She had good days, where she was just high enough to be happy, not too blitzed to be useless. Those were the days when we folded. It was the only creative thing she knew how to do, maybe because it didn’t require a lot of clearheaded thinking once you knew the steps, and she knew them by heart.

On the rarest days, I had both parents. Dad used to take me fishing on Little Hood Creek, and Mom would curl up on the bank, a book in her hand, big, round sunglasses hiding her eyes. When she was baked from the sun, she’d toss the book, dip her feet in the water, and point out the minnows darting between her legs.

It was all so goddamn good.

And so goddamn breakable.

The good days burned into bad nights, and the bad nights bled into bad weeks. Eventually Mom left, and Dad started drinking more, and every day was a bad day until I forgot what it was like to have a good one.

The first time Dad hit me, I was eight. He was drunk on cheap tequila and harassed by old demons. I’d broken a window hitting a ball around the yard. It was the only time he ever apologized for hitting me. And it was the only time I believed he wouldn’t do it again.

After a while, when I got bigger, I started fighting back. Sometimes I was as drunk as him. Two dark-haired guys, haunted and sneering, stumbling around with fists flailing. We must have looked like a joke.

The last night I saw him, he beat me so bad I couldn’t walk. I hid in my room for three days, only coming out when he was in town at the bar or bumbling his way through his job at a factory.

On the fourth night, after he passed out, I stole his car keys off the kitchen counter and a six-pack of beer out of the fridge, and crept outside in the dark.

I never looked back.

But now, for some fucked-up reason, I was looking back. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. And about me. And about whether or not I was just like him.

And sometimes, when I killed someone with my own hands, I worried I was worse than him. Far as I knew, he’d never murdered anyone. But me, I’d killed so many times I couldn’t count the bodies.

Maybe that’s what was driving me to dig up the past now, to find out the details of the mission I’d been on when I’d met that girl.

I took another hit off the cigarette and ground it out beneath my boot.

If I found out I’d killed that girl—well, then maybe I’d finally accept my fate. Embrace the cursed blood in my veins.

But if she was still alive…

Maybe there was redemption for me after all.

4

NICK

I SOMEHOW MANAGED TO SLEEP A FEW more hours, and when I got up, Cas was staring at me from across the room.

I scrubbed at my eyes, trying to scrub away the dregs of last night. I had a headache so fucking huge, it felt like my eyeballs were trying to pop out of their sockets. “What the hell are you looking at?”

“You were growling in your sleep,” he answered.

“Bullshit.”

“I thought you were turning into a werewolf. ’Course, at least as a dog, you’d be easier to house-train.”

I grabbed an empty beer bottle from the dresser and lobbed it at him. He deftly plucked it from the air and grinned. He was always so disgustingly pleased with himself.

“I’m so badass.”

I ignored him as I made my way for the door.

“Put some clothes on!” he yelled. “Anna doesn’t want to be assaulted by your junk.”

I looked down at my boxers and turned back around, throwing on some pants before I headed downstairs. Anna and Sam were already up, dressed in their running clothes.

“You guys heading out, or just coming back?” I asked.

“Heading out,” Sam said. “You want to come?”

One thing that helped clear my head was running.

“Give me five minutes?” I asked, and Sam nodded.

Exactly six minutes later, we were facing the woods behind our house. I’d thrown on a T-shirt and baggy sweatpants, along with my running shoes. I preferred training with as many disadvantages as I could come up with, so I always overdressed, and rarely wore sunglasses. The clothes were easy to run in, but in less than a quarter of a mile, I was sweating buckets. The day had promised to be a hot one, and zero cloud cover made the sun merciless. The more scenarios I was prepared for, the better.

When we rented this house in the woods, we’d gone out and mapped a running route that took us through dense forest for over seven miles. It was uneven terrain, the path barely worn enough to give us clear access to the forest. Every few feet, branches were clawing at my face and threatening to blast out an eye. Anna, the shortest out of all of us, had it easier. She raced through the forest like a ghost.

We came back to the house somewhere around ten AM. Anna called the shower first, so Sam and I hung out in the backyard to spar. We’d tossed our soaked T-shirts onto the porch to make it harder for either of us to get a grip on the other.

Sam swung with a left hook that I dodged easily enough. I caught him with a right to the ribs, and he hunched over, blowing out a breath.

“Fuck,” he muttered, holding his side.

As much as I liked Anna, I liked Sam better without her. For one, he cursed more. And two, he was a lot more vicious.

“Come on, pretty boy,” I said. “Is that all you got?”

He straightened and smiled, but his eyes were burning with a promise to do me bodily harm. I’d like to see him try. He was a better technical fighter, but I was more explosive, even hungover. When I hit, I hit hard, and although Sam hid it well, I could tell he was hurting.