Lay Me Down by Erin Kellison Read Free Book Online Page A

said. She was sitting close by Maisie in sisterly solidarity. When their mother had died suddenly in a car wreck, Jordan, five years older and already out on her own, had finished rearing her.
    Maisie was looking off into the distance, face stony with resolution. Steve guessed the younger sister did understand what had happened to William Kerry.
    “You want to explain it, Maisie?”
    Her gaze shifted over to him, that trouble heavy in her gray eyes. He’d been staring at that trouble for the past couple of days, wondering what haunted her.
    “He came here to fly, but someone pushed him out of the dream, which means they have another person like me working for them, by the way. From there, who knows where he went, but eventually he ended up compacted into a tiny ball and handed to me to deliver to the worst place ever. I ran, without making the drop.”
    “But why did you bury it?” Fawkes asked.
    Maisie shrugged. “I figured I was transporting a memory of some shady dealings, and I hoped that I might have something on Graeme and his people that might keep them from killing me after I severed my connection with them.”
    “She didn’t know,” Jordan said. “What courier checks the packages they deliver? It’s none of their business.”
    Big sis was echoing Maisie’s earlier defenses.
    “I should’ve at least thought about it,” Maisie said.
    And there was the little sister assuming her sister’s part. She took responsibility, but she was still holding back. Steve couldn’t fathom why. They needed to act immediately.
    “Let me talk to her,” Jordan said. When he started to object, she added, “Alone.”
    Fine. Jordan could try, but then it was Steve’s turn.
    Maisie thought she’d seen bad? He’d show her bad. One way or another, she would tell him everything.
     
    ***
     
    “So you still hate him,” Jordan said, sighing.
    They’d stepped out of the Sunrise flying dream and into the null Agora. With the massive columns floating in grid-like intervals, the place seemed like a surreal temple on Olympus, and they were gods, powerful and quarrelling.
    Maisie leaned against a pillar in the darkness, heartsick.
    Both of them knew that direct discussion about what had happened to William Kerry was futile—Jordan, good big sister that she was, had tried reasoning with her a million times on a million subjects after Mom had died—so they were saved from fighting now.
    Jordan’s tried-and-true strategy was to talk about a less tense subject, circling the matter at hand, but not dead center. Men were an easy topic, a common starting point between them. The deeper stuff grew from there.
    Relieved to be treading old ground, Maisie went with her lead. “Not hate exactly. He’s trying to do his best, but he doesn’t get me.”
    For a while there, in her dark city, there’d been a synergy between them. She’d felt relaxed with him as they’d walked to the boundary. Confident. Strong. She felt the way she wanted to be, not this scared person she was right now.
    “I’ve seen the way he watches you.”
    “Yeah, he does that. He’s always watching me.” Maisie struggled to put into words what she’d felt from him in her dream. “I thought he might, you know, be interested, but I have no idea why. I’m not his kind of girl.”
    “You mean smart, loyal, beautiful, talented, funny? Yeah, it’s a real turnoff.”
    She was pretty sure he thought she was a self-serving coward, but she said, “He wears ties. My hair is pink.”
    “Maybe pink is his favorite color.”
    This conversation was just as uncomfortable as one about William Kerry, though she didn’t know why Steve’s having a low opinion of her mattered so much. He got on her nerves.
    “The point is, I’m not going to give him what he wants. And I’m not joining Chimera. Those decisions are made.”
    Jordan wasn’t going to be able to convince her otherwise, and they both knew it.
    “I’m worried about you,” she said. It was her way of