The Institute was supposed to be dead.
Knowing that, believing that, had been the only thing that had let her even begin to move on after all the pain and suffering, after everything she’d been through both before her escape and after—especiallyafter they failed in their last attempt to rescue her friends, to save the people she’d left behind.
They’d failed and her friends were gone. It had taken years to accept it, years to come to terms with that being reality. But at least the Institute was gone—at least it wasn’t in a position to hurt anyone ever again.
All signs pointed to that, anyway, and her guardian turned surrogate brother hadn’t found anything to the contrary, not even a whisper, in years. It had been reassuring enough for her to let herself mourn, to try to come to terms with the magnitude of what she’d lost.
It had let her begin to forgive herself for failing them.
Ky Thatcher’s hands shook as she slowly unwrapped the cellophane wrapper from the deck of tarot cards. I can’t believe she bought them. I can’t believe I’m doing this. All they’ll do is remind me. But that’s not bad, is it? It can’t be that bad. Her fingers fought with the flap on the cardboard box that separated her from the cards themselves. The find had been coincidental, to say the least. A trip to the bookstore at the mall with her roommates weeks ago was what had set it all in motion. She hadn’t known that Reece would go back and buy the deck for her, that Marie and Ian would buy the wooden box they’d tucked the deck into, the cloth they’d wrapped it in before they’d given it to her. Happy twenty-first, Ky. Much better than a bottle of fireball and bad karaoke, right?
Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. She couldn’t see the future.
No. That had been his gift, not hers.
For a few seconds, she squeezed her eyes shut, fingers going still as the flap popped free of the box. A lump rose in her throat, one she struggled to fight down.
Yes, they were gone. But that didn’t mean she loved them any less—and him, most of all.
Breathe. Just breathe.
What hurt the most of all was that it war starting to be hard to remember his smile and the sound of his voice, his laugh. It was hard to remember what the touch of his fingers felt like, what it was like to hug him. Those were the things she didn’t want to ever lose, but the memory was fading, disintegrating like old photographs.
Six years since she’d seen him. Four years since she’d failed and the Institute had destroyed itself to protect its secrets. The ache was still there but the pain wasn’t raw anymore.
Time did heal, or perhaps the wound just scarred over enough to be bearable. She still wasn’t quite sure.
She slid the cards out of the box, unwrapping another layer of cellophane that kept them bound into a pack. It crumpled in her fist, crackling and unfolding as she tossed it onto the edge of her desk. The cards themselves were cool in her fingers, sliding against each other easily as she fanned them, stacked them, began to shuffle. They were crisp, new, not tattered around the edges and worn by years of use like his had been The edges of the cards were still clean, still white, where his had been grayed by years of brushing against his fingers.
It wasn’t the same, but it was close enough.
On the third shuffle, she bobbled the deck. A pair of cards slipped free, landing on the floor near her foot. She stacked the rest of the deck and set it beside her on the bed, then leaned down to retrieve the fallen cards.
Knight of Swords. Queen of Swords.
Tears gathered in her eyes as she stared at the pair of cards in her hand, the lump in her throat rising higher.
Hadrian.
His card. Hers.
It isn’t supposed to be this hard.
For a second, she could remember sitting together in the dim of his room, her shoulder and his pressed into each other, his tattered, well-loved deck in his lap, cards spread before them. She could hear his voice quietly explaining what it all meant, though she couldn’t remember the words. They’d been so young. They’d chosen to dare.
It had cost them almost everything.
“Ky? You okay?”
She startled at the sound of Reece’s voice, blinking furiously as she looked up from the cards. “Yeah,” she said quickly, scrubbing at her eyes. “Yeah, I’m fine. What’s up?”
“Matthew’s here,” her roommate said, studying her with a look so filled with concern that Ky knew that her friend had seen a look on her face that worried her more than just a little. “Are you still up for dinner? If you’re not, I’ll make up some kind of excuse.”
“No, no,” she said, sliding the pair of cards back into the deck and standing up. “I’m still up for dinner. Tell him I’ll be down in a minute.”
“Okay.” Reece hesitated for a few seconds, studying her for a moment longer. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” Ky said, tucking the cards into the wooden box. She wrapped it in the cloth, then tucked it into one corner of her bed, between her pillow and the wall. “Yeah, everything’s good. I was just—just thinking about something.”
Reece nodded, leaning in the doorway. “About before?”
“Yeah.” Her friends knew a little about her past, about the time before she’d met them as freshman. Not many people had managed to crack into her shell and none of the people she’d grown close to since her escape from the Institute knew the whole of what she’d been through—not even Matthew Thatcher, who’d taken her in, treated her like family, made her family, but he knew more than anyone else.
Some things were just too much to share—some things were too terrifying to share, even if the Institute was dead and couldn’t hurt anyone else. The fear was still there, the tiny voice at the back of her mind whispering what if you’re wrong?
It was too much of a risk to take with anyone who didn’t already know something and her roommates had no idea—of that much, she was certain.
“I know that you don’t like to talk about it, but you know that if you ever need to—”
Ky smiled, nodding. “Yeah. I know, Reece. And I appreciate it more than you know.” She scrubbed the last of the tears from her eyes. “Presentable?”
“He’ll be clueless,” her friend confirmed. “You going to be out late?”
“Probably not that late,” she said. “It’s just dinner. Probably home before dark.”
Reece nodded. “Okay. See you when you get home?”
“Yeah,” Ky said, smiling. “And—and I’ll explain when I get home.”
“About why you were crying over some tarot cards?”
Ky nodded. “Yeah.” And probably more than that, too, truth be known. It’s time.
The Institute was dead. The people she’d lost were beyond their ability to hurt anymore. But keeping the memory of them to herself wasn’t fair—not to her or to them. The friends she had now deserved to know about the friends she’d had then—and the friends she had then deserved to have her memory of them, her love for them shared.
