Chapter Thirty-Five
Thirty-five
“Get ready for the scariest thing you’ve ever seen!”
Aurelia’s high-pitched giggle rings through the late-afternoon air as she strides out from behind the shed in the back corner of Amelia and Krystal’s yard wearing what is supposed to be a turkey costume. Trailing behind, her little sister, Kassidy, picks up rogue feathers that flutter to the grass.
“Isn’t it scary?” Aurelia asks me. “We just ate me!”
“Absolutely terrifying,” I agree from where I sit on the top step of their deck, nursing the mug of tea Amelia handed me.
“Aurelia!” Amelia exclaims. “Take it off. We have to return it to school on Monday in one piece and it’s practically deteriorating.”
“Maybe her ruining it wouldn’t be the worst thing.” Krystal joins us on the deck as Aurelia squawks in protest. “The musical was cute and all, but the costumes could use a refresh.”
Amelia rolls her eyes fondly, but it’s impossible to miss the fear lodged deep in her gaze.
The reality that all of this—eating turkey and stuffing crowded around the table—almost didn’t happen.
She reaches for Krystal, something I’ve noticed her do a lot in the three days since we flew back to Tarrentown with Poppi and Yasmine after getting cleared to come home.
Like Krystal, they both are on the road to a quick recovery.
Me, less quick.
“You may not have been poisoned like the rest of us, but you were pretty roughed up,” Krystal explained to me when I woke in the hospital a week ago.
She was beside me, already having been cleared by the hospital she, Poppi, and Yasmine had been taken to after being found unconscious at Santa Monica Pier.
“Bad concussion, some bruised ribs. A horrible wound on your side that they think might be from a bear or cougar? It’s like you got mauled.
You’ve got enough stitches in you to knit a sweater.
And you want to know the most fucked-up thing? ”
I didn’t, but I never thought I’d hear another word out of her mouth, so I clung to each. “What?”
“You were found in a dress. Like, a whole-ass gown. All glammed up like you were going to the Met Gala or some shit.”
I was grateful, in that moment, to be alive. To be back in the overworld. My world.
I was less grateful when I remembered the cost.
Luke made a deal with the devil to save me. Got me to the hospital in time for doctors to stitch me back together. Listed Krystal and Amelia as my emergency contacts so I wouldn’t wake up alone.
And then he disappeared.
“I don’t want to take it off.” Aurelia stomps up the steps, pouting. Kassidy has abandoned her position as feather collector in favor of pulling out fistfuls of grass.
“You can’t eat dessert with it on,” Amelia wagers. At the mention of dessert, Aurelia’s eyes light up. The costume is in her mother’s hands before I can blink.
“Dessert time!” Aurelia announces, running inside. Krystal scoops Kassidy up, holding her extra tight before pressing a kiss to her cheek and handing her to Amelia.
“Are you coming in?” Amelia asks us.
“In a few. Start without us, babe,” Krystal tells her.
Amelia smiles softly before closing the door. Krystal drops onto the step beside me.
“You don’t have to drink that.” She nods at the mug in my hands. “I know you hate tea.”
I laugh. Or, try to. It hasn’t come easy the past few days. It’s like the mechanical box inside my chest that produces the sound is broken. “Thanks. Not just for the leaf water, but for letting me stay with you and join for Thanksgiving. It’s been a really lovely day.”
Krystal nudges my shoulder. “Of course. You can stay as long as you like. You don’t need to rush to find a new apartment.”
I’ve visited my apartment once to get more clothes, contacts, and my spare pair of glasses.
Even with Beliar gone now, going back makes me sweat.
The leasing company couldn’t so much as give me a window screen after weeks of asking, but since I was nearly presumed dead, they’re letting me out of my lease a few months early. Saints, they are.
“If you don’t feel up to coming back to work on Monday with me, that’s okay, too. I’m sure things will be a wreck for the foreseeable future as Ted takes Luke’s position.”
“That should be interesting,” I say, but the mention of Luke unmoors me. Since waking up in the hospital, I’ve tried to do anything, everything, but think of him. Once my stitches heal and bruises fade, I’ll have no indication that the events of the past two weeks were real.
Sleep has helped, though I always wake in a cold sweat, the last dregs of a nightmare finishing its course. I’ve also regained my appetite. Between my ravenous hunger and slow-as-molasses healing, I’ve never been more assured that I didn’t permanently pick up some demon traits.
“How’d it go?” Krystal asks, nodding to my phone. “Did he answer?”
