” Jonas asked, climbing out of his truck. Dom stared at him, brow furrowed, head cocked ever so slightly to the side, eyes widening slowly. It was sort of a strange expression, like Dom didn’t recognize him. And then Dom took a step back.

The glow of the restaurant’s sign reflected on Jonas’s orange skin, as he raised a hand in greeting, and he stopped mid-step. He hadn’t put on a glamour.

Jonas’s mouth dropped open, but no explanation came out. I’ve been lying to you for years. I’m not at all who I say I am. That would be fine. The perfect end to his day.

“Jonas?” Dom asked.

“Yes,” Jonas said, lowering his hand. He wavered by the hood of his truck. Don’t scare him. “Are you alright?”

Silence settled in the air between them, tense for a long moment. Dom exhaled slowly, gathering up his hair in his hands. He looked at the bike, re-tying the bun at the crown of his head. When his hands dropped, he looked back at Jonas.

“I’m alright.” Dom sighed. “You couldn’t give me a lift, could you?”

“Of course,” Jonas stammered. He hadn’t thought… But then, needs must, he supposed. Something about the devil you knew, perhaps? Jonas rolled his eyes at himself. Dom took a step back and looked at his rear tire, with an exasperated grimace.

“Are you sure you don’t mind? I don’t live far. But it’ll take a minute if I have to lug this thing.” He pointed up at the sky, where clouds were beginning to roll in from the south. “Looks like rain.”

“I’m happy to.” Mostly it was a relief that Dom wasn’t running away screaming; Jonas didn’t think his ego could take it. He took a step forward, fully anticipating that in better light, closer, Dom would flinch. Or he’d do the other thing humans did: start probing. General questions about magic would morph into ‘what can you do?’ and that was a short jump away from ‘what can you do for me?’

But Dom didn’t say much, aside from what basic communication was needed for the two of them to maneuver the unwieldy motorcycle into the bed of Jonas’s truck. Jonas was back behind the wheel and Dom was tugging on his seatbelt when he asked his first question.

“So you’re a demon?” Succinct and to the point. Jonas nodded. Then realized Dom was still buckling his seatbelt and hadn’t looked up.

“I am.”

“I guess I should have figured, since you live right next to Elmmond House.” Jonas adjusted his grip on the steering wheel.

“Where do you live?”

“Through two lights. The next street after, take a right.” Jonas nodded and pulled off the shoulder.

They made it to the first cross street, pulling up slow. The signal flicked from yellow to red.

“Sidney said you don’t go anymore. To the party at Elmmond House.”

Sidney had been talking about him to Dom. Affection fluttered in Jonas’s chest. He ignored it.

“I don’t,” Jonas said. “Do you?” Lots of the locals attended, but Dom shook his head.

“No. We were always— Hector always told me and Ares to steer clear.” Jonas nodded. Hector had always seemed like a practical man. “What goes on there? I mean. Not like—” Dom glanced over at Jonas, and the light turned green. Jonas looked back at the road. “The people who go missing. What happens to them?”

“That depends.” Jonas knew what Dom was talking about. He’d seen the missing signs that popped up in the post office every November. “When planets align the right way, portals open up at Elmmond House. Portals to other worlds, other dimensions. People go through. Some don’t come back.”

“They’re trapped?”

“No.” Jonas shook his head. “Not trapped. They could come back, they just don’t. I don’t know anything about growing up mundane, since I didn’t, I mean,” he gestured to his horns. “But I imagine a world full of magic and sorcerers and faeries has quite the appeal when you’re not born into it.”

Dom frowned as they pulled up to the second light. Jonas turned on the windshield wipers, as droplets splattered on the glass.

“Why do you live here?” Dom asked. Jonas chuckled. It was stupid how easy this conversation was. How it was the exact conversation he should have had with Sidney. It made the words bitter on his tongue.

“I don’t have much magical ability anymore. Just enough for a glamour.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Did it? It used to, in Jonas’s mind. But now he wasn’t so sure. “They won’t let you come back? Since you don’t have magic?”

“No, I could.” Maybe he should. Would that be any better? Or differently worse? “I like it here,” he admitted. “It’s quieter.” The light changed and he pulled forward. When they came to the next intersection, Jonas took the right.

Guillemot Street was mostly dark. A row of two-level clapboard houses sat back from the sidewalk behind a variety of different styles of fence. Jonas slowed the truck. Dom was still frowning, his gaze distant.

“Here?” Jonas asked. Dom startled.

“Sorry. Three down. 701. You can pull into the alley and I’ll get the bike out.”

701 was a little narrower than the other houses on the block, and seemed to have two front doors.

“Is it an apartment?” Jonas asked as he turned onto the gravel backstreet.

“A duplex. I rent out the top floor sometimes. Not at the moment.”

Jonas glanced over at Dom, watching his mouth open and then close. He’d swallow his question and then try again. Jonas was so used to Sidney’s rolling stream of questions, he’d forgotten that it wasn’t so easy for everyone. By the time they parked at the shed around the back of the house, Dom had started and stopped himself at least three times.

Jonas genuinely felt bad for him. He’d recently experienced the frustrating inadequacy of words. Maybe Sidney prompting Jonas to tell the truth would have helped.

“What do you want to know?”

“My brother lived on the top floor.” Dom gestured to the house. The dark windows. “He went to that party ten years ago and… We looked everywhere. Questioned everyone, and I can’t believe he wouldn’t come back if he could.” And that was not at all what Jonas had been expecting. A totally different sort of heartbreak.

“Maybe he can’t come back,” Jonas offered. “Depending on what he sacrificed to get into the other realms, it’s possible.”

“How do I figure it out?” Dom’s eyes were fiery, his tone fierce.

“I mean, ten years,” Jonas managed as delicately as he could. “Most binding contracts don’t last that long. It takes a lot of magic to hold things together. And, well?—”

“What?” Dom demanded. Jonas hated being the bearer of bad news.

“Even if something kept him in another realm, he would have been able to contact you.” Dom’ s mouth drew into a thin line as he turned to look out the window.

“Right.”

“I don’t mean—” Jonas tried, but Dom cut him off.

“He wouldn’t just leave.” Dom’s conviction was so firm, Jonas could have built a house on top of it. From the sound of things, Dom already had. “He wouldn’t do that to me.”

But people, Jonas had learned, were capable of all kinds of things Jonas never would have believed. Jonas thought that Sidney never would have ignored him when he walked into the conservatory. Sidney would have stormed out, maybe. Or told Jonas to get fucked, very possibly. But Sidney wasn’t vindictive. Or Jonas hadn’t thought that he was.

“People can surprise you.” Jonas offered. Dom glared at him.

“I know my brother,” he snapped. Did Jonas know Sidney?

He thought he had. And now that he was letting himself dwell on it, Sidney’s behavior seemed even more strange. Something wasn’t right.

Jonas stared at the back of Dom’s house, as he let his thoughts congeal.

“Creatures can take advantage of humans. That happens, sometimes.” Dom narrowed his eyes, as Jonas began to piece things together aloud. “There are contracts and then there are enchantments. People can get tricked into things. Eating, drinking…” Prolonged physical contact. That demon had been all over Sidney.

“How would we know? Is there any way we could find out?”

“I can ask,” Jonas said, thinking only that he needed to get back to Elmmond House. To Sidney. He needed to talk to him. To make sure he was alright.

“Would you?”

“Of course,” Jonas agreed, without thinking about it. “I’ll go now.”