Coal to Diamonds by Augusta Li Read Free Book Online Page B

Thorn outdid Cole as a demonic ringleader. He was more exotic than Cole, more knowledgeable and powerful, by far. Thorn stood as a lush, velvety black beside Cole’s threadbare gray. If Bobby and Cam could accept the darkness, then why not have the entirety of the silken, decadent night instead of the narrow patch of shade?
    It had been easy for Cole to be taken in by Darius Thorn when Thorn had moved to town six months ago. He’d been the mentor Cole had always wanted and the friend he so desperately needed. Elegant and worldly, Thorn had seemed more suited to London or Paris than Greysport, and the attention he paid to Cole made Cole feel like maybe he, too, belonged somewhere better. Then, when Cole had introduced Bobby and Cam to Thorn, their knowledge, abilities, and personalities had complemented each other so well, Cole’s life had finally began to feel whole. He should have known it was all too good to last.
    Bobby and Cam had left him before, ten years ago. They’d left him to the miserable little settlement, not much more than the coal-mining camp it had been a century before, where everyone talked behind his back, called him a queer and bastard, and looked at the ground when he passed by. They left knowing that, with his grandmother dead, not a single person within a hundred-mile radius cared whether Cole lived or died. Cam and Bobby had abandoned him to that hell, left him to a loneliness so profound it was almost audible: a constant, melancholy music.
    For ten years, he’d tried to tell himself he wasn’t resentful when Bobby sent him a Christmas card bearing a picture of himself in an Italian suit beside his perfect wife and daughter, or Cam snipped a review of his successful show from the paper. He wanted to be happy for them, his brothers and lovers, as they rose like heat toward the sky. Bobby became a junior partner in his law firm and Cam modeled for blue jean ads, while Cole’s life barely hovered above the muck. He’d published a few stories, tragedy-tinged erotica featuring rugged, olive-skinned warriors and golden-haired fey, but the insurance agency ate most of his time.
    Cole thought he’d finally find satisfaction once he quit his job to write his novel. Three novels, actually. He intended a grandiose trilogy to rival Tolkien. He loved the seclusion of the cabin, the absence of the whispers and stares he’d come to expect in town. He didn’t even mind the extra work required to heat and maintain the little place. But as one year turned into two, he found himself sitting more and more on his porch, watching the sunset gild the trees and aching for Cam and Bobby. He saw them so clearly sometimes that it made him weep: the exact brown of Bobby’s hair or crescent crinkle of Cam’s eyes when he smiled. He took out his wand, that slender piece of boyhood he’d managed to clutch when everything else had been irrevocably lost, and remembered the nights in the tree house. How he wanted those nights back! He’d been happy, complete, in those twilight hours, like never before or since. Together, the three of them held all of the elements in balance. Bobby and Cam had shattered their perfect thing into pieces, and Cole willed it whole again. Often he sat for hours under a sky that shifted from rose gold to indigo and stroked the wood in his hand, tracing over the sigils with his fingers. He pictured Cam and Bobby from their toenails to their eyelashes. He pictured what it had been like to be with them, what it would be like if they could be together again. Evening became night, autumn winter, and winter spring as he skulked among the trees, twirling the wooden stick in his long fingers, dreaming, longing.
    Casting.
    Summoning.
    Though he hadn’t intended to, Cole had called Cam and Bobby back to his side. But they returned to him damaged, broken in ways he couldn’t believe. Cam had injured his ankle and lost his dancing job. He’d resorted to stripping in an upscale gay club. An irresponsible