Chapter 29
Seraphina
Earlier.
“Take this and disappear.”
Logan presses a wad of cash into my hand before slamming shut the car door and driving off. I find myself alone in the pitch blackness of a street in Oakley, blinking in confusion, trying to wrap my head around what’s happened.
I just spent the last few hours convinced I was going to die. First, at the hands of Angel, and then at Damien’s and Logan’s. When Logan told me he wasn’t going to kill me, I struggled to believe him. When he assured me that Damien had devised this scheme to protect me, I nearly laughed.
They all want me dead. I know it.
This must be a trick. They must have decided to send someone else to end me.
By now, I’d almost welcome it. I have no idea what to do with myself. The idea that I won’t see Damien again—and that if I do, it will be to die at his hands—is unbearable.
I think I’ve finally hit the lowest point in my life. I close my eyes, embracing the darkness, willing it to take over for good.
In the distance, I hear a car. No car ever drives down this shitty street at night. I glance at it and see it’s a black, shiny vehicle, sorely out of place in this dump. Must be the guy they sent to kill me.
I wait, my heart hammering, even as I tell myself that I accept my fate. But the car hangs back at a distance, and after a while, I start to walk, numbly.
That damn survival instinct. It won’t let me collapse. It never does.
I don’t know where I’m going. I just continue, my body going through the movements on automation, my eyes dry, my skin cold. But at some point, I turn onto a street with a familiar house at the end of it. Well, guess I’m going back to Ben.
I sigh in passive acceptance and walk down the little side stairs that lead to his basement door. I try to open it, but for once, it’s locked. He must have managed to get up long enough to turn the lock.
Sighing again, I knock.
A minute later it cracks open, and Ben stares at me, his face gaunt, his eyes flashing angrily. He looks more awake than I’ve seen him in a while.
He must not have succeeded in getting his fix without me.
“You’re back,” he grunts in surprise.
“Can I come in?” I say, hating myself for stooping to this level.
He hesitates for a moment, then grunts again, turns around and lets the door fall behind him. I quickly push through.
I gasp as my eyes take in the tiny two-room apartment, the main room entirely filled with his dirty bed, while the kitchen is cracked open to reveal moldy dishes. The stench is overwhelming. The windows don’t seem to have been opened since I left.
Has the place always been this shitty? Did I get used to the luxury of the Devil Tower?
Ben lets himself fall on his bare mattress and holds a hand out.
“I don’t have anything for you,” I mutter.
At once, he lunges up and pins me against the wall.
Now that he’s not addled with drugs, he’s surprisingly strong. It’s lucky I don’t really care anymore.
“Where’ve you been?” he spits out. “Busy getting fucked, whore?”
I stare at him calmly, refusing to be intimidated by the fist threatening me.
He brings it down on my cheek, and the force of it twists my head sideways.
“Never put out for me, whore, but you’re getting fucked by some rich guy, eh?”
Another punch, this time to my gut, and I’m on the floor, the wind knocked out of me.
“I can smell the money on you, cunt! And you never even bought me my shit!”
I lie wheezing on the floor, unable to defend myself as he takes a step back and aims his foot right at my stomach. He kicks me, again and again, as I try to protect myself with my hands, even while my brain is thanking him for doing what Damien inexplicably couldn’t. Killing me.
“I WANT MY FUCKING DRUGS!” he screams, his fists and feet landing on me, on my stomach, my face, my back, my legs.
Finally, he lets up, and I’m aware, with a pang of regret, that I’m still alive. But I’m incapable of moving. I stare up at him numbly as he kneels next to me, his hands rifling through my pockets. He finds Logan’s wad of cash.
“Knew it. Rich bitch. One thousand fucking dollars. You were holding out on me, weren’t you?”
I close my eyes in exhaustion as I hear him head into the tiny kitchen. He returns with a steak knife.
“You’re fucking dead,” he hisses, and then he plunges it into my stomach.
-
Two hours later, I’m still not dead.
What the fuck.
Ben is lying on the bed in a drug-induced stupor and I’m still on the floor. The hands I’ve placed on my stomach have somehow kept me from bleeding out. Damn survival instinct.
It’s wet beneath me, and when I drag a finger on the floor, it comes up red. Clearly, I’ve managed to bleed a lot. But I guess it takes more than a steak knife to the stomach to kill Seraphina Connor.
Unfortunately.
Spurred on by boredom more than anything else, I stand up, panting hard. I head to the bathroom and find an old sewing kit at the back of the medicine cabinet. It was my mother’s, and I don’t think I’ve ever used it as an adult.
