Chapter 26
26
Sonny
B ane hasn’t come to visit me again, but Finley has.
He’s appeared at the end of my bed the past two nights, only once everyone has gone to sleep. I can’t seem to get on a reasonable sleeping schedule, and Finley helps pass the time by talking my ear off.
“This place hasn’t changed one bit since it was built,” he muses. He’s sprawled across the end of my bed, his ankle resting across the other knee as he stares up at the ceiling.
“You’ve seen it before?”
“Of course. Me, Lewis, and his father built it with our own two hands. I’m glad to see it’s stayed with the Whitlock bloodline.”
“Raze is very different from Lewis,” I mumble under my breath. If he knew, I doubt he’d be happy that his hard work has fallen into the hands of a murderer.
“Raze is trying his best to right the wrongs he had nothing to do with.”
I have to look away to suppress my eye roll. I had no idea he was a Raze-apologist.
“The Whitlocks have been allies of the Landry name for centuries,” he barks when he catches the tail end of my scowl. “Whatever tiff you two are in will pass, just as they always did for me and Lewis.”
“It’s more than a tiff,” I bite back.
Perfect . Now, I’m arguing with a ghost.
“It’ll pass,” he repeats, twirling a hair tie between his fingers.
Instead of bickering with him, I change the subject. I still haven’t figured out how these visits work or if I can kick him out if things were to get heated. I’d rather not test it.
“Why did your family come here? To Nocturne Valley?”
“Well, first of all, when we came here, it wasn’t Nocturne Valley. It was an empty piece of land between a treacherous mountain range,” he corrects. While I’ve attempted to put our disagreement behind me, he’s still clinging to his attitude.
I shake my head and shrug to say, You knew what I meant.
With a long, pointed look, he continues. “Gifted individuals were not widely accepted where we lived, and my father grew tired of hiding in secret. His family was wealthy, but he was an only child and when my grandfather died, he was left completely alone. One night, his father came to him in a dream and showed him Nocturne Valley. He didn’t waste any time getting to work. He gathered as many families like us as he could and got them here. The land was cheap, since there wasn’t civilization for miles. It was perfect for his purpose, though. A haven for us to practice our gifts openly.”
“Were you born here?”
“Yes. My older brothers were born in our homeland. My parents made the trip when she was pregnant with my oldest sister. With the help of everyone and their gifts, they were able to build up the Landry estate within a year’s time. Everyone lived in it together while they built up the town. It was a time of unity and openness. One where everyone worked toward the common goal of making Nocturne Valley the best it could ever be. I know my parents looked back at it with pride.”
“Then what happened? Why did they...you know,” I struggle to say the words, but Finley knows what I mean.
Why did they slaughter them all?
“Because of small men with inflated self-importance and heaps of greed,” he snarls. “They were hungry for more power and wanted to steal from the innocent to get it.”
I sit up, wedging my pillow behind my back. “I thought tensions rose because there were no resources.”
“That was a part of it, but I later learned that those issues were fabricated to turn the town against my father.”
“I’m confused. So . . . they weren’t real?”
“No, they were real. People starved. The town turned against one another, and then they turned on us. But that was only part of the real problem.” He explains all of this in a bitter tone, proving that even time can’t break a Landry grudge. “It was when the Midnight Syndicate was created that things took a turn. Their first mission was to sabotage the building of the road between Nocturne Valley and Infinity Heights. They would sneak out in the middle of the night to destroy any progress made during the day.”
“That’s unbelievable.”
“It’s only the start.”
Hugging my knees, I offer him an apologetic grimace. “I understand why you were so pissed in your journals.”
“My anger has only gotten worse. I’ve had nearly two centuries to stew over this,” he spits.
“And you think I’m going to make a difference?”
His lips curve in a knowing smile. “You are the difference, lovely girl.”
“You keep saying things like that, but never bother to explain why you think so.”
“Everything will reveal itself in due time,” he assures, and then his body blinks out and he appears again beside my bed. “You must be tired. Your friends have been asleep for hours. I’ll let you get some rest.”
