Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
Harrison was trying to lead us away from the truth. From the things he didn’t want us to see. In the most effective way possible,
by pretending to be what Jack really is. Good, all the way through.
And I don’t have to be an expert in demonology to know that whatever Harrison wants to get from these swirling, slurping things
that press in heavy around me, it isn’t good.
If things Jack and I did make this harder for him, I’m fiercely glad. I just wish we’d known, for a lot of reasons—and so
we could have thwarted him on purpose.
Harrison’s smile is oozing now and the creep-show chuckle has taken on undertones that settle into me and make my stomach heave. And I know I have to
give up the idea that the Harrison I thought I knew is in there still.
Or ever was.
Because clearly, it was all a lie. Whatever is happening here, now, is something Harrison chose. He made this happen—and he
had to know that doing this would hurt the rest of us.
As I think that I know, deep down, that hurting us was a feature, not a bug.
That hurts. But not as much as it’s going to hurt Jack and Nora. Knowing that makes me hurt even more.
“You’re a liar, Lexi,” Harrison clucks at me.
That chuckle reverberates, bouncing