Chapter 16
Lynx
This… human won’t leave me alone.
She’s sitting beside me while I count to one thousand, internally losing my mind the longer Sable is nowhere to be seen, and this girl won’t. Stop. Talking.
It’s a miracle I haven’t snapped her neck. Satan for-fucking-bid she gets stuck here too.
Sable stormed out not too long ago, but I didn’t have any desire to follow her—but now I’m uncomfortable because she left me here with these imbeciles and I haven’t seen her in longer than I like, and because this human equivalent of a fly just rested her hand in my lap.
My gaze snaps to her face in a glare to find her grinning at me.
Technically, I could kill her in front of all these witnesses and no one could do shit, since I’m already dead and all.
“Who said you could touch me?” I narrow my eyes to slits. The tone is filled with a threat. Do it again and there will be consequences.
The smile drops from her face, and her hand retracts so fast, I’m surprised she doesn’t pull a muscle.
Good. At least she’s not stupid.
Now where the fuck is Sable?
My vision flashes as someone holds up a little contraption. People are posing, grinning at the thing, and I frown in confusion before another flash goes off. Everyone crowds around the girl and stares at something.
“My face looks weird in that photo.”
“Mine too.”
“Evelyn, your eyes are closed.”
“Another!”
For the next ten minutes, I push for information on what the fuck is going on.
A guy who reminds me a little of Tony is so drunk he doesn’t even realize how differently we’re dressed.
They’re all wearing garments I’ve seen Tony and some souls I’ve tortured wear, but even then, they have more skin showing than what I’m used to.
“What’s your name, cutie?”
I turn to see a dark-haired girl staring at me, batting her bloodshot eyes at me. She’s either been crying or she’s too drunk to even see properly.
“John,” I lie.
She hums. “That’s a nice name. I could make a lot of noise with that.”
Someone take me back to Hell.
No, this is Hell.
The girl is staring at me expectantly. I quirk a brow. “Are you waiting for an invitation to suck my dick or something?” Not that she’d ever receive one.
She licks her lips. “Maybe.”
“Not happening,” I reply sternly, my gaze drifting away so she knows it’s final.
Three seconds go by before she huffs and leaves.
I’ve come to learn that photographs can be taken on a little box, with a screen, and they all seem to have one. I heard one guy ask someone where his phone was before he proceeded to grab another small box from the window seat.
Strange. Strange creatures.
Another box plays music—the ungodly noise alone is enough to blow my eardrums, never mind their endless chatter with slang I’ve never heard before.
A girl’s voice echoes around the room. Someone yells how much they love this song. The words irk me. If I hear people scream “call me maybe” one more time, I may need to incinerate this entire building to save my eardrums.
I feel old.
I still haven’t asked Sable what year it is. As time passes so differently in Hell, it’s impossible to figure out. A hundred years could’ve passed up here. Or more. And if that’s the case, then my brother will already be dead.
A fist twists around my heart and squeezes at the thought.
The only peace I’ll feel is if he had a long and happy life and didn’t search for me.
If those assholes hadn’t stabbed me and sent me to my eternal misery, then I could’ve been part of that happy life too.
But he would’ve had to fend for himself unless one of the other families took him in—the promise to my mother broken.
What if the curse cast on me made him lose his memory of me? What if my entire existence was erased? What if those men went after him?
Once I know about my brother, I’m going to find and kill every single family member of the assholes who sent me to Hell. Their entire fucking bloodline. I won’t make it clean; it’ll be messy and painful—a long, drawn-out process of agony and fucking gore.
I wonder if I’ll curse them too.
Did they know what they were doing when they stabbed me and signed my lifelong prison sentence?
I take a drink and stare at the wall.
Sable’s been gone for a while now. The hairs on the back of my neck rise, images of her with some fucking human somewhere in this manor flashing through my mind. Impulsiveness has me getting to my feet, ignoring the looks shot my way, the comments about my clothing as I search for Sable.
What if someone else can see her—or worse, touch her? If someone has their hands on her, I’ll break each one of their fingers and snap their neck. Tidus loves to gnaw on bones—he can smell them from miles away. It’d be like Christmas for him, and maybe he’d give me a break for at least a few weeks.
The room she summoned me in is empty, although the stench of death and demonic residue still lingers. I stare at the spot where she took her last breath, my nostrils flaring at the annoying feeling coursing through me. I can’t pinpoint it—possibly regret? Remorse?
She’s the reason I’m here—I shouldn’t feel fucking bad.
Where the hell is this girl? Should I try to leave the grounds? I’ll inevitably find her that way. I guess a part of me is bored and wants to go snooping around the mansion—maybe I’ll walk in on her touching herself like she did me.
Yes. Good idea. It’s only fair after she got a good look at me in such a compromising position.
Not that I stopped.
And not that she looked away.
I leave the room and check the rest of the wings, coming up empty. When I reach the furthest corridor from the humans drinking themselves into oblivion, I pause when I hear something smashing.
Sensing her whereabouts now that I’m near her, I follow the sound and push into the room, appearing beside her just as her fist goes through a mirror, shards of glass scattering across the floor.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Sable spins to stare at me, her eyes wide and red. An uneasy feeling hits me. She’s upset about something, and I don’t want it to be me. “Get the fuck out!”
I duck just before the remains of the broken mirror can hit me then flinch back as she comes straight for me, swinging a bloody fist at my face. Catching her wrist, I push her up against the wall before pinning both arms to her sides. “Calm down.”
