Counterfactual

17 | banshee

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

BANSHEE

( — a spirit in the form of a wailing woman who appears to or is heard by members of a family as a sign that one of them is about to die. )

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

          THERE ARE PLENTY OF TIMES WHEN ROWAN HAS TO ASK HIMSELF WHAT THE HELL HE'S DOING. He did it when he accepted to help Isla with her investigation—though he can't fully remember actually doing it, but that's another story—but that was before that same investigation nearly got him killed, leaving him to reconsider his decisions.

          Unfortunately, Isla can be quite . . . persuading when she wants to. While she gave him a free choice between staying with her and letting her do things on her own with no negative consequences, he still chose to stay for God knows what reason. He thinks he's doing it for her—at least, that's a given—but she's not the only reason why he has decided to keep going.

          It's for Taylor. It has always been for her, especially now that he can't see her anymore and the guilt weighs more than ever. He feels horribly selfish whenever he thinks about it, wondering whether he actually cares or if he's only pushing himself this hard because he feels guilty about not having done his job properly earlier on. If he had done it instead of thinking there was still time, maybe she'd still be here. Maybe she'd still be alive.

          Even Rhiannon, who might be risking her credibility and her stay at Crowcrest, has somehow gotten herself involved in the middle of this mess. Isla is not a fan of that, arguing Rhiannon is unnecessarily endangering herself even more by breaking her silence and releasing supposedly confidential information to them, but it's no use, even if it shocked him.

          Up until that point, he almost feared her, admiring how every single one of her moves was always so meticulously calculated, with her measuring all its possible consequences, both the positive ones and the negative ones. This means she's shoving all her carefulness aside, for something that never even concerned her in the first place, but he still feels some ambivalence in her. Not everything has been lost in the fire.

          Back to Isla, who terrifies him even more.

          Technically, she's not allowed to leave the campus thanks to the security measures the staff keeps reinforcing, but she has privileges other students don't just because of her status. It's what explains why she spends as much time in Rowan's apartment as she does, having chosen it over the diner whenever she needs to focus on her studies. He doesn't mind, especially because she's so awfully quiet he forgets she's there and it's strangely nice to have some company.

          He really doesn't want to make a habit out of this. He told her that, back when he let her borrow his bed for the night, and she kept her promise. Letting her stay here to study is completely different, but he still fears they might be falling into a routine that will be awfully hard to break.

          Isla argues she doesn't want to be alone, seeing as Rhiannon spends so much time doing whatever the Social Psychology experiment requires her to do—and even more—along with the rest of her friends, and Rowan sees it as a valid reason for her to want to be here. It's not like she's treating him as a last resort—he definitely doesn't see their . . . relationship, lacking a better way of putting it . . . as such—but they might be a lot more committed to each other than he'd like to admit.

          It's not that he wouldn't want it if she was on board as well. It's not that. Maybe the current circumstances aren't the best to try to follow that path, not to mention she's so keen on rebelling against her father that Rowan begins to doubt whether her decisions and actions are purely rebellion-driven or if she's thinking them through.