chapter twenty-seven.

Simon

She chooses a truly wonderful time to call me.

I'm in a lecture for psych—as Oliver—and the class is dead silent as the professor drones on and on about Pavlov's dog and how it connects to modern day relations, and such. I would be interested, very interested, if I was not more interested in Val's name flashing back at me from my phone screen.

I can't get over it, any of it. It all still feels like a dream.

Muttering under my breath, I shoulder my backpack and get to my feet, the jingle of my keys and the rustling of my clothes as I move to the center aisle disturbing the relative silence. The professor shoots me a questioning look, and I just lift an apologetic hand as I wave and drift out the door.

I hit answer, cradling the phone against my ear. The hallway stinks again; the bathrooms never stay clean in this building, and no one ever takes the time to clean them. "Hello?"

"Simon?"

"Uh," I say. "Oliver, right now. But yeah. It's me."

"What?" she says, and there's a thoughtful pause before she just grunts under her breath and continues: "Okay. Whatever. Look, I need your help with something."

I rake my hair back from my face, catching a glimpse of my reflection in the trophy case across the hall. The one thing I never get used to about wearing Oliver's face is the eyes. Everyone in my family has some degree of brown eyes, whether they're dark like my little sister Abbie's or more gold-tinged like my mother's. So seeing those baby blues blink back at me is sometimes a bit unsettling, to say the least. "Okay?" I reply. "Is everything alright?"

"Yeah. It's great. If I'm right, I think I just cracked this story wide open," Val says, and it's that voice, that voice I love, the quiet and rushed way she talks when she's excited about something and is talking more to herself than to you. These little things, these little notions I've picked up on the longer I've known her—it's even crazier now to think that I have the freedom to learn even more of them. "You told me briefly about your cousin last night, didn't you?" she goes on. "How he's a shapeshifter too?"

I narrow my eyes. "Sure he is. But—"

"Is his name Larry, by any chance?"

I jolt a little, remembering the last time I saw him, the frayed look in his eyes when he'd said, We were born cheaters. "How do you know—"

"The internet. I saw the name Larry St. John and then I sorta connected the dots. So do you think he could have a persona that was a professor here, once?" she asks, still in that quiet, brisk tone of hers. "Like how you're Oliver right now but you're actually Simon. Does this Larry guy do that too?"

"Considering what I know about him, I'd imagine he would—"

"Jesus. Jesus! Where is this guy?" Val demands. "I've got to talk to him. Right now, I've gotta talk to him."

The lecture hall's doors open, and student after student begins flooding out of them. I get a few strange looks, enough to make me turn and face the window. In my ear, Val is still rambling. "Hey, Val? Valerie? Can you listen to me for a second?"

"And I—what?"

"Larry's not..." I fight for the right word, or at least the one that makes the most sense. I settle on: "Safe."

"He's not safe?" Val scoffs. "What is he, a switchblade? What do you mean he's not safe?"

I mean that ever since my family realized I was a shapeshifter, too, they've done everything they can to keep me away from Larry. I mean that he kidnapped me once when I was twelve. I mean that he forced me to rob a gas station once, and break into someone's car another time, and make a massive withdrawal from a stranger's bank account just with the info we found in a dropped wallet. I mean that he's convinced the only thing he can do with his power is use it to cheat and steal and plunder, and because of that, nothing that touches him is safe.

He's not safe. That's the only way I can think to put it.

"My family doesn't...I don't..." I trail off, clicking my teeth. "We have history, I guess. And not the good kind."

"Is there a good kind?"

I shrug. "Touché."

On the other line, I hear her exhale. "I don't exactly know what happened between you two, but I do know that I've been working on the story of this miraculously missing professor for a week and so far this is the only lead I have. So will you talk to him? For me?"

"Val..."

"We'll keep each other safe," she assures, and for some crazy reason, I believe her. "I promise."

I rest my face in my palm for a moment, ninety-five percent sure I'm going to regret this.

"I don't know where he is," I tell Val. "But I know where he might be."

By the time I pick Val up from the Clubs Building, I've shifted back to myself, and the sun is just barely beginning to kiss the horizon, hinting the sky with hues of orange and pink. Val's like an exuberant little kid, clutching her legal pad to her chest, looking excitedly out the window as I drive her away from the center of Boston and more towards the city's inner edge. Last time Larry paid me an extended visit, at least—about four years ago—he was staying here. I can't think of a reason why he'd take a chance anywhere else.

We pull up; I park the car across the street.

Val peers out the window, tapping the glass with her finger. Silhouetted against the setting sun, she's like an angel, the individual frizzes of her locs turned gold in the tinted light. "This is where he is?"

"Told you he's not safe."

I've brought her to a string of abandoned houses, all of which were probably built in the early twentieth or late nineteenth century. Their crumbled foundations and glassless windows are infamous for housing squatters and the homeless on chilly Boston nights, and though Larry can certainly afford his own place with all the money he's made from all his heists, he never sticks around long enough to care.

Val shrugs and gets out of the car. I expected no less.

As we cross the street, I gesture towards a pinkish brick building near the street corner. It's one of the nicest homes on this lane. By nice I don't mean that its brick exterior isn't irreparably cracked. I just mean that the roof, at least, is intact. "Here," I tell her, fighting the urge to take her arm and hold her close to me, just in case something jumps out at us. "He'd be here."

We're approaching the front door when she stops me. "Simon."

