#unsetic

A shadow briefly crossed his features, then it was gone.  I squeezed his hand before I gently disengaged my fingers from his.

“This is where she said she’d be,” I said softly. “Hopefully, she’s here and we’ll have at least a few questions answered.”

“A few,” he murmured.  “Like what?”

“Like whether or not she found out you’d escaped,” I said, watching his face.  We were getting closer to the edge of the warehouse district.  The streets beyond would be lined with businesses and apartment buildings, most of them still dark at this hour.  The rhythms of Deneer had their mornings starting later—usually around midmorning local time—and lasting well into the night.  Our arrival just before sunrise might as well have been three or four AM back home, the silent hours between last call and the morning rush, the graveyard hours, the third shifts.

He sucked in a quiet breath, glancing at me.  “You mean—”

“In December she came looking for Kate and I.  She needed our help and there was an off chance that you might have been there.  It was a chance we couldn’t pass up.”

Tim’s expression went slack.  “But I was already—”

“We didn’t know that.  Neither did she.  Do you see, now?  Do you see why all of the bullshit going on was such a big deal?”  I shook my head, struggling to keep my voice down in the face of rising anger and frustration, two things I hadn’t really let myself feel until that moment.  “I’m not saying that we wouldn’t have gone to help if there hadn’t been a chance we could find you, but I will say that it changed how we approached the whole situation.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.  Something sparkled against his lower lashes—tears, I realized.  A lump rose in my throat.  I threaded my fingers through his again and squeezed.

“You have nothing to be sorry for. Nothing at all.  Okay?”

“Okay.”  The word came quietly, but with only the barest hesitation.  Maybe I was finally getting through.  I doubted it, though.  If there was one thing I knew hadn’t changed about my brother, it was his propensity to hang onto guilt even when he was told something wasn’t his fault. He took another deep breath and sighed quietly, his gaze drifting to Kate, a dozen yards ahead of us.  She didn’t look back as she crossed the street, clearly trusting that we were still with her.

“You’re safe,” I whispered to him.  “I promise.”

A laugh bubbled up in his throat, though there was a faintly bitter edge to the sound.  He squeezed my hand.  “I love you, sis.  Y’know that, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You really think you’d stand a chance protecting me against them if they came hunting?  If they—if they somehow seized control of me again?”

I looked up and met his gaze, his eyes shining in the light of the streetlamps and the moon.  “Absolutely,” I said, my voice quiet and level.  “We just got you back, Tim.  There is no universe in existence where I would let you go again.”

“You think you could stop them?”

“I know I could stop them,” I said. “I promise you that.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

I stopped and he stopped with me, turning to face me.  “Do you really want to know the answer to that?”

“Maybe,” he said.

“I have more tricks up my sleeve than you realize, Tim.”  I turned and started walking again.  Kate and Brigid had stopped ahead of us, watching, waiting. We were out of earshot but I could tell even from this distance that Kate was concerned and I was willing to lay odds that Brigid was, too.  “I’ve gone up against them and won before.”

“I almost killed you when they still had control of me.”

“But you didn’t,” I said, glancing back at him.  “You didn’t.  We’re both here and we’re both alive and we’ve got work to do.  Are you coming or not?”

Just Tim and AJ, sharing some sibling love on a world he’s never been to on a hunt for someone who once tried to help him.

Excerpt is from the current working draft of UNSETIC Files: Lost and Found.