It was time. Past time, really.
The past was gone. It was time to keep moving on.
♠ ♠ ♠
“I guess I never realized that something like that would mean that much to you,” Matthew said, leaning back in his chair and watching her as she picked at the steak left on her plate. “That it would conjure up something like that.”
“It’s not just that,” Ky said quietly, setting down her fork and reaching for her drink—sangria, his suggestion based on assumptions of her levels of experience with alcohol. She didn’t mind the assumption. It was sweet and cold and her head would still be relatively clear by the time she got home even after a second glass. “I’ve just been thinking a lot about them lately, that’s all.”
The FBI agent’s brow lifted slightly as he studied her across the table, fingers drumming lightly against his glass of Coke. “In a good way or a bad way?”
“Mostly good. I just—I miss them. I keep thinking about what they might want for me knowing that they’re—that they’re gone. I’ve finally realized that you’re right and they wouldn’t hate me for surviving.”
“The way you talk about them, I don’t think any of them ever could,” he said, glancing away for a few seconds. She didn’t miss the hitch in his voice, though.
After all, one of the people they were talking about was his little brother, and if the original plan had been successful, T.S. would have been sitting next to them at this very table.
But nothing had gone according to plan that night. It had all come apart, and now she was the only one left.
Ky took a long swallow from her glass. Steady. “I’m going to tell their story, Matthew. The whole thing.”
He’d picked up his glass to take a sip and nearly dropped it, eyes widening. “What?”
“You heard me. I don’t exactly know how yet but I’m going to tell their story. Our story. All of it.”
“All of it,” he repeated, still staring at her.
“Yes. It’s not fair to—”
His phone rang and he cursed under his breath, holding up a hand as he dug for his cell. “Hold that.”
“Uh-huh.” A wry smile twisted her lips and she rested her chin on her palm, watching him as he frowned at his phone. Either I’m saved from having to explain my logic, or he’s just going to be even more disturbed when I launch into it.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, rising and starting away as he answered his phone. Her gaze followed him as he stepped out onto the restaurant’s sparsely populated patio, dodging a waitress on the way.
Well. It’s either work related or it’s not. If it is, I’ll either have to catch the bus back or have him drop me on the way to wherever he needs to go. It was after his usual hours and he hadn’t mentioned working anything critical—usually he’d tell her if he was working on something, even if he didn’t tell her what it was—so if it was something work related, it wasn’t something that could wait.
And if it wasn’t work related, then who was calling? Matthew didn’t have much of a social life to speak of by design, few close friends and very little family beyond her as his all but adopted sister—though on paper, she was his cousin, since circumstances had precluded him from passing her off as his actual sister.
Must be something work, then. A new case? Some kind of emergency with an old case? The idea of the latter sent a chill skittering down her spine. Matthew specialized in working with the victims of cults and similar groups—and taking down said cults and groups where he could. He’d had some success in the past but the most important one to him—the Institute—had been the one to escape him thanks to what had happened four years before in Illinois.
They’d taken his parents, his brother, and then denied him the chance to bring them down. If anyone hurt as much over it all, it was him.
There hadn’t been any cases relating to cults lately, though, at least not that she knew of or that he’d mentioned. Sometimes she helped him talk to the victims as someone who could understand where they were coming from in ways he never could. It didn’t happen often, but she’d done it a few times over the last few years since she’d started college. That she’d probably join the Bureau after graduation was something that had gone almost unspoken between them, though she knew that he’d never force her into any choice in the matter. The Institute had been their case together, though, even though she’d really been too young for it.
But T.S. had been younger when he’d inserted himself into it, probably foolishly, before anyone could talk sense into either brother in those dark months and years after their parents had been murdered while working on a case.
Ky idly sipped her drink, fingers drumming quietly against the table as she watched Matthew pace beyond the windows, watched the expression on his face shift and change the longer he was on the phone. Her heart began to sink.
Definitely work. I know that look. But what case? Or is it something new? She gnawed at her lower lip and glanced at her phone. Nearly seven. Whatever this was, it was urgent enough to call him two hours after he was allegedly off the clock for the night. Of course, in his line of work, he was rarely completely off the clock. It was something she’d realized a long time ago when he’d first taken her in after she’d escaped the Institute—but lost his brother in the process.
Outside, Matthew hung up his phone and headed for the door to come back inside. Ky turned back to her plate, her drink. She took a sip of the sangria, staring at the remnants of her steak and sides, realizing that her appetite was long gone.
I hope he’s okay.
The way he dropped back into his chair told her that Matthew was not, in fact, okay. He took a long swallow from his glass and stared at her for a few seconds before he found his voice. “Was my friend Damon. You remember him?”
“Vaguely,” she said. “The one that runs that clinic downtown, right?”
Matthew nodded. “He needs me to come down. His cousin got mixed up in something.”
“What kind of something?” she asked, swallowing the bile that crept higher and higher in her throat. “Like something you work on, that kind of something.”
“Yeah,” he said, the word coming out heavy. “That kind of something.”
Ky nodded. “Do you need me to grab the bus home?”
“No,” he said. “No, I—are you up to coming with me?”
“It’s that kind of something.”
“Sounded like. Not her, not really, but the person she brought with her, yeah. Damon’s spooked and worried that they’re in danger or worse. You know I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t—”
“—if you didn’t think you’d need me.” Ky drained the last of her glass. “Let’s get the bill and go, then. Sounds like this can’t wait.”
“Are you sure?”
“Everyone keeps asking me that today,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Yes. I’m sure. But we’d better get going before I change my mind. Hell of a way to spend the day after your birthday, isn’t it?”
Matthew snorted a laugh and went to find their waitress about the bill.
