Chapter Thirty-One
Thirty-One
“Can you imagine giving up immortality for this?” she says, disgusted. “He used to be so beautiful. I don’t get it.”
I spring to Ritika’s body. I feel for her pulse. Weak, slow, but still there. She’s alive.
“Relax, she isn’t dead,” Leila confirms, annoyed. She beckons to the table. “Sit.”
It’s a command that might be followed by a consequence if I don’t obey. I collapse bonelessly into the chair across from her, my heart leaping into my throat.
“Ritika doesn’t know anything,” I say quickly. “There’s no need to finish her off.”
Leila sneers.
“Please don’t insult my intelligence,” she snips. “And don’t worry. She’s too useful for me to kill right now. I’d love to learn a bit more about her, when she wakes up.”
I focus on my breathing. Keep it steady to keep my panic at bay.
“How did you find us?” I ask.
Leila’s smile is self-satisfied, like she’s been waiting for me to ask.
“Julian’s smart, but he’s so sentimental,” she says.
“He’s got all these properties, but he just had to take you to this one.
Like I wouldn’t know about it? Guess he didn’t think Alphonse’s wife would send me an invitation to his funeral.
” Rage flashes across her features, there and gone between blinks.
“He hid himself from me, you know, when he chose this human life. Cut me out entirely. Didn’t even let me say goodbye.
It was very kind of her to try to correct my brother’s cruelty posthumously.
I didn’t go, of course, but it came in useful. ”
I swallow. My whole body shudders with existential fear as Leila appraises me, her gaze sliding from the top of my head down to my trembling hands.
“Are you going to kill me?” I ask.
“Of course,” Leila says, matter-of-fact.
“I have to. Bad things happen when humans find out about us. I know the boys have been very casual about it, but that’s because the consequences look really different for them.
They slip up, they’re considered gods. Rose and I?
Well, you saw. We get the whole ‘Witches, burn them at the stake’ treatment.
” She taps her nails against the table, and they clack, one by one, like a metronome.
“I promise I’ll put you down easy. For what it’s worth, I really liked you.
You’re very interesting. I get why Julian lost his sense over you. ”
The compliment flies over my head; I’m focused instead on how to get out of this.
As far as I know, Julian has no other supernatural powers, no preternatural strength or offensive abilities aside from the ones he’s built for himself over the years.
Leila can drain me, sure, but she’s already quite young as it is—too much and she’ll turn herself into a child like Rose did.
As it stands, she’s shorter and slighter than I am.
If this comes down to a battle of brute force, I could take her.
Leila’s grin widens, and she claps her hands together in amusement.
“Oh my god, are you sizing me up right now?” she says. Her giggle is high, shrill, and sends chills down my spine. “Ugh, you’re so cute.” She twists in her chair. “Robbie? Can you come in, baby?”
The back door opens, and a hulking man steps through. He is broad chested and bald, and the skin on the back of his head folds over itself. His face is obscured behind a mask.
Strapped across his chest: a gun.
Blood splashing against the glass. Harold’s wide-open grimace, his mouth still forming around his cries for help. Eyes lifeless and dead.
My body moves before I can stop it, because I can’t just sit here waiting to die, can’t just let her snuff me out—
I hear a click. “Robbie” has lifted his gun, and the barrel is trained on me.
“I wouldn’t run if I were you,” Leila says. “Robbie here’s a former Navy SEAL; he’ll catch you pretty quick. And I don’t want that, because I have the most fabulous end planned for you!”
She pulls out her phone, makes a call, and I hear the tone of a video call being answered.
“Hey, Leila,” a sweet, sullen voice responds.
Time slows. I feel like a giant has grabbed me by the middle and is crushing me in his grasp.
Because it’s Sophie.
Oh my god, she has Sophie.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Leila says. Her expression has changed completely, glee making way for a pitying pout and watery eyes so quickly that it gives me whiplash. “How are you hanging in there?”
“I’m okay,” Sophie says. “We’ve been coloring. Mom hasn’t woken up yet though.”
Leila’s eyes flicker up to me as if to ascertain that I’ve captured that bit of information, and of course I have: Winona is with them too.
“I know things are hard right now but you’ve been a very brave girl,” Leila is saying, and I hear her as if from a distance, her voice slowed and stretched out. “But anyway! I called because I have a surprise for you!”
“What is it?” she asks unenthusiastically.
Without warning, Leila turns the camera to me, and I have to fight the terror off my face.
It’s Sophie all right, sitting on a plush teal carpet and surrounded by markers.
In the distance, another young girl draws swirls on a piece of paper while she swings her legs.
She glances up, eyes catching mine, then ducks away almost sheepishly as Sophie gapes at the screen, and I suddenly understand why Sophie said “we.”
Rose.
“Auntie Sean?” Sophie says in disbelief, then the phone rises until her face fills the screen. She looks tired, wan, her normally riotous curls hanging limply around her face. “Auntie Sean! Oh my gosh, you’re okay!”
“Y-yes, nugget,” I say weakly.
