20. Freya
FREYA
E li’s gone when I wake up and I try not to freak out over being left alone in a locked room. The daylight streaming in from the window helps and my heart softens as I realize Eli must have opened the drapes before he left.
We’re in December and it’s freaking cold out but today, even through the glass, the sun shines strong and warm on my face. I soak the feeling in and remind myself I am so far away from the basement my father used to lock me in.
When I push myself up to sitting, paper crinkles under my hand. I pick it up and read the note Eli’s left me.
Had to go to The Lair to chase down a lead with River and Oz. Didn’t want to wake you. Jude’s downstairs. Message him if you need anything.
Love you, Eli x
I don’t know how his ‘love you’ can make my heart flutter when the rest of the note just pisses me off. I’ve been left behind again and I can’t even leave this fucking room without Jude’s permission.
My backwards form of protesting the whole thing is to refuse to message Jude. Instead, I get out of bed and drown my moodiness in the shower. I hiss when the shampoo hits the cuts Eli left on my shoulder. The sharp sting has memories of last night slamming into me like a tidal wave.
I press my palms against the tiles as the water runs down my back. I broke Eli’s skin. He should hate me.
I try to remind myself that he wanted me to do it, that he liked it, but disgust is a brutal fist around my stomach and queasiness swims in my head. All I can see is my dad and the sick hunger in his eyes as he sliced into his victims.
I am not like that. I am not like him.
Last night was intense but it was consensual, and it felt good . My head is all messed up though and the lines between right and wrong are so blurred I can’t see what side I’m on.
I close my eyes, trying to use the breathing techniques Alistair showed me to stay calm. Water droplets run down my face and gather at the edges of my lips. I breathe in the steam, concentrating on the cloud of heat surrounding my body.
I’ve almost found my calm when a loud crack has me jerking. My eyes flick open and I freeze for one devastating moment before throwing myself out of the shower.
That was a gunshot. I’ve heard enough of them to know what a bullet sounds like and that was definitely a gunshot.
It came from downstairs, and I run a towel over me before grabbing my clothes off the bedroom floor and pulling them over my still damp body.
“Jude!” I shout.
There’s no reply and I race to the door, running my fingers over the edges in a futile attempt to open the damn thing.
Frustration has me slamming the sole of my foot against the metal before I give up and snatch my phone off the bedside table.
I call Jude and grab my knife, heading to the window as the phone rings and rings.
“Come on. Pick up, pick up,” I mutter under my breath, but no one does. A desperate scream tears out of me and I hammer the hilt of the knife into the window. The glass vibrates but stays solid and unforgiving.
“Jude!” I shout again, trying not to read into the fact that he hasn’t answered. Trying not to think about the gunshot.
I draw the blade of the knife diagonally across the window and do the same from the other side, carving a cross into the glass.
If I can create a weak spot, I might be able to smash the window with the chair.
I go over the lines again and again as fast as I can.
The knife screeches with each slash, like chalk on a blackboard, but I keep going until a deep ‘x’ shape is cut into the glass.
I drop the knife and go to the armchair. I’m just about to try and lift it when the door beeps.
I stop what I’m doing.
One step and I have the knife back in hand as I face the door.
Three more beeps follow the first and I wait, my fist turning white around the hilt of the blade.
The door pushes open.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t to see myself staring back at me.
My hand drops to my side. “Allie?”
My sister trembles in the doorway. Splatters of blood speckle her pale arm, all the way down to the gun that hangs from her fingers.
Her face is ghost-shocked and so very young as she looks at me with desperate eyes. “I shot him,” she says. “I didn’t mean to. I just wanted to see you but he…” Allie keeps talking, the words tumbling from her lips, but I stop listening.
Jude.
I push past my sister, out of this damn room, and race down the stairs.
I see his legs first, poking out from behind the couch. Electricity seizes my chest like a defibrillator and it’s a miracle I manage to keep moving.
I run to him, skidding to my knees on the floorboards. Blood pools around his shoulder, the entire upper and left side of his hoodie soaked a dark red.
“Jude! Jude wake up!” I whip my shirt off and press the material against the small hole in his shoulder. He doesn’t answer at first but then his eyes flicker open and his head lolls to the side as he looks up at me.
My chest shudders. “You’re going to be okay.”
“Angel…” His lips stumble on the word before his eyes roll back.
“Shh,” I sob as I push down on my shirt, trying to stem the bleeding. “Don’t talk, just stay with me okay.”
Jude doesn’t answer, his eyes flickering closed.
“No! No, no, no.” I press harder and his eyes jolt open again. “You stay awake, you hear me, Jude?”
A glassy sheen covers the deep brown, but he keeps his gaze on me.
He’s going to be okay. He has to be okay.
I don’t hear her come up behind me, but suddenly Allie’s at my back. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to.”
I keep my hands pressed against the bleeding and nod to where Jude’s phone sits on the table. “Call 911, tell them an FBI agent’s been shot. He’s conscious but barely. Tell them we need an ambulance now. And put the fucking gun down.”
Allie nods and trades the pistol for Jude’s phone.
His blood is hot and slick under my hands. It’s soaking through my shirt too quickly and I fold over the material, pressing down as hard as I can.
It’s not enough though. Jude’s eyes flutter shut and this time when I shout at him, he doesn’t wake up. No.
Allie keeps muttering that she’s sorry, that it was an accident, but her voice fades away under the whooshing of my own pulse.
I don’t know how long I kneel there, holding on to Jude like my hands are all that’s keeping him tethered to this earth, but eventually someone tugs at my shoulder.
The paramedic pulls me back and takes over. The two of them work fast and, somehow, we end up in the back of the ambulance.
Allie huddles in the corner and I hold Jude’s hand while the paramedic hooks an oxygen mask over his face.
She looks young, like she’s barely turned twenty and her blonde ponytail swishes when she turns to face me. “Your phone’s ringing,” she says.
It’s not till then that I hear the ringtone, feel the phone buzzing in my pocket.
“Here. For your hands.” She passes me a towel and I wipe the worst of the blood off before retrieving my phone.
It’s River. I press to answer and hold it to my ear.
“Care to tell me why your bracelet just notified me that you’ve left the house?”
I stare at Jude’s body lying on the stretcher in front of me and my voice comes out dead. “Jude’s been shot.”
A pause.
“What? Freya, what did you just say?”
I don’t explain what happened. All I can think about is hearing the gunshot and being stuck in my room, unable to leave, unable to help.
“We’re on our way to the hospital,” I say. Then I hang up.
The phone rings again and again but I turn it off. River should understand what it feels like to know something’s wrong and be utterly helpless to stop it.
If I wasn’t locked in my room, if I’d been downstairs with Jude when Allie arrived, none of this would have happened. She didn’t mean to shoot him, she just wanted to see me.
And now Jude is dying, all because River doesn’t trust me enough not to run.
Up until now I’d been giving him some leeway because I know I broke my promise. But I’m done. This is on him.