Chapter 30 #2
Once inside, I kick off my boots, give Hound dinner and lots of kisses, toss my daggers under the loose floorboard in my room in case Penny comes home unexpectedly, and make a comically large cup of coffee.
Our apartment is cold—the frigid, starless night seeping in through our flimsy insulation—and I miss the toasty fireplace and heaps of thick blankets in the Elkfore commons.
I crank up the heat and offer my eternal devotion to the god of working thermostats.
On the couch, I curl up under a pool of light from our single lamp and pull my limbs beneath a blanket with my weaponry textbook. Hound jumps up next to me and rests his head on my legs with a satiated sigh. A yawn seizes me and I stretch my sore limbs and look out the window.
Through the cool glass, the Babylon streets are alive with the sounds of Friday night.
Up-tempo music swimming out of Cobwebs downstairs.
Taxis honking, dogs barking. Girlfriends screaming at one another in greeting.
Tonight, that familiar lurch in my chest is nowhere to be found.
I don’t want to be down there, experiencing my twenties through bad dates and worse booze.
I really am grateful for Harker. And a lot less lonely than I used to be.
Do I really want to go back to how I used to be?
Plus, it’s my favorite time of year, and there’s no better place to soak in the All Hallows’ Eve delights than Astera.
I open my group chat with Elliot, Sophia, and Peter.
Do you guys actually want to get costumes in the city tomorrow?
There’s a Halloween shop down the street that opens in a vacant hardware store every October like Brigadoon.
Peter responds first. Yeah! Can we do Half City sightseeing?
For sure. Meet at my place around 10? Penny’s sleeping at the Frenchman’s.
We get to see your home? Sophia writes. Shall I bring my finest china?
Shit, Elliot writes. My Dior suit is at the dry cleaner.
I stifle a laugh. MY APARTMENT you dummies.
But that reminds me of the other half of my life: I text Fiona next to reiterate how much I still want to work the Chasm exhibit despite this “secret project” I’m doing for my mom.
I’m attacking everything from all angles.
Super Viv is in full effect. I even debate texting Reid and asking him if we should meet up next week to brainstorm the garden’s location, but I don’t have his number.
My heart gives a dejected thump, which I choose to ignore.
Instead, I pry open my textbook. Once I drain this coffee, I’m going to be revved up and ready to tackle the dense, crinkled pages ahead.
I’m still feeling positive and assured I can do it all when my eyes droop closed.
“Stay put,” my father whispers. “Don’t move no matter what you hear. You swear?”
He’s crammed me into a storage container. I can feel the slickness of spilled oil. Taste the brine in the night air. Hear the horns of the ocean liners mooring at the docks.
“Those are Broods,” I tell him. “You told me to run when we see them.”
My father’s eyes crinkle with something I don’t recognize. “And you should. Always. But I can’t keep running forever, kitten.”
“Dad—” It comes out like a plea. Please don’t leave me, I want to say. Please stay here.
“You swear?” he repeats, more urgently this time.
Tears are brimming in my eyes. I tighten my hold on his daggers. “I swear.”
He gives me a kiss on my forehead. “You are everything to me.”
When he closes the container, I begin to shake. From the cold, from the fear, from my sobbing. I can hear the ocean waves lapping furiously at the piles outside, trying to drag them free of the seabed. Seagulls squawk their hunger. Mildew and exhaust fill my nose.
I miss my dad already.
I hear low voices arguing. Men. Slithering, hissing, bellowing. Deviants. My whole body is electric with the certainty of it. My dad’s daggers wail in my palms to be used.
Dad said stay put, I think.
And so I do.
Even when the sinister voices rise to a fever pitch. Even when I hear my dad begin to fight.
But as the grunts and cries grow louder, I can’t help myself. I press my face to the metal to try to hear more and find a crack in the container wall. A sliver I can see through—
Blood. Flashes of silver. Twelve demons against my lone dad. It’s not a fair fight. And they all carry the mark of the Brood.
He’s screaming as he drives his sword, bleeding from his ribs and neck…
I know he needs me. But no matter how hard I pry at the container door, it doesn’t budge—
I wake to the shattering of a porcelain cup and the scent of my coffee dripping onto the floorboards. My skin buzzes. My eyes, peeled open, take in the reality around me—my cold apartment, the couch against my face, the spilled caffeine—when the floor creaks across the living room.
My eyes snap toward the sound.
But there’s nothing there. Just dark shadows cast by headlights and neon signs outside projected on the walls.
Still, I climb gingerly to my feet, heart in my lungs.
My daggers are beneath the floorboard of my bedroom.
I walk heel-to-toe toward the kitchen drawers, which are closer.
All our flatware is sterling silver—the only home goods I’ve ever splurged on.
How did something get into our place? I’ve been home this whole time.
Unless it’s been watching me. Lying in wait?
Another creak. Longer, deeper. Like the stretch of a bow across a violin.
My pulse is ratcheting. My skin prickling. The feeling warps my terror into something with a sharper, finer point. My grip tightens on a utensil—
And then a shadow crawls out from Penny’s darkened doorway, snaking across the floor…
I grit my teeth, and thrust my silver toward—
Hound.
Stretching sleepily with a pleasant yowl.
“Jesus,” I tell him, sagging against the kitchen counter as I shut the silverware drawer. “I almost butter-knifed you.”
Hound trots over and licks my leg.
The prickle in my skin fades. Perhaps it was residual adrenaline from my dream…or a demon who’s a block away by now. Kneeling down to hold Hound close, I stare out at the city lights, hands stroking through his coarse fur, my heart still slamming in my chest.