“Mom got called by the doggy daycare that you didn’t come back for Onix, and you weren’t answering your phone, and we thought something happened,” she cries. “We went and got him, don’t worry, but you were missing, and nobody knew where you’d gone, and we were so scared—”
“Sean just went on a little vacation without telling you,” Leila supplies for me.
“Blizzard took out some cell towers and made the drive back unsafe, but I finally got in touch with Julian this morning and came straight down to check on her!” Her gaze catches mine, as if to seek praise for her decent alibi.
“But she’s safe, and she’ll actually be coming with us. ”
Tears drip down Sophie’s chin, and she gets to her feet, heading toward the door.
“I have to go tell Mom,” she declares.
Across from me and out of sight of her stepdaughter, Leila rolls her eyes, then turns the camera back to herself.
“We’ll call her when we’re on the way, okay?” she says. “My battery’s about to die.”
“O-okay,” Sophie says uncertainly, and Leila waves, hangs up, and puts her phone face down on the table.
My world feels like it’s tilted on its axis, like it’s been flattened into a disc and I’m about to fall off the edge. The people I love the most: Winona, Sophie, even Onix, gathered in one place. And Brandon…well. Sophie’s state told me everything I needed to know.
“Is he dead?” I ask.
Leila takes a sip of her tea and nods.
“Two days ago,” she supplies. “Don’t worry. We’re planning a good send-off.”
I keep waiting for a miracle. For me to gain the ability to travel backward in time to the day a cheerful Leila first appeared in our cath lab, call up her boss, and demand she be sent elsewhere to terrorize someone else.
Or, if this was meant to be our fate all along, for Julian to burst through these doors, finish Robbie off John Wick style, and force Leila to deliver my family back to me.
But instead I’m here, hopeless as a gecko in a sticky trap, and Brandon is dead, and I hardly have the space to mourn because his ex-wife and kid might be next.
“They don’t know anything.” No amount of strength can keep my voice from trembling, and for once, I don’t care that Leila can see that I’m scared. “Winona and Sophie. I haven’t told them a thing.”
“I know that. They’re obviously just bait,” Leila says, bemused.
“Look, I’ll keep this simple for you. Winona and Sophie don’t have to die.
They’re sweethearts, as you know, and they think that I’ve rented a cute little cabin out of town to bond over shared loss.
So let’s make this easy. You get in the car with Robbie, and we do a nice little exchange.
Your bestie and her daughter get to go free.
And you…?” A tear drifts down my cheek, and Leila reaches across the table to catch it on her thumb.
She looks down at the liquid as if it fascinates her, then sucks it into her mouth. “Well, you know.”
I die. For some reason, this knowledge doesn’t strike the fear it had minutes before. After all, I should be dead already. These few extra days were simply borrowed time.
“I’ll come with you,” I gasp. “I’ll come, so please—”
“Wonderful,” Leila interrupts. She springs to her feet. “Let’s get you ready to go.”
The first thing Leila has me do is strip naked.
In the name of my dignity, she makes Robbie wait outside the door but checks me over with the clinical attention of a devoted dermatologist searching for a cancerous spot.
My necklace is the first thing to go, flung carelessly onto my bed, but she doesn’t think to comment on my nails, and I have to school my face to keep my triumph from being seen.
The change of clothes she brings for me is a size too big.
I’ve lost weight since we’ve last seen each other, a consequence of my bouts of Julian-induced withdrawals.
The material of the pullover she’s given me is luxuriously soft; a peek at the label reveals it to be 100 percent cashmere. It goes on like a prison jumpsuit.
They lead me wordlessly away from Ritika’s supine body, through the kitchen door, onto the veranda, and to the edge of the woods, Leila skipping in front, Robbie lugging menacingly behind.
I follow her like a ghost, because I will be one soon.
I know what comes next, after allowing myself to be moved to a secondary location.
I’ve read The Gift of Fear cover to cover, watched enough true crime documentaries to recognize that I am walking into my casket.
I wonder how long it will take for Julian to come looking for me. If he’ll realize he’s been fooled and will make it home fast enough to get Ritika help. If he’ll ever forgive me for going willingly.
We get to a clearing, where a small hatchback is waiting, and Robbie steps in close behind me.
“Hey, so,” Leila says, producing a strip of fabric from her pocket. “We can’t have you know where we’re going. And I’ll be having some conversations that I’m not sure you should be privy to.”
Numb, I bend to let Leila tie my blindfold. She winds it over my eyes, then squeezes the knot tight.
I suspect what happens next and close my eyes to steel myself against the accelerated whoosh of my heartbeat. They won’t kill me here. Leila wouldn’t go through all the trouble of putting on these theatrics just to off me on the edge of the woods.
“You’re going to knock me out, right?” I say to the darkness. “Go ahead. Do it. But if I may, go for under my chin, or temple. I’ll actually lose consciousness that way.”
Robbie doesn’t respond. I haven’t heard him speak once, but his breath rattles behind me. I’m about to suggest they invest in chloroform like old-timey cartoon villains when suddenly a dizzying, smarting pain echoes between my ears.
Robbie has chosen temple after all.