I don’t bother telling him that rest won’t find me. Not when my mind is such a chaotic mess. He never gives me a chance anyway, because once he says the words, the image of him flickers out again until it disappears altogether, and I’m left all alone.
W e spend three more days in the cabin, carefully tip-toeing around like ghosts to avoid being seen or heard by anyone from Ravenshurst. Nights are the worst for all of us. We’ve each formed a new phobia of the dark, yet having lights on can call unwanted attention to the cabin. It’s a battle we fight each time the sun sets, and one we nearly lose before it wakes up again the following morning.
Tonight is no different.
It’s been snowing for days. The cold is much more manageable with extra layers of clothing and blankets, but it still makes the most menial tasks increasingly difficult.
“What is he going to do with us?” Jonah wonders aloud for the millionth time.
We’re all lounging in the living room together, a single candle lit on the small sofa table in the center of us.
We’ve spent hours coming up with hypothetical scenarios for what our future holds and considering all of our options. We always reach the same conclusion, though: Raze is our only viable escape. None of us are equipped to hike through the woods for the days it would take to get to Infinity Heights. If we ever got there, we have no money or resources to get ourselves further away from the Midnight Syndicate. Even if we could, we decided it would be a futile attempt. The Syndicate has members across the globe that we don’t even know about. Escaping them isn’t possible. And even if we did, they would only send Raze after our families as retaliation.
The conversation always ends up here, with one of us questioning what Raze wants with us to begin with. How does he benefit from helping us?
“Hopefully he comes back soon so we can ask him,” Beatrix sighs, tightening the blanket she’s wearing across her shoulders.
“And before we run out of food,” Ava adds wearily. “We’ve only got two more cups of rice and a couple of cans of vegetables to get us by.”
“We can ration,” I suggest, if only to try to ease her mind. But she’s right. If Raze doesn’t come back soon, we’re going to have to make our way into the woods and find food ourselves, which puts us at risk of being seen.
It doesn’t matter. We’ll do what we need to do to survive. Together .
We haven’t seen Raze since the first night he brought us in. When we woke up the second day after sleeping well into the afternoon, we discovered he had dropped off more of his old clothing, food, and glass bottles of the tincture he claimed would heal us. There was a note on the table, but all it said was that he would be back soon.
We waited an entire twenty-four hours before mustering up the courage to drink whatever was in the tincture. They forced me to go first, and we sat for a couple hours afterward to ensure there were no real side effects before they followed. Two days later, all of our wounds are practically gone.
The room is silent as we each fall victim to our own minds. I have no idea how much time passes before there’s the distinctive sound of snow crunching beneath tires just outside the front window. It takes us a beat to register what’s happening, and each of us shares a terrified look when it dawns on us.
There’s a vehicle approaching the front of the cabin.
We each hit the ground at the same time and I signal for them to army crawl toward the bedroom I’ve been sleeping in. There’s a window along the back wall where we might be able to slip out unnoticed if we have enough time.
“It could be Raze,” Ava points out, though she continues to crawl directly behind me.
A car door slams, followed by footsteps in the snow.
“If it is, I want to see before we let him in,” Beatrix mutters. “Someone should get up and check.”
We nearly break through the doorway of the bedroom when a key slides into the lock and the doorknob twists. We freeze in place as a cool breeze flows through the whole cabin. Raze steps over the threshold, quickly swinging it back shut.
He spins and looks around the dark space, his brows furrowing when he doesn’t immediately spot us.
Jonah shifts beside me, and Raze’s eyes drop to the floor, where the four of us are cowering against the wall.
“What are you doing?” he asks, his posture firming.
My gaze falls to his arms, where he’s got a heap of something black draped, but his hands are otherwise empty. Disappointment coils in my belly when I realize he hasn’t brought us any more food.
“We should have established a special knock,” Jonah complains, grasping the table beside him to climb to his feet.