She’s been crying. Still is. Her eyes are bloodshot, her cheeks soaked. I want to wipe a tear away, but I know me touching her that way will make it all worse.
The place is wrecked. Glass everywhere. A broken lamp lies beside one of those phones the humans had, the screen smashed to smithereens. Even a chair is in pieces.
I knew she had a violent side given all the times she’s attacked me, but what the fuck has happened now?
Dodging a knee to my balls, I press my body to hers to keep her from hurting herself.
“Stop.”
“Why did you have to kill me? Why?” she yells, spitting each syllable, as tears coat her cheeks.
I’m rendered silent at the pain in both her voice and eyes.
I frown. “Is that why you’re mad?” We’ve been over this already.
She tries to shove me off and fails. “My sister is dead, asshole. And now, so am I. Because of you. You’re the fucking reason I’m like this. Everything is your fault!”
With how loud she’s crying and screaming, I wouldn’t be surprised if a human could hear.
Against my nature, I wrap my arms around her, tight enough to stop her from pulling out of my hold.
My chin rests on her head, and I let her yell and scream and try to scratch me.
She tells me she hates me, that I’m a monster.
I’m the reason she’s trapped. The reason she wasn’t able to summon her sister.
Her body relaxes against me when none of her attempts to get free work.
“Calm down,” I say, softer this time. “Breathe.”
She kicks at me again, and I hold her tighter, but my grip on her loosens as she drives her forehead into my nose and knocks me back.
Shit.
That was both annoying and hot.
“I lost my sister,” she cries, swiping at her cheeks. “She’s dead, and all I wanted was to talk to her one last time, and you took that away from me.”
“I think I lost my brother too,” I say quietly, almost so quiet I don’t think she’s heard.
She stops fighting, breathing hard as she stares up at me with glistening brown eyes. A divot forms between her brows. The silence stretches like she’s processing my confession.
Sable’s lips quiver, her mouth opening and closing, lost for words.
“What do you mean?” she finally whispers.
“When I was killed and sent to Hell, my brother was left alone. He had no one to care for him. My mom died, and I became his guardian. And I…” Stopping, I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I don’t know what happened to him.”
Her cries stop, although she still rapidly inhales every breath, her eyes red and puffy. “You lost someone close to you too.”
“Yes. Like I told you, I stole something that didn’t belong to me. But if I hadn’t, I would have lost everything. A roof over my brother’s head, food in his stomach. Everything. I would’ve lost it all.”
“Why didn’t you go to a homeless shelter or a food bank?”
I tilt my head. “I fear we may be from different times. I wasn’t born with wealthy parents.”
“Doesn’t change the fact that my parents are horrible people.” She shifts her weight. “Were yours?”
My shoulder rises. “Both dead.”
She nods. “Lucky.”
How the fuck is that lucky? What kind of childhood did this girl have to think losing your parents is a good thing?
“I know what will cheer you up.” I grab her hand, and she doesn’t stop me as I pull her from the destroyed room and down the hallway, to the grand staircase to people-watch.
After arguing back and forth about messing with humans, she gives in. I hide behind a pillar as Sable trips someone up, making them fall flat on their face and stare around themselves in confusion.
Then she flicks someone’s ear, pulls a guy’s hand out of a girl’s pants, and grins at me as she pours a glass on the table, causing everyone to glance around and wonder why there’s a cup floating in midair.
Why am I smiling back?
The idiots who decided it was a good idea to party here are all drunk and dancing, and I stare at a group of guys pouring white powder on the table and using a piece of plastic to move it around.
Sable comes up beside me. Watching. She looks up at me. “Cocaine,” she says, reading my confusion. “It’s a drug. They’re snorting it.”
I’m not dumb—Tony told me a lot about drugs and how much they’ve taken over a lot of people’s lives. He was a stoner when he was alive.
I didn’t have the money to get drunk and take drugs when I was human. I could barely even put food in my brother’s stomach.
I zero in on a guy talking to the girl who tried to flirt with me. I recall him being the first person who walked into the house, ignoring Sable’s yelling. Now, with the finesse of a newborn horse, he drops a white substance into the girl’s cup the moment she looks away.
“You see that?” I ask her, and Sable nods.
We watch them, and I’m not quick enough to intervene before the girl empties the cup in one gulp.
“I hate people like him,” she says. “Fucking Connor.”
Connor? She knows him?
Sable gasps as she watches a picture frame fall from the wall, and a group of guys start throwing it between each other, chanting a name I feel like I should recognize.
She rolls her eyes. “Idiots.”
Our eyes snap to the staircase—the guy who poured powder into the drunk girl’s cup is leading her up each step. She’s staggering now, so whatever he gave her has worked quickly.
Sable drops the glass and marches toward them, and I watch in awe as she takes two steps at a time, stops in front of the asshole, and shoves him so hard, he’s unable to grab hold of the railing on his way down.
His head hits each step until he lands at the bottom in a heap.
Sable wipes her hands. “No one does that in my house.”
I’m smiling again, and I realize she’s smiling back at me, and I don’t hate it. Sable’s eyes are mesmerizing, her body perfection, and her hair makes me desperate to brush my fingers through it. She’s the definition of beauty, in a fucked-up kind of way, since I’m the one who killed her.
She’s drawing closer, that smile still plastered on her face, a chuckle reaching my ears.
But then I remember my situation, my smile drops, and I turn away from her to get myself an untampered-with drink.