Chapter 15
Seraphina
It takes me about an hour to reach the lake, but it’s worth it.
I come here every day after school. At first, it was to escape the Beast. Now, the Monster.
I climb the weeping willow to the very top. I’ve always been terrified and oddly drawn to heights. It’s thrilling to look down into the waters below and feel I could fall at any moment.
There’s nothing like the exhilaration of relinquishing control over my body. I breathe in the dizzying sensation.
I like Astley Lake. It’s nothing like the dirty slime that goes by the name of Oakley River. The color out here is crystal blue, but the trees that border it cast dark, threatening shadows. Those shadows are what interests me.
Perched on my tree, I fumble for my camera. I only have one roll, so I study the angle carefully before taking the snapshot.
The Monster gave me the camera as a welcoming gift. He probably hopes it’ll trick me into thinking he’s a nice man. But I know better.
I stay by the lake a while longer, until darkness sets in, turning the idyllic place into one bathed in stifling doom.
Then slowly, I begin the long walk home, already imagining myself putting my newly-developed photos in the flowery pink box behind the dusty TV.
-
For a long time after Damien has left, I stay frozen, my mind reeling from what’s just happened.
I’ve never felt such extreme fear as when he dangled me over the balcony. I’ve never felt so out of control. It’s like I’ve woken up after a long hibernation. Like the numbness that has enshrouded me practically since I was born has been pierced clean through, and has shattered to pieces around me.
I wonder when he’s going to come back. I have learned my lesson. I don’t want to taunt him anymore. Not because of how scared I was while he was punishing me on the balcony, but because of what happened after. When he asked me all those questions.
That was when I realized I had scared him. I looked up at him and read it in those usually unreadable eyes.
Things suddenly feel different now. When he saw me risking my life, it scared him. That means he must care, at least a little.
Plus, I answered his questions. I obeyed. That means he won’t punish me with more days of solitude. He’ll be back, I’m sure of it.
The thought energizes me, and I decide to go to bed right away, so tomorrow will come quicker.
-
But he doesn’t come back. Not the next day, nor the following one.
I stay by the phone the first day. The next one, I spend on the couch, staring at the blank wall, lost in thought.
Occasionally, I reach for one of the magazines on the coffee table, hungrily hunting for articles about him.
Laughing at his interviews, now that I know just how untruthful they are.
By the third day, however, I’m in the depths of despair. He hasn’t come. He revealed himself to me, and now he’s punishing me for it. Keeping away. He doesn’t want me after all.
My thoughts drive me frantic, and I lash out at myself without realizing it, digging into my arms in frantic anger.
I look down and am surprised to notice a drop of blood forming.
The light burn on my wrist is enough to snap me out of my thoughts.
I take a deep breath then look up at the camera, wondering if he’s seen what I’ve done. Wondering if he’ll come.
But the little red light isn’t blinking anymore. I frown. Has the camera been turned off?
Suddenly, I hear the lock in the door, and I turn, hope surging in my throat. It’s late, almost 11 p.m. No one is supposed to come at this hour. It’s not time for a meal. It can’t be the quiet woman. That means…
I wait with baited breath, hoping with every part of me that it’s Damien again. I need him so bad my skin aches.
But the door opens onto… Logan Colt.
I take a step back, heart pounding, as he faces me, a smirk playing at the edges of his mouth.
“Well, well, well,” he says.
I still remember the cold gun pressed to my temple at his orders. That was the last time I saw him and, I hoped, the only time. I back away until my body hits the wall, and stand there, trembling.
“The boys are away on a business trip,” he says casually, walking toward me. “Damien asked me to check in on you.”
He lifts a hand toward me and I cringe, but he only brushes a lock of hair behind my ear, his smirk widening.
“Checking in on our pets is my specialty,” he says, and my heart sinks.
I’m not sure whether it’s because of the threat in his voice or the pets, plural. No, I’m sure. It’s definitely the latter.
Am I really just one of many? It would explain why Damien lets me wallow for days in loneliness.
“I can see why Damien has such a hard-on for you,” Logan continues, his fingers running through my hair. “But I guess I’m not as convinced as he is that you really are innocent.”
By now, he’s about an inch away from me, and I can feel his hot breath on my face. I flinch, my eyes darting around him, looking for a way to escape, but he’s got me cornered.
“You may not know this about me,” he says, his voice dropping to a dangerous purr, “but I’m Damien’s best friend. I’ve had his back since grade school. And I won’t let him lose it all over some girl.”
