49. Evelyn
“I’m not going to tell you twice. Naughty children get punished, and your parents know you are both very naughty, don’t they? They will be disappointed to know that you remain stubborn and disobedient. They thought they’d beat that out of you.”
Oh God, I couldn’t believe that was me. My voice. I was breaking my own heart, but it would’ve worked on me. Those words were all the ones that horrified me, that still woke me in the middle of a nightmare, leaving me calling out for my grandmother.
“I will have to tell them how disobedient you’ve been,” I said, feigning towards the door. The bigger one, the sister, grabbed my pant leg.
“No!”
The little boy clasped her free hand, shaking with fear. I smelled urine and knew it was his. I couldn’t afford to cry.
This was their life or death.
“Are you ready to do as I say?”
“Yes, miss. Yes, please, don’t tell them I was bad.”
I lifted my chin, gesturing towards the window.
“Get out there, then. That’s what they want.”
Two sets of legs clamoured, jumping into Zach’s arms. I didn’t have to tell him what to do. With thirteen children in tow, and black forest beckoning them, he had them all hold hands. Laszlo saved him from a predator, and with how he looked over his flock, I knew that was the tip of the iceberg.
Returning to my robe, I took a steadying inhale, and started assembling the bomb.
Applause from the ballroom, so loud that I could hear it back in the bowels of the house.
It was almost time. They’d be here soon.
I knew what to look for. Laszlo told me the tunnel was on the far wall, beside one of the oil portraits of someone long dead.
There was a bureau there, a large, wooden antique.
It would be the perfect place to place the explosive.
I’d practiced these motions on fake materials until it was muscle memory. I knew I couldn’t rely on remaining calm when I was literally assembling a bomb.
My hands trembled, and I called back on my mantra. The thing gem cutters relied on for those tricky cuts, the ones that could destroy a million-dollar gem.
“With each breath in, there is power. With each exhale goes doubt. With each breath in, there is calm. With each exhale, I expel fear. I exist in the light, and my path is clear.”
Another breath, and my fingers came back under my control.
Footsteps down the hall.
My screwdriver slipped.
“No,” I hissed, and swatted the panic away. Footsteps were closer. The screw turned into place.
It was a remote detonator, and Laszlo gave me strict instructions. Once they were in the room, and saw the children missing, they would put the entire mansion on lockdown. I had to be out before then.
Was he going to make it out before then?
I wrapped the bomb in the robe, and then I set it.
I slipped out the window, closing it behind me. The kids were already gone. The woods were dark, but the lawn was illuminated by the full moon. The penumbral eclipse had begun, the outer shadow touching the lunar disc. The moon had a sickly red hue.
A blood moon.
I spent so much time worrying about the party, about planting the bomb, about getting out, that I hadn’t considered how it would feel to be in nature at night under a blood moon eclipse.
It felt like the first night I ran away at sixteen to escape an arranged marriage to my half-brother.
Mount Aer was secluded, and it took me hours to descend the mountain. Then there was Satan’s Kingdom, the forest beneath the mountain.
I’d been terrified to wade into it, but I forced myself to be brave.
I would be brave now.
For Laszlo.
For his revenge.
For the sister he could have had.
I set off towards the woods, pulling on my night vision goggles. Leaves crunched beneath my feet. Walkie-talkies crackled in the distance. I shot my gaze over my shoulders.
Did I hear something closer?
I was on edge. Of course I was! Were they in the room, yet? Could they see me, if they looked out the window? I moved faster, begging my heart to quiet so that I could listen. Rhythmic crunching. Were those the kids ahead of me? Zach?
Even once I stopped walking, those sounds kept moving, faster. Someone was there. Someone was after me. I hoped it was a guard, but there was a sour taste in my mouth that told me it was something worse.
Someone worse.
I spun in the opposite direction.
I wouldn’t lead him to those kids.
The darker parts of the forest closed in around me as I ran in the opposite direction of the getaway vehicle.
The top of my foot struck a root, and I stumbled forward. A tree broke my fall, a twig nearly stabbing my eye. I pushed off from it, sprinting faster, keeping my knees up as high as I could manage.
A blow from behind knocked me to my knees, and sickness rose in my throat as my pursuer spoke one single word.
“Belle.”
Jimmy.
Nothingness claimed me.