A/N: Author's note, blah, blah, blah... I like Devil's Advocate much better. Anyone who agrees: you're awesome. (And so are my reviewers).
Devil's Advocate |GONE| (02)
Dean looked like he could punch me right in the teeth.
"You manipulative little bitch," he told me.
I shrugged again.
"Fine. But only because Izzie's really important to me. I'll give you my damn allow—"
Dean was gone.
I blinked once, twice, rubbed my eyes.
Gone?
Well, where did he go?
"Dean," I called uncertainly. After a moment, I managed a somewhat angry tone. "Dean! What the fuck!"
I looked around. No Dean. And now, no Danny.
The game he'd been playing still continued on the TV screen, although his character stopped moving and now stood at a standstill, a sitting duck for the monsters in the game.
"Danny! Dean!" I yelled. "This isn't funny!"
No answer.
The lights went out. For it being so early in the morning, it was pitch-black. I couldn't see a foot in front of me, and I felt my heart begin to thud faster in my chest. I didn't like the dark. I never grew out of that childish fear of the dark.
My breathing came a little faster as I got to my feet and staggered blindly through the darkness, hands waving out in front of me in hopes of finding the wall, a light switch, a phone to call the police—anything.
I tripped. I fell forward, arms windmilling in hopes of somehow propelling myself back to my feet, but it was useless.
I fell.
And fell.
And didn't stop falling.
The further I fell, the colder it became. It seemed to get even darker, if that were even possible.
And then there was light. A ghoulish, sickly green light; dim, but quickly growing stronger. I was submerged in green, as though I'd jumped into stagnant swamp water, but I was surrounded with heat. The icy chill of the fall was gone, and replaced with hot, hot heat, the kind that rivaled even the hottest days on Perdido Beach.
Radioactive-green and smothering heat was existence.
It was all there was.
It was all there would ever be—
I open my eyes with a jolt. It only takes a millisecond for the memory of the dream to disappear and for the sunlight seeping through the spaces between the blinds to sear my retinas. I immediately shut my eyes again, pressing my face into my pillow and moaning under my breath when the hangover starts to set in. My head feels like it's packed with wet sand, and it hurts bad enough to feel like someone is systematically picking apart my gray matter with tweezers.
I reach out blindly for my bedside table, feeling until my fingertips brush a smooth plastic bottle. I grab and quickly twist off the child-proof cap, tapping several Advil tablets into my palms and pressing them past my lips. I swallow them dry, and I wait breathlessly for them to kick in. Once the headache's dulled enough to open my eyes to slits, I slowly lever myself into a sitting position. I pull my knees to my chest and wrap my arms around them, resting my head against them as I stare at everything littering the bedside table to my left.
The tall, slender bottle of Smirnoff is missing its cap, though there's really nothing left of the alcohol but the last few dregs at the bottom of the bottle. I haven't resorted to drugs yet, but since the coming of the FAYZ, I've seen the appeal to nicotine and alcohol. Vodka's been my reining favorite for a few weeks, though I think that's liable to change soon. It's not that it tastes the best—it tastes like shit, like rubbing alcohol—but because it doesn't take much to get good and drunk.
My bedroom door creaks slightly, and I glance over at it to see Danny peek inside.
"Good morning," I say dryly, though it's most certainly not a good morning.
He smiles and wanders in, climbing up onto my bed and sitting across from me with his legs crossed, on top of the blankets.
He opens his mouth to speak, but I cut him off.
"Talk quietly for a while, okay? I'm not feeling too good this morning."
His eyes flicker to the alcohol, but I know that he doesn't know any better than to suspect that it's just water.
Thankfully, Danny keeps his tone low. "I'm hungry, Kasey."
"Isn't there cereal or something? You know how to make cereal."
"No milk."
Right. All the milk went bad about a week ago.
"Dry cereal isn't so bad."
Danny grimaces.
