Chapter 25
Sable
Ionce thought I’d die here. In the basement, hidden away—out of sight, out of mind. Never in all my years did I witness Mother or Father come down here. Now, with the moonlight streaming in through the narrow windows, I realize that’s why I always came down here.
Even with no reason to hide, something about this section of the manor feels more like home than anywhere else in the house.
I walk beside the wall, running my hand along the shelves, trying to remember what used to be on them.
Ah Ma gifted my father an antique Chinese ceramic vase from one of the dynasties. It used to sit on the very edge of the middle shelf with a cloth thrown over it. The staff knew to take it out and put it in the foyer every time she came to visit.
A hand-me-down wooden rocking horse used to rest on top of a desk once I graduated to riding real ones. Father hoped I might go pro.
Then there was the painting Grandma bought me for my fourteenth birthday that Mother didn’t let me hang up in my own room because I “didn’t deserve nice things,” though Ella was allowed to display whatever she wanted.
It sat against this wall, shoved behind a couch that had been present ever since I first ventured down here.
I pause in front of an old workbench, rusted with age. Cracks decorate the wood. It can barely stand on its three and a half legs, one of its drawers tipped onto the floor.
It doesn’t look familiar. I wrack my brain, trying to remember what was in its place before the manor was raided. I think there was an easel here instead. This looks like something that would have been kept in the maintenance shed away from the property.
My skin tingles as I imbue strength into my hands to pull out the only drawer still inside it. It takes two tries before it gives way. Loose screws roll against a rusted set of pliers when I open it, then I huff in frustration when it catches a quarter way out.
I keep tugging on it, silently cursing whenever my hand slips through. Lowering myself to my knees, I angle my head to peer inside it so I can figure out what’s in the way. No amount of yanking makes it budge, so I make the split-second decision to act like a child.
I throw the entire table against the brick wall and exhale a sigh of relief when more cracks thunder through the wood.
It’s probably nothing, but with nothing to do every day, something mundane is better than even more nothingness.
I kick aside the splintered and broken pieces until I get to the drawer, which is now split in two. As always, it takes more pathetic tries than I’d like to get a decent enough grip to yank it out and find the culprit.
A black book tumbles out. I blink, expecting it to take a different shape. My money was on a screwdriver or something, not… this.
My lips pull into a thin line as I pick it up off the floor and bring it closer to the light. The pages of the worn leatherbound book are crinkled with age and use.
As I inhale, the book falls from my hands and lands right back where I got it from. Huffing, I set my ass on the dirty white cloths strewn around the room and flick the cover open.
My fingers stall over the ink scribbled onto the page. That’s my mother’s handwriting. I’d recognize her and Father’s scrawl anywhere. He’d always write at a thirty-degree angle that complemented her cursive script.
What is this book doing here? In a crappy desk not even the Feds bothered to take.
As I keep flipping through the book, something begins to form at the back of my mind. It starts as a quickly dismissed thought that slowly takes shape into something real. I recognize some of the names and companies listed in the book as ones the prosecutor mentioned in their hearing.
I flip from page to page, struggling to get my breathing under control. This ledger is filled with the dealings and names of what have to be shell companies, offshore accounts, and more things I don’t understand yet.
This is the proof the Feds were looking for to nail them with more instances of fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion. They thought my parents were involved with more, but they could never find the evidence.
They’d never win their appeal if this came to light.
“Fuck, Sable.”
My attention snaps toward the voice just as two demons come barreling down the steps. I didn’t even hear them opening the door.
I stagger onto my feet, fists trembling at my sides from the… from everything. I’m dead and they’re behind bars and still the torment doesn’t end because I’m just as helpless as I was when I was alive.
I can’t do anything with this book.
The full force of Lynx’s anger falls onto me as he charges closer. “Where the fuck have you been?”
“Yeah, Sabe,” Tony joins in. “Where the hell have you been, loca?”
What?
My lips part to answer, but nothing comes out. I try to grasp the rage bubbling through my veins to meet him head-on, but it slips right through my fingers.
“Seriously, dude?” Tony moves to smack the back of Lynx’s head but quickly backs off when his eyes turn red. “You looked everywhere, but you didn’t look in the fucking basement?”
“Why would she be in the basement?”
I can’t pinpoint the cause of Lynx’s ire, or why he’d even be looking for me.
He’s never cared about where I am or what I do before, and I don’t exist to be at anyone’s beck and call.
But my voice is lost to me. Any word I could conjure is soundless beneath the thoughts twisting and scraping in my head.
Tony huffs, pointing his thumb to his right.
“This guy had his panties all twisted—” He stops suddenly, groaning up at the ceiling.
“Ugh. I have to go back to work. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, kids.
” Tony throws something overhead that Lynx catches with one hand.
The item crinkles in his grip like foil.
“And, hey, remember to wrap it. Don’t want you creating the Antichrist or anything. ”
I blink. The spiraling stops mid-twist.
Can demons procreate? Better yet, can I get pregnant? No, I don’t get periods, right?
I’m left to stare at the space where Tony once stood because the bastard dropped a bomb on me then fell through the swirling vortex of darkness he conjured like nothing happened.
The silence stretches between us, and like a beacon, my sights fall to the book at my feet. My mother isn’t here, and still she manages to taunt me.
“What’s wrong?”
I hold up the ledger, unable to answer.
“What’s that?”
“I…” I’m breathless and I’ve barely said anything.
I’m not sure how to feel.
Angry for the hurt they’ve caused other people through their theft. Victorious that I have the key that would ruin the Eldrith name further. Or distraught that there’s nothing I can do with it because I’m a ghost, stuck here to wander these halls, hoping and praying my parents never find happiness.
I stare at the book. “This would keep my parents in prison.”
It’d mean they’d suffer for longer. Mom would hate herself even more for the shame she’s brought to the family. No amount of pity she’s garnered because of her dead daughter would let her dig herself out of the hole she’s gotten herself into.
I don’t know the law well enough to know whether they’d ever be able to own this property or see a cent from its sale, but money won’t do them very good in jail.
“They’re in prison?”
I nod solemnly. “They stole money and deserve to rot in there for all the other things they’ve done.”
“What things?” Lynx’s voice takes on a razor’s edge unlike anything I’ve ever heard from him. He sounds angry for me.
Ella was the only person who’d ever do such a thing—and she never did it very much.
My grandma would only give me looks of pity paired with a sigh, and of all the things this evening has brought, Lynx’s display of emotions makes my eyes heat with unshed tears.
Ah Ma was always on my parents’ side too.
I swallow the shards of glass forming in my throat. “They weren’t good people, but they were even worse parents.”
“They hit you?”
There it is again. That rage on my behalf. Maybe I wouldn’t have had to hold on to so much anger growing up if there was someone else sharing it with me.
“The physical attacks, I could take,” I say, voice hoarser than I intended.
It’s hard to pull the words out when I’ve never spoken them before.
“It was… The shit they did does things to a person’s head, you know?
I-it sounds so small and inconsequential, the things they did.
Small jabs here and there that became unnoticeable under the bigger things.
And I just… They aren’t hurting enough. Not like we did—like I did. ”
I grind my teeth, trying to breathe through the red-and-black haze falling over my vision as I glare at the book.
The fucking black book that would make my parents pay for everything they did.
The same book I can’t do anything with.
My nails dig half-moons into my palm. This self-pity needs to end. If I want to be angry, then I better be useful too. This book is getting into the hands of the police. Even if I need to kill one of them to make it happen.
“They’ll get their dues.” Lynx says it like a promise. “If not in this life, then they’ll regret every breath they took in the place they go after.”
“In this life,” I vow. The afterlife is too far away.