He spits out the words derisively, and I shiver.
“I know Vale is just salivating,” he adds pensively, his fingers still raking through my hair, sounding more like he’s speaking to himself than to me.
“He can tell Damien is weak right now. Obsessing over his pet. It’s his dream come true.
He’s about to swoop in and take control. But it’ll be over my dead body.”
He pauses for a beat, his voice bitter. Then the next second, he seems to wake up.
“Come on. Let’s have some fun.”
He grabs my arm and drags me out of the apartment, out of the building, and into a waiting car.
I barely have the chance to take in the surroundings, to thrill at being outside—the first time in so long—before he pushes me roughly into the front seat.
He sits behind the wheel, turning on the engine, and whips away from the curb before I’ve even had time to buckle my seatbelt.
I let out a strangled cry. He’s driving like a madman, barreling down the quiet streets, turning toward… Oakley.
He doesn’t stop till he’s at its periphery, on the swampy riverfront that’s abandoned apart from a few ramshackle cabins.
The water stinks that bad. It could’ve been prime real estate, but Oakley gave up on handling its waste a long time ago. The sewers stench that emanates from the river makes me gag.
Logan bangs open the car door, grabs me again, and slams it shut behind me. Then he drags me toward a large rowboat made of rotting wood.
Once we’ve boarded it, he pushes me down to my knees and throws an oar at me. “Start rowing.”
Shivering in the cold night air, I plunge the oar into the black, slimy water, and push it backward.
I’ve never done this before. I have no idea what I’m doing, but under Logan’s cruel eye, I quickly figure out what movements will make the boat go forward, and I do them again and again, my arms aching, my breath coming in desperate spurts.
“Good enough,” says Logan at last, and I understand that I’m supposed to stop rowing. I lift the oar into the boat and wait, my heart beating wildly, wondering what he wants with me.
“Stand up,” he orders, and I do, pushing myself up on two unsteady feet.
He draws nearer, and I cringe again, my back dangerously close to the edge of the boat.
“Tell me one good reason I should believe you’re innocent,” he growls.
I blink up at him dumbly.
“I said,” he hisses, grasping my top with one hand as he lifts me up so that I’m really tilting over the boat, “tell me one good reason I should believe you. You stole the nanochip, didn’t you? Where did you put it?”
I swallow hard, my throat dry. A what? I stole what?
“I don’t… I don’t know…” I stammer.
He lets go of my shirt abruptly, and with a scream, I tumble into the freezing blackness of the Oakley River.
For a terrifying moment, I’m submerged in the slimy water, but I manage to struggle my way to the surface. I gulp in the clean air, and see that he’s turning away.
Is he really going to leave me here?
A moment later he turns toward me again, popping open a bottle of beer, and leans over, chuckling.
“Forgot to ask if you could swim. Guess you can’t.”
I’m still struggling in the water, splashing around like a dog to stay above the surface. He’s right. I have no idea how to swim. I never took a swimming lesson in my life.
“Looks like you have a pretty good survival instinct, though,” he adds in mock admiration. “Let’s see how long you can bob on the surface like an idiot before you sink.”
I gasp up at him, my limbs aching with the effort of staying afloat. Meanwhile, he slowly sips on his beer, eying me like I’m his entertainment for the evening.
“Want to tell me why you stole the perfume bottle?” he asks after a while.
But I can’t speak. I can only gulp in little breaths of air as I continue to struggle in the water.
“Wrong answer,” he gloats. “Try again. Where’s the nanochip? The perfume bottle was unsealed and the nanochip is missing. Where did you put it?”
I shake my head, my eyes pricking. I’m too overwhelmed, too tired even to think my usual refrain. It’s not fair. I don’t understand what he’s talking about. My brain is turned off. All I can think of is surviving.
That fucking survival instinct. Sometimes, I wish it weren’t so strong in me.
It sure would have spared me a lot of pain.
I don’t know if it’s the look in my eyes, or if he’s just gotten bored of watching me so desperately trying to stay afloat, but after ten minutes or so, he goes to the other side of the boat again before coming back with a lifebuoy tied to a rope, which he throws into the water. I grip it, resting my head against it.
Logan says a few words to me, which I can’t hear above the blood rushing to my ears.
“Hey! Freak! I said, put it around your waist!”
I startle out of the fog of exhaustion pressing down on me, and slip the lifebuoy around me. I wait passively as he tugs it toward the boat. Then he lifts me up.
I sag limply in the bottom of the boat as he curses me out.
“Some help would’ve been nice,” he pants. “Motherfucker. You really stink.”
He turns away as I lay helpless on the ground, and then I feel the boat begin to move. He’s rowing.
I hear the water slosh around for a while before he comes back and prods my side with a foot.
“Get up, freak. We’re going home.”
He must have seen that the word got a reaction out of me. I take a deep breath, welcoming the numbness that invades me, and follow him out of the boat, which he’s maneuvered back to the dock while I was in a near comatose state.
“Hell no,” he says as I try to climb back into the passenger seat. “You’ll ruin my car. You can walk back, can’t you? You’re used to it.”
I stare dumbly as the engine roars and he cocks a gleaming gun at me.
“Don’t try to escape, or I will find you and kill you.”
With that, he drives off, leaving me soaked in slimy water, in the shittiest part of Oakley, in the middle of the night, nearly two hours away on foot from my Astley prison.
He doesn’t need to worry, though. It’s not like I have anywhere else to go.
I begin the long walk back to the apartment, thankful that it’s so easy to detach myself from this situation. I’m used to assholes. I’m used to pain. I can take it all. The only thing I can’t take is the mind games Damien seems to revel in playing on me.
Damien.
My breath hitches as I suddenly realize that Damien is the reason Logan acted like this with me tonight. He was protective of his friend.
Or maybe…
I inhale sharply at the thought.
Maybe Damien told him to do this.
The thought comes to me like a blow to my stomach, knocking the air out of me. My eyes blur with tears.
It’s too much. The pain is too much. It doesn’t feel possible that Damien could do such a thing, and yet, he’s the one who locked me in the cell.
Who let me wallow in the apartment. Who’s been fucking with my mind for nearly a month now.
Of course Damien is behind this. The certainty of it shatters me.
I fall to the ground, my hands fisting the dirt, tears flowing freely from my eyes. I curl up in a ball, trying to comfort myself, as sobs rack my body. I cry until there are no tears left to cry. After that, I sink into numbness.
I don’t know how long I stay like this, in a fetal position in the middle of the road, but the pitch blackness of the night fades, blotted out little by little by pale swirls of purple and pink.
The early morning stillness is interrupted by the screech of tires.
“Are you kidding me,” mutters a voice, and I feel a hand roughly clasp the back of my shirt.
I’m dragged into a car, and I breathe in the familiar scent of new, expensive leather.
Logan’s car.
I hear him curse me out, curse out the road, the car, himself.
Even in my exhausted state, curiosity gets the better of me, and I mumble out the question.
“Are you going to shoot me?”
“Fuck you,” he growls. “Fuck you. Guess you can’t wait to tell him all about it, can you?”
Those words don’t have the effect he probably intends them to have. In fact, it’s the opposite. I prop myself up on my elbow, a thrill of energy suddenly pulsing in my veins.
Damien didn’t order him to do this. Damien doesn’t know.
As long as that’s true, I can handle all the rest. I can handle anything.
He drives on in silence, and I find myself falling asleep, hugging the thought to me like a promise.
Damien doesn’t know. Damien doesn’t know.
-
Moments later, or so it feels, I’m awakened by a thick stream of warm water washing over me.
My eyes open, and I see Logan holding the shower head. I cringe, but there’s no anger in his face. His eyes are carefully averted, and I can’t read his expression.
“I had to take off your clothes,” he mutters, “they were ruined. I didn’t touch you or anything like that.”
He keeps his gaze away from me, and I stare up at him in shock. I don’t understand him. One minute, he was on the verge of letting me drown. Now he’s giving me a shower, and almost looking… apologetic.
At last, he turns off the water and throws me a towel.
“Dry off,” he mutters, “and go to bed.”
I hastily wrap my trembling body in the towel, and notice my blue lips in the mirror and my pale-as-a-ghost face. Coupled with my purple undereye circles, I look more than ever like a zombie.
Hugging the towel to me, I hesitantly make my way to my bedroom, where I find Logan has turned down the bedspread.
Then he leaves, slamming the door behind me, leaving me more confused than ever.
I sag onto the floor, still wrapped in my towel, and close my eyes. I don’t understand a thing that just happened. But I’m too exhausted to think about it much longer. I don’t even make it to bed before falling asleep. My eyes close in spite of me, and I keel over fully on the floor.