"You could eat it with water. That's how it was originally supposed to be anyway, with water and not milk."
His grimace deepens. "I'm not eating that!" His voice rises momentarily, but it's loud enough to pierce the hazy shell of my hangover and increase the pain located right behind my eyes.
I flinch to myself, massaging my temples to try and soothe the beast. "Okay. I'll make you toast or something, all right? Just give me a few minutes."
Danny's face crumples into a pout. "If you won't make me breakfast, then maybe Aunt Odette will!"
I laugh without any humor. "Sounds like a plan. Bother Odette instead." I curl back up under the sheets, with my back to the window, and I close my eyes as Danny stomps out of my bedroom, fuming.
I'll probably feel a little guilty for encouraging Danny into bothering one of my very few friends, but right now, the temptation of going back to sleep is too strong.
"I really appreciate it," Odette says heatedly as she approaches my front porch with Danny in tow. She's trying to look furious, but I know well enough that she loves Danny more than I do; she'll always take him in without a moment's hesitation. "You can't keep—"
"Shh. Please." I gingerly tap my temple, a gesture to signify that the dull throb is still there. I lift my cigarette back to my lips to take another drag.
Odette shakes her head, then releases Danny's hand, ruffling his hair. "Go inside and play for a while, okay? I need to talk to your sister."
Danny nods, eager to please her, and he scurries inside without looking at me.
Odette steps up onto the porch and sits in the rocking chair near my perch on the railing, settling into it with a sigh.
I never even knew Odette existed until the FAYZ. It only makes sense; Odette was/is a Coates kid. She has a power not unlike Sam Temple's, though rather than acting like a white-hot blowtorch, Odette can simply create friction between her hands and form baseball-sized fireballs. She'd been 'plastered'—had her hands sealed up in concrete—up at the Academy when she'd refused to follow Caine. You can still see the haunted, hardened person that ordeal had created; Odette, while insanely pretty, had cool blue eyes as hard as ice. She had no qualms about using her powers offensively now.
It's by pure chance that we even met. It was a simple serendipitous encounter, of Odette stumbling upon me trying to operate my mother's car. With a wry smile, she'd gone about teaching me all she knew about driving and cars—a surprising amount of knowledge, too, coming from a fourteen-year-old—and we grew extremely close afterwards. We aren't very similar, but somehow, we click.
Odette doesn't really have a concrete home that she lives in; she lives nomadically and sporadically, though typically when she isn't living in Dean's old room, she's living in with Sam's friend Quinn.
"Put that out," she snaps at me, snatching the cigarette from my lips before waiting for me to do it myself. She ignores my complaining and extinguishes the tip on the arm of the chair; she flings the butt away and scowls at me, folding her arms. "What's wrong with you, Kasey?"
"What ever are you referring to, my dear?" I ask innocently.
"You have a little brother to look out for," Odette says sharply. "You can't go around stealing from your parents' liquor stash and getting drunk when you have Danny to watch out for."
"I didn't ask to look after him," I mumble, twisting the cap off of the plastic water bottle I've been keeping close for hydration. I take a long sip, casually avoiding Odette's eyes.
She sighs. "He's too young to go without having a mother."
"So? I don't have a mom either and I'm doing just fine." I try to ignore the irony in my statement.
"You're the only one he has left. You can't leave him to fend for himself."
"He has you," I point out.
"But you're his family. Don't you think that's more important?"
"Not really. A caretaker is a caretaker."
Odette shakes her head. "You're just saying these things because you're hungover."
"Yeah. I know. For a little prick, I love him."
Odette smiles, but it quickly fades. "Your birthday's tomorrow."
"Yep."
"You're not gonna...you know..." She trails off, uncomfortable talking about the subject.
"Nope. Sam already grilled me about it yesterday. It's like he thinks I'm suicidal or something."
"I hear it's tempting," Odette admits. "You'll want to do it."
I smirk at her. "Well, good thing I can say 'no.'"