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TECHNICALLY LENORE AND VALERIE HAD NOT LIED TO Milo when they had told him they were going out of town.
When he'd asked where they were going specifically, however, Valerie had panicked and told him they were visiting a client Bridgeport.
They aren't.
Valerie is a lot if things; an aura reader, a high school drop-out, an aspiring tattoo artist; but she does not consider herself a liar.
Yet here she is, keeping secrets from her own brother with her only comfort being that her mother had been complicit in her lie. Lenore had neither confirmed nor denied Valerie's fabricated story, and Valerie knew that that decision had been difficult for her stomach, too.
"When are we going to tell him?" Valerie asks aloud, tapping at the surface of the river's water and watching as the ripples scatter away from her hand.
Lenore doesn't respond immediately, undoubtedly processing the best way to answer this question in her mind before she speaks.
Eventually, she says, "It depends what we find, if anything."
Valerie tells herself she can't be annoyed by this answer because she knows that it's true. She says nothing as she rises and steps away from the river, wiping her damp fingertips on her jeans.
It's late in the evening, the time of day when shadows stretch before they disappear and creatures partial to the night start to make a fuss. It's quiet, the loudest sounds being the wind whispering secrets to the leaves and the unrelenting murmur of the river.
Valerie wishes she could say the scene is lovely, but no one calls a graveyard lovely.
This is where they had seen Cas Sinclair's death.
Things have been getting worse since Milo's reading. Worse isn't quite the right word though, Valerie thinks. Worse doesn't describe the twisted reality of cutting your brother's friend free from a tangle of voracious and thorned plants with a mind of their own. Worse doesn't describe the unfathomable truth that a teenage boy with his whole life ahead of him might not live to see the end of the year.
Worse doesn't describe the soul-sucking feeling of knowing that your brother might be somehow responsible for all of the above.
This is why we're here, Valerie reminds herself. They need to know why. Why is this happening? Why now?
Why Milo?
Why Cas?
"Did you bring the flask?"
Valerie stares blankly at Lenore for a moment before the question registers.
"Oh, yeah. I did." Valerie reaches into the tote bag slung over her shoulder and retrieves a purple flask painted with flowers. She unscrews the top and sniffs the liquid inside, but instantly regrets it.