I turn, looking down at her. Her eyes are like two precious jewels in this light, or maybe like the yin and yang: one dark, one light. "Yeah?"

"This Larry guy," she says, and for once, I just wish I could say his name with such detachment. This Larry guy. Like he's an urban legend. Like he's someone I've never met. "What did he do to you?"

For a moment, I'm not sure how to answer.

Then, I frown at her. "He showed me what the world expects of people like me," I say. "That's what he did to me."

Val's eyes drift towards the ground. I exhale, my breath pluming in front of me, and try the door. To my surprise, it falls open, unlocked, without much effort.

The air in here is musty, unclean, cloudy. Dust particles float in the air like snow on a December morning; I cover my mouth with the collar of my shirt, trying to ignore the pungent scent of cat pee and cigarette smoke. The carpet underneath my feet is torn and stained, the paint on the walls peeling off in sheets. It's abandoned; that much I was expecting. Maybe I just didn't think it would be this abandoned.

The foyer clear, I enter what appears to be a living room, and come to an abrupt stop.

Larry, curled on the floor with a guitar missing one of its strings, looks up at me with a confused look in his eye. Though he's wearing the same worn T-shirt he had on when last I saw him, he's swapped out the jeans for a pair of sweatpants and has even donned some wrinkled flannel. One step at a time, I suppose.

"Ginger Snap?" he greets, and I'm not sure why, but it feels strange to hear my family nickname from his mouth. It's almost like it's not his to say. "This is a surprise. Normally I'm the one who comes looking for you. Does that spazz of an older brother know you're here?"

"No," I say, already well aware that Noah will kill me when he finds out. Because he will find out. Because he's Noah. "He does not."

Larry smirks.

"Look, Larry, I didn't come here to humor you. I came here because—"

"Silas Wade," Val pipes up, appearing from around the corner. Larry's startled enough that his expression changes, his eyebrows lifting, eyes widening. "That's you, isn't it?"

Larry gets to his feet, and at his full height, he towers over both of us. I see Val swallow, and perhaps unconsciously, I inch closer to her.

Then Larry's changing. He shrinks a little in height; his shoulders narrow and his stomach flattens. Blond-silver hair washes with dark, straight strands suddenly boasting a wild curl; a beard grows over a longer jaw.

I've never seen this face before, but Val's mouth has opened in blatant surprise.

"I don't know," Larry says. "Why don't you tell me, Val?'

She jumps. "You know my name?"

"Everyone in the St. John family knows your name, sweetheart. Simon's been drooling over you since he was a kid," Larry says, and I roll my eyes grandly. "None of us ever thought he'd earn you, though. Or maybe we just didn't know you were crazy enough to stick around once you knew the truth."

Something in Val's face tightens for a moment, but she shakes her head, and it clears. "Why did you disappear, Professor Wade?"

Larry—Professor Wade—grins. The smile's lopsided and yellow-tinted. Not Larry's smile, but this other guy's. "Got too well known. Too many people cared about me, too many people were connected to me," he says. "I'm a ghost. That's who I am. Disappearing is what I do best."

The sun sinks even lower beneath the trees, the sky a deeper indigo, now. Cool air blows in through the faulty walls. "Is that why you disappeared from us, too?" I ask. Larry's gaze shifts toward me. "Is that why no one saw you for four years?"

Larry's body melts back into his own; beside me, Val shudders.

He steps forward, pinching my cheek. "Aw," he says, and I can't tell if he's trying to be endearing or belittling. "Did you miss me, little cousin?"

I smack his hand away. "I asked you why you left. I didn't say I missed you when you did."

The smile on Larry's face evaporates; he steps back. It's the same look he gave me when we first met, when my parents and my aunts and uncles and my grandparents all looked at him like he was an omen of death. That slight frown, those downturned eyes. Almost like he's saying: They've broken you.

Almost like he didn't do that all by himself.

"You wanna know why?" Larry says, reclaiming his spot on the floor. He picks up the broken guitar, strumming a cacophonous chord. "I thought I found an opportunity to do better with my life. I thought, Maybe I could use all this "cheating" for something else. I thought I could get myself together."

"What?" I say. It's not at all the answer I was expecting. Get myself together are three words I never thought I'd hear Larry say.

Larry grins at me like he knows what I'm thinking. "The government," he says, and grins even wider at the stunned look on my face, "got in touch with me. Said they'd heard about my power and thought it would do well in the business of gathering intel for them. I wasn't going to say yes, but they offered me a pretty penny. A home. Protection. A stable income. It all sounded perfect."

Val looks at me, her eyebrows knitted, then back to Larry. "What went wrong?"

"What went wrong?" he scoffs. "It's a dangerous business, honey. One by one, I lost everything. My safety. My friends. I even had a wife. Lost her, too."

Something in my chest spasms. I'd never thought...I'd never thought it could be this way. "Larry...I..."

"Don't," he begins, his voice rising, if only a little. He lifts a hand to wave me off. "Don't say anything. Just listen. I'm here because I'm getting away. Because back home was the only place I could think to go, even if nobody wants me there, either."

And I'm not sure what this feeling is. This sort of empathy, or maybe pity, welling within me for the one human being I can only ever remember dreading the presence of. I don't know what it is, but I want to tell him that I'll help him. That I'll figure something out.

But then something else he said sticks out to me, suddenly.

"Larry," I start, "what is it you were getting away from?"

He lifts his eyes to me, and though he smirks again, this one is a lot less mirthful.

"Not what," he says. "Who."