Raze’s frown deepens as he blinks back at Jonah like he’s a puzzle he can’t figure out. “Why would we have done that?”
“How the hell else were we supposed to know it was you and not some random old guy from the Syndicate here to whisk us back into those cells,” Beatrix answers agitatedly. She swipes the dust off her pants and stands up straight, matching Raze’s confident posture.
His face loosens as understanding settles in. He looks directly at me to explain, “None of them would bother coming out here in the cold. They’d send their little pets to hunt you down. As luck would have it, I killed them both this morning.”
The confession falls so easily from his mouth, I can hardly believe it. The four of us stare back at him with slackened jaws, our brains struggling to process the magnitude of his words.
“Is that supposed to make us trust you?” Beatrix voices all of our thoughts aloud. “Because it’s giving the opposite effect.”
Raze swings his gaze toward her and narrows his eyes, his brows tenting upward in a condescending look. “It’s not supposed to make you feel any type of way. Except, maybe relieved, since they can’t come after you anymore.”
“You are one crazy motherfucker,” Jonah mumbles, but the look on his face is full of trepidation.
Raze’s head draws back as he considers what Jonah said. He stands there quietly for a breath as we all gather together in the living room across from him.
“What are you here for?” Ava asks him, gesturing toward his empty hands. “You haven’t brought any food, so I assume you have something else to say.”
Her tone suggests she’s expecting the worst, but her face is carefully blank.
He nods once, as if her question has brought him back on track to explain his visit. “We’ve finally got a safe house secured for you.”
Beatrix crosses her arms over her chest. “We’re moving?”
“Would you rather stay here, cowering on the floor at every sound that goes bump in the night?” he asks her mockingly, and it’s the most normal thing he’s done since we escaped Ravenshurst. I’ve watched him speak to students in the same sarcastic tone for months.
“Where is this house?” I ask, refusing to get caught up in the nostalgia of it.
“You’ll know more soon.” He holds a finger up and twirls it around. “We can’t risk having the conversation here, in case an Aeternum comes through and sweeps the place.”
Beatrix scoffs. “So, you want us to follow you out of here blindly after you just told us you’ve killed two men?”
His answer is immediate. “Yes.”
“ Are you going to give me a hard time about this? ” His voice fills my head, and I hate the way it instantly calms me.
“ I haven’t decided yet, ” I mentally admit, careful not to reveal our new form of communication to the others. “ Tell me where the safe house is. ”
His shoulders slump slightly forward, and he tilts his head. “ You really don’t trust me ?”
I just stare back in response, my mouth a tight line. We’re not having this argument again.
“What is happening here?” Ava probes, glancing between the two of us.
Raze’s eyes shutter in defeat, and his reply is a sigh in my mind. “ It’s on the edge of Nocturne Valley, where it will be easy to transport you out if need be. ”
“Hello?” Ava demands, waving her hand in front of my face.
“ Why not just take us out of the town now? ” I ask, then finally break eye contact with him to offer a soft smile to Ava.
“Just ensuring he isn’t taking us for execution,” I explain, scrunching my nose.
Raze sneers. “ Because we may need you .”
“How are you doing that?” Beatrix questions.
After seeing how Ava reacted to my being able to control the lights, I’ve been terrified to admit I can also read thoughts and speak to spirits. Which is why I’ve kept my visits with Finley under wraps. I suppose I don’t know for certain if talking to Raze like this is his power or mine, but it feels intimate either way.
“By channeling thoughts,” Raze simply tells her, then begins handing off the large piece of fabric he’s been holding. “Put these on so we can get going now that Miss Ellery has exposed herself to our Aeternum spy.”
Ava’s eyes ping to mine, and I know I’m in trouble from the hard look on her face.
Jonah holds up the black fabric with a scowl. “Are these...cloaks?”
“Why do you have so many of them?” Beatrix wonders under her breath.
Raze doesn’t answer. Instead, he hands off the last two cloaks to me and Ava, then turns back toward the door. “Let’s go. We’ve got people waiting on us.”