“Let us come with you,” Sam said.
I ignored him and grabbed the jeans from the floor of the closet, then tore a flannel from a hanger.
“Nick,” Anna said. “Stop for a second and talk to us.”
Cas dropped onto my bed, even though his was right across the room. Of course, it was hard to sit on his bed when it was piled so high with shit; you’d need a fucking shovel to clean it off.
I hated sharing a room with him. I needed to get out of this place. I needed to go. It’d been over twenty-four hours since I’d had the flashback where the girl had called me Gabriel, and it’d taken Anna and me over fourteen of those hours to find the information I needed in my files.
Now I had the name of a town—Trademarr, Illinois—and I wasn’t going to sit around any longer. There was only five or so hours of driving between me and the answers I needed.
“I don’t want you guys coming,” I said, and stuffed a few more things in the bag before zipping it up.
“He’s secretly running off to join the circus,” Cas said. He propped himself against the headboard of my bed. “What’s your act going to be, Nicky? Oh, wait, I got a good one. The Surly Man. You’ll scowl the crowd to death.”
Anna crossed her arms. “Stop it, Cas.”
“What?” Cas said. “I’m being serious.”
“You’re never serious,” she replied.
“Am, too.”
“Out,” Sam said to Cas. Cas groaned, but didn’t argue. He was obedient like a dog.
Sam stared at Anna for a second, and she caught on. “Me, too?” she said. Sam didn’t answer the question, which was answer enough.
Anna paused for a beat, as if she meant to challenge him, but finally gave in. “I’ll be downstairs if you need me.” She closed the door behind her when she left.
“I don’t want a lecture,” I said to Sam.
“I didn’t plan on giving one.”
He crossed the room, his boots thudding heavy on the floor before he sat on the edge of my bed. He balanced his elbows on his knees and folded his hands together as he looked over at me. His right eye was circled in deep red and purple from the punch I’d caught him with yesterday. I was still feeling the ache of the fight in my ribs.
“What are they about?” he asked.
“What are what about?”
“Nick.” Sam gave me the look he always gave me when he knew I was being a dumbass on purpose.
He’d meant the flashbacks.
“What, Anna didn’t tell you?”
“She didn’t.”
I sighed and leaned into the dresser behind me. “A girl.”
“You know who she is?”
I’d been thinking about her for days. No, weeks. But the flashbacks never gave me anything important.
“I don’t even have a name,” I answered. “Nothing. She’s like a ghost.” I scrubbed at my face, closed my eyes, and saw her again. “I have to know if she’s real. Or alive.”
Sam glanced at me, catching what I didn’t say. “She was part of a mission, wasn’t she?” I didn’t answer. He nodded, like he already knew anyway, like it all made perfect fucking sense. “What if you go there,” he said, “and you find out you killed her? Or what if you find out she’s nothing like you thought? You think filling in the blanks is somehow going to fix everything?”
“Maybe.”
“It won’t.”
“This is starting to sound like a lecture.”
He looked away and let out a half laugh. “You’re right.”
What I didn’t tell him was that I needed to know if I’d killed some innocent girl only because the Branch had told me to. I needed to know once and for all if I was just as bad as my dad. Maybe I’d been following in his footsteps all along, hurting people because it was in my blood.
“If you won’t stay for me or Cas or even yourself,” Sam said, “stay for Anna. You have no idea what she’s like when you’re gone.”
I frowned. “What’s she like?”
He thought for a second. “Restless.”
I pushed away from the dresser. “You never told me this before.”
“That’s because you always came back.”
I let out a grunt. “I’m not leaving for good, you know. Anna’s a big girl.”
“Don’t be a dick. You can’t promise that. Not when you’re messing with things that trace back to the Branch.”
What he meant was, You can’t promise you won’t be dead in a week.
I pictured my body rotting in a shallow grave in the middle of nowhere, and Sam, Cas, and Anna waiting for me to come home, wondering if this was the time I wouldn’t. The guilt nearly changed my mind. Nearly.