He nodded in agreement, knowing he’d caved for Todd probably more than he’d ever caved for Lyri. “It’s ridiculous, though, and no one needs to be giving you guys your way this much.”
“You’re right,” she pouted, a wicked glint in her eyes. “They need to be doing it more.”
“Then maybe talking to them would help?” he suggested, shrugging as she changed the subject. “Probably not. I haven’t lived around here long.” She might. She was certainly young enough to have been one of his students. But he’d only been here for a year now, so she would have to be from somewhere else.
She shrugged in turn. She had talked about it quite a lot with her dads, after all, they both knew what she was going through from first hand experience. “Not from here. I’m from North Dakota originally. Only been here a couple of years myself.”
“It wasn’t but she didn’t want to lie to me about it.” He answered, surveying his surroundings to see if he could get his bearings from his memory of what his sister had told him.
There was another factor he neglected to mention, from before he’d been taken in by the family and realigned his loyalties, but it wasn’t something he wanted to acknowledge to himself, let alone out loud. It gave him enough certainty that he could locate where his father was allegedly imprisoned though.
“That tends to happen when a person cares and wants to be in your life.” And Manson was definitely the sort of person to cling to that ideal when it came to those she cared about in some manner or another.
Epiales waited, watching Jack closely. He had more of an idea on where to go and it wouldn’t do them any good to rush into this place.
“Neither do I, but I might have a rough idea at least.” Jack murmured, taking a moment to adjust to the sensation of the change of location and how the atmosphere in general varied noticeably from the mortal realm.
“Manson described the place to me.”
“Your sister has nightmares about this place so that could not have been an easy topic for her.” It wasn’t an easy place for most people to set foot in and it was making his skin crawl just to be there.
With a sigh, he gave Jack a slight nudge as he hit the lights. He had no idea where they were going once they got there, but the sudden chill was enough to make him regret this instantly. “I do not know exactly where he is kept here.”
“I don’t think she’d agree to it. Not right now, anyway. But it can’t wait, especially if he has gotten out. It’s better for everyone’s sake if I do it as soon as possible.”
“I have no connection with the dead so I will not be of any use if the Wraiths come near you. Do you understand the risk in that?”
“Maybe so, but I need to go down there. I need to see for myself. I can’t get better if I don’t have proof that it’s really all in my head, right? Please. I need to do this.”
“It might be wiser to ask Avalon to take you down there. She knows that part of the underworld far better than I ever intend to.”
“So nobody else has checked on him in years? Which means one of two really shitty possibilities, doesn’t it? Either he’s still down there and I’m just losing my fucking mind, or he’s found a way to get out and now he’s back and trying to fuck with me for whatever sick little plot for revenge he’s cooked up.”
“No one has had reason to. There is no one with anything to gain by letting him loose and it requires someone to take his place in chains to be set out. It could be as simple as your medications needing tuned due to your body growing an immunity to them. That does happen.”
“Tha’s far… c’n all humans ge’ these guns? My owner’s go’a know ‘bout it, bu’ he said ‘unters weren’ a problem for us. Nothin’ ‘bout 2 mile long shots.”
“Handguns top out just over 6,600 feet but hunting rifles can range up to 3 miles at sea level.” She snorted at that. “My daddy said the same thing when I was a kid and now I’m the only livin’ member of my family.”
ofviolentdeath 