She didn’t even know he had died.
Mikel punched the button to open the elevator doors and waved her in before him. “Sometimes it slips out and I can’t help it,” he explained.
“Are you okay?” she asked, trying to ignore the apparition as Mikel leaned against one wall of the elevator and she propped herself against the other, her arms wrapped loosely around her torso. He didn’t feel okay, but she was too sick from her father’s influence to properly sort through how much of the anger she felt was leftover from him and how much was Mikel’s.
His eyes dipped from her face to where she was holding herself, his nostrils flaring slightly. “Forget about me. What did he do to you?”
“Gave her a bit of discipline, I reckon,” the apparition of her grandfather grunted. “Always told that boy taking the Sigma under his wing was a bad idea. Bitches like that are bad news. I only have so many sons for her to run through.”
She sucked in a deep breath, closing her eyes and willing the apparition to disappear. “Nothing, really.” She popped her eyes open and gave Mikel a weak shrug. “Some emotions are just heavier than others. Darker. And with him … I just can’t seem to shut him out like I can the rest of you. Mom said all Alphas are stronger than our barriers, but he’s something else.”
Buddy harrumphed with pride.
“He’s not stronger. He’s just conditioned you to be weaker around him.” Mikel narrowed his gaze. “Do you believe what he said about your mother? About their bond?”
She dropped her attention to her shoes and kept it there as they walked out of the family centre, Buddy following along like he simply had nowhere better to be. “You know …” She hesitated, her own uncomfortable emotions mixing with the toxic cloud of fury her father had left her with. “I’m embarrassed to say this, but I don’t think I’ve met his eyes enough to be able to tell the minute differences between them and my mother’s. I know she definitely had two slightly different shades of brown, but—”
“Are you fucking dumb, girl?” Buddy laughed at her, a few steps behind them. “You didn’t know?”
She broke off, swallowing back a sudden wave of grief. “I’ve always thought I have my father’s eyes. But if they were truly mated … why have I never thought that I have their eyes? How would I know which colour was his and which was hers?”
“You must have noticed on some level,” Mikel agreed quietly. “It’s hard to tell from afar, especially if she had eyes like mine. I know people always wonder if I’m bonded when they first see my eyes, even if they don’t ask outright. Maybe she had just enough of a variation.”
“Can’t believe I’m still picking up the tab for that useless bitch even after all these years. Can’t even be dead in peace,” Buddy grumbled, forcing Isobel to halt.
Mikel also stopped, his eyes finding hers.
“What the hell are you talking about?” she asked, flicking her attention to the apparition just long enough to let him know she was talking to him before she refocussed on Mikel, whose brows had pitched together.
Somehow, he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut, also flicking his eyes to the spot she had glanced to.
“Oh, now you want to talk to me,” Buddy groused sarcastically. “So honoured the Sigma girl has time for the likes of me.”
“You’re an Omega,” she shot back. “Don’t get so far ahead of yourself. What were you talking about just before?”
Mikel let out a low, short whistle. “How long have you been carrying on two conversations?”
“Not long,” she said quickly. “But thanks for confirming my theory that the men in Dorm A gossip more than every Omega girl in Dorm O combined.”
“Oh, great,” Buddy muttered sarcastically. “We’re at Ironside. Better call security, girlie. I can’t even afford a fucking glass of water here. Not even if I drink it from my hands.”
“Naturally” was all Mikel said.
Isobel sighed, glimpsing students along the path ahead of them. She needed to wrap this up.
“What did you mean you’re still picking up the tab for … for her. Are you talking about my mother?”
“Caran Hoity-Toity Baker?” Buddy was trying to lean into her sight, his thick brows jumping as he deliberately used her mother’s maiden name instead of the name she shared with him.
“Carter,” Isobel inserted. “Caran Isobella Carter. You already know her name, so use it.”
“My mistake,” her grandfather stated blandly. “Must have forgotten. It’s hard being dead.”
“So you are dead? And what, now you’re a ghost? A figment of my imagination?”
Buddy tsked, wagging his finger in her face. “Those are the questions that got you banned from your mama, girl.” He pulled back, suddenly pensive. “Actually … go ahead and ask them. Then I’ll be banned too.”
“Um.” She was struggling to stay focussed on Mikel. “W-What are you?”
“A remnant,” he answered, looking a little confused himself.
“Are you real?”
“As real as remnants can be.”
“Where do you go when you aren’t here?”
“Elsewhere, nowhere.” He waved a hand like she was asking stupid questions. “I rest. I sleep. I’ve earned it. This is the first time my rest has been broken.”
“Have you seen my mom?” she whispered hurriedly, hearing the group of students drawing closer.
“Nah.” Buddy looked up to the sky, like checking what time of day it was. “Don’t know how I know I took her place today. I just know it. This really isn’t working—oh, never mind. Yes, I can feel him calling me back no—”
Isobel turned her head as he disappeared, searching along the path for any sign of him.
“Gone?” Mikel guessed, after the students had passed by them, shooting Mikel wary glances. They were probably skipping classes.
Isobel nodded, and he started walking again, his pace deliberately slow. Above them, the sky was growing dark, clouds gathering fat and heavy, the wind picking up speed. She was grateful for his pace because her steps were growing shorter and stiffer, a sharp pain shooting up through her ribs. Her face pinching with confusion at his continued silence. “You’re not acting at all weirded out by the fact that I’m seeing dead people.”
“I’d be more surprised if there was nothing more to our abilities than what the officials tell us,” he responded lowly. “There was some quiet chatter back in the San Bernadino Settlement around five years ago about a Sigma. Apparently, she was seeing visions of her dead husband, but then the visions changed into other people, and she never saw him again, so she finally killed herself to be with him, thinking he was alive somewhere in some sort of afterworld.”
“Do the Gifted believe in an afterworld?”
“Not from what I recall.”
“Oh.” She tried not to sound disappointed. That would have been convenient.
“They believe in fragments.” Mikel shot her a guarded look. “Like memories. Kept alive by the people who knew them and kept safe by one of their gods. They believe that lighting a candle can bring back one of the fragments on loan from the god who protects it. You can speak to the dead that way. They just don’t speak back.”