“First ring.” I swallow down the lump that rose in my throat thirty minutes ago when I stepped outside to finally call my ex.
When Krystal returned my phone, I had a dozen missed texts and voicemails from him since our disappearance and reappearance made national news.
“It went fine. I apologized for…leaving like I did. He wanted closure and to make sure I was okay. He’s with someone new, so, that’s great for him. ”
I can’t entirely keep the bitterness out of my tone, though it’s undeserved. As far as exes go, mine could be much worse.
“I’m proud of you,” Krystal says. “Except you lied.”
“About?”
“You’re not okay.” Krystal gives me a small, sad smile. “You have a tell, you know.”
“A tell?”
“When you’re lying. You twist the ring on your finger.”
I look down at the ring my parents got me. Its purple amethyst gem shimmers in the dwindling sunlight. “I…didn’t realize I had a tell.”
I wonder if she can see what else I’m keeping from her. In the hospital, she asked if I remembered anything.
Everything, I wanted to say as it all came flooding back. “Do you remember anything?”
Krystal frowned, a faraway look in her eyes. “Not really. I remember pulling over on the side of the road to ask if a man lying in the grass was alright. And then nothing but glimpses. Or more like…feelings. Fear and hopelessness, most of all. They think we were kidnapped.”
“Who are we?”
“You and me, Poppi, and a woman named Yasmine. Madeline also disappeared around the same time as us. We didn’t think either of you would show up, but you did, so maybe she will, too.”
My heart panged at the memory of Madeline getting skewered through the chest. I wanted to tell the truth so her family could get closure, but I didn’t know how. “You’re okay?”
“Sure thing, babe.” Krystal smiled. Then, as if taking a real second to think about it, she sighed. “No. I feel so fucked up. We were targeted, Brie. This is the shit Netflix makes documentaries about. It’s fucking terrifying. But we’re alive. Two badass bitches, we are.”
“The baddest,” I agreed.
Now, I stand up. “I know I said I was stuffed twenty minutes ago, but that was twenty minutes ago, and dessert stomach is a thing.”
Before I can leave, Krystal grabs my wrist.
“Wait,” she says. “I haven’t been completely honest with you.”
I sit back down. The last time somebody “wasn’t completely honest” with me I found out their brother was the devil, and they, at one point, were also the devil. Needless to say, I’m on edge.
But this is Krystal—not Luke. She’s beside me in a thick caramel sweater and olive corduroy flared pants, her coily hair revived from its matted state from when I found her at Beliar’s. Whatever she’s been keeping from me can’t be worse than what I’m keeping from her.
“What is it?” I ask. She gazes at her backyard—at the shed and playset and woods beyond it.
“In the hospital, after you woke up, you asked me if I remembered anything, and I told you no. But I lied. I don’t remember much, but I remember you.” Tears glisten in her eyes. “You weren’t like the rest of us. You saved us. Luke was with you, wasn’t he?”
My throat lump returns. “He was.”
“I thought so. I remember Poppi asked about him being Jesus and what you told me in the van—that it was all just a bad dream.” She sucks down a breath.
“I know you said that to protect me. And I’m going to let you, because I’m not looking for details on where we were and what happened.
I just want you to know how grateful I am that you and Luke got us home. ”
“I didn’t want Kassidy and Aurelia to have to grow up without you,” I admit. “Or for Amelia to lose you. And fine, maybe part of it was a little self-serving on my end because I don’t want to work at Curated Care if you’re not there with me. How would I ever survive?”
A weepy snort escapes her. She pulls me into a hug and I clutch her tightly. “You’re a good friend, Brie. You deserve to be happy.”
“I am happy.” It’s a knee-jerk response because I know it should be true.
I lived and made it back to the overworld.
We rescued Krystal and Poppi and Yasmine.
I have a warm bed in a house full of love and people who have accepted me as their own.
I sit beside a true friend, my first since pushing away all of mine after my parents died.
She gives me a knowing look, glancing at my ring, which my fingers are subconsciously twisting. Traitors.
“You’ve been different since we’ve gotten back,” she continues. “We all have, but whenever Luke comes up, you get sad. I know I always joked about you two getting together, and then I felt awful about it because apparently he kidnapped us—”
“He didn’t kidnap us,” I reiterate. That was the conclusion the police jumped to because Luke disappeared at the same time as us.
I couldn’t tell them the complete truth, but I was sure to clear Luke’s name.
Though him disappearing didn’t help. “We teamed up to save you. But along the way, things got kind of…personal. I started falling for him.”