Revealing Silver by Jamie Craig Page B

separation was wearing both of them down.
    Nathan never answered the door when she knocked, so she had acquired Isaac’s key and stopped knocking. The apartment was dark and cool, empty of any signs of the holiday. Did Nathan have decorations? Probably not. He didn’t strike her as the sort who got involved with the Christmas spirit.
    But the bottle of vodka was exactly where she last saw it, unopened. Assuming that was the same bottle.
    “Nathan?”
    “In the kitchen.”
    Olivia stepped inside, gesturing for Isaac to follow her. “I have the coin. And Isaac.”
    Resting a little had helped dispel the worst of the shadows beneath Isaac’s eyes, but the lines bracketing his mouth would take a lot more than a catnap. He held two gift bags, items he’d removed from his loaner car without explanation when they’d left her house. Though she wasn’t convinced they were such a good idea, maybe he knew something she didn’t. She hoped so.
    He was silent as they walked through the living room toward the small kitchen, but his eyes moved constantly, drinking in every detail. She wished she had his knowledge of what normal was around here. It might have helped the past couple of days. The way he lingered on the vodka and the discarded blanket on the couch told her things weren’t normal.
    At the kitchen entrance, he hesitated, glancing down at the bags he held. Olivia waited as he turned around and put them on the floor in front of a tall bookshelf, then led the way when he came back to her side.
    Nathan had showered and changed his clothes in preparation for their visit, and he was tossing one of the myriad takeout containers she’d brought in the past five days. He didn’t look normal, no more than Isaac did, but he looked better . That counted as a victory.
    “Merry Christmas,” Olivia greeted.
    Nathan’s attention darted to Isaac’s face before he nodded. “I hope so. You ready?”
    “As I’ll ever be.”
    “Have you touched the coin since…?”
    “No. Not directly. So I can’t make any promises.”
    “I understand.”
    Isaac didn’t make a sound, but she sensed him behind her shoulder. She wished he would say something, but he was obviously waiting for Nathan, and Nathan was going to continue to be stubborn. They deserved each other.
    Isaac did, however, touch her arm before they went back to the living room. “We should have water and Tylenol ready for you in case it does work. And maybe a bowl, if you feel like you’ll be sick.”
    “I’ll get it,” Nathan said, looking at Olivia as though responding to suggestions she made.
    Olivia crossed over to the couch, pulling the coin’s case from her purse. She wanted something safer than wrapping it up in an old sweater and sticking it in the bottom of her underwear drawer, so she’d hunted around until she found an old-fashioned metal jewelry box with a lock, they key to which she wore on a chain around her neck.
    Olivia set the box on the coffee table. “It’ll be fine.”
    Isaac prowled around the couch. “I’ll pass on agreeing with you just yet. But I’m still asking Nathan to research this Keeper stuff. We need to know if Gabriel’s blowing smoke.”
    Gabriel hadn’t been blowing smoke, but she didn’t expect Isaac to accept that. Maybe if he had been there when Gabriel witnessed the connection between her and Stacy he’d be more inclined to believe it. He’d been excited at the sympathetic pain, and then desperate to keep her alive. Marisol would have shot her in the back, but Gabriel had stopped his cousin and used her newly discovered title to save her life. On the other hand, Isaac could experience the piercing headaches and mind-numbing visions himself and still insist they were a crazy delusion. He was a natural-born skeptic and stubborn as a mule.
    Nathan emerged from the kitchen with the bowl, Tylenol, and water, setting it all down on the table beside the coin’s box.
    “Where’s the other coin?” Olivia asked. “I don’t