But as I grab it, bittersweet memories of Mama teaching me to sew pillowcases come back to me.
The hardest thing is putting the thread in the needle. I’ll do that for you. The rest is easy. In and out, in and out. It’s nice to make things with our hands.
We didn’t have many moments like those. Mama was usually too tired.
I grab the needle and the single spool. I cut off a long piece of thread, slip it into the eye of the needle, like Mama taught me, and make a knot at the end. Then I bring it to my wound, gritting my teeth.
In and out. In and out.
The first time I push the needle into my skin, it doesn’t hurt half as much as I’d expected. But the second hole I make hurts like a bastard.
Still, I grit my teeth and continue. In and out. In and out.
At last, I’ve finished, and I look down at my work.
It doesn’t look as nice as the pillowcase did, but it’ll do the trick. The bleeding has slowed to a trickle, and I feel a little less hazy than before.
I grab the bloody steak knife on the way out. I’m not sure why. I slip it into my pocket, unheeding as it cuts slightly into my thigh. Another cut won’t make the slightest difference.
I walk out the back door quietly and start walking again. This time, I know exactly where I’m going.
The lake.
It’s a long walk, and I know I’m heading closer to Astley and to danger. This is where Devil is, and Angel. The people who tried to kill me.
Ben tried to kill me too, though. I guess pretty much everyone I’ve met in my short, sad little life, wants me dead.
It’s an odd, sobering thought.
The only person who probably won’t try to slit my throat if he sees me is the Monster. But it would take a lot more than imminent death for me to return to him.
As I walk, I’m aware of the blood trickling slowly from my body. I wonder if I’ll make it to Astley Lake, or if I’ll die on the way.
I guess I’m bound to die somewhere. Might as well be on the way to the only place that feels like home.
After an hour of walking steadily, I see it in the distance. A blue expanse of cold, crystal-clear water. Smoke seems to rise above it in the quiet moonlight. Large weeping willows branch out, casting its waters in shadow.
In certain areas, the surface glimmers with the reflection of moonlight, a pale, haunting image. I sink to my knees on the stretch of grass that surrounds it. I should have come here right away. This place is so peaceful. I feel at home.
I lie down next to it, letting the waters lap at my body. It feels good against the bruises, against the burning stab wound in my stomach. I’m so tired. So very tired.
“Seraphina Connor.”
My eyes flit open and a pang of anxiety chokes me.
“Relax. I don’t want to harm you.”
I grunt with pain as I sit up, and search in the darkness for the person who knows my name.
A stranger appears in the moonlight, wearing a suit, his hair slicked back on his head. He’s clean-shaven and smells of soap and tobacco. As he sits down on the grass in front of me, making an odd picture with his crisp pants and vest, he appraises me with small green eyes.
“What do you want?” I breathe.
He shows me a card that I can barely make out in the darkness of the night.
Samuel Mattson, Federal Bureau of Investigations.
The FBI.
I look up at him in confusion.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard of me,” he says quietly. “But I know a whole lot about you. You are not nearly as invisible as you might imagine.”
I can’t help the shiver that spreads down my back.
“Don’t worry,” he adds. “You’re not in trouble. For now. Actually, I want to help you.”
I stare at him suspiciously.
“I’m all by myself,” he murmurs. “See? I don’t pose a threat.
I’m acting on some information I received.
But I haven’t told a soul about it yet. I was waiting to talk to you, first. I’m sure you’ll help us, Seraphina.
I know you were held against your will at Devil Tower.
I know you’re the target of a lot of bad people. I’m on your side.”
I try to swallow, but my throat is parched. I keep my eyes on him, unable to utter a sound.
My muteness doesn’t deter him, though. He fumbles in his breast pocket and takes out a tiny chip.
“This is a nanochip,” he says, then looks at me shrewdly as I make a little movement of surprise.
“I can see you know about it. The contents on here could put several bad people away for a long while. They’re pretty much guaranteed to get the leader of Devil on the electric chair.
We’re going to fry that fucker. Wouldn’t that be nice?
You’d finally be free. I heard he’s been trying to kill you. ”
I continue to look at him dumbly.
“I’m asking for your cooperation,” he says, the smug little smirk forming on his lips telling me he has no doubt I’ll give it to him. “If you help me, your past will be forgotten. And you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you put a bad man on the chair. What do you say, Seraphina?”
I hesitate for another few moments, and then I nod my head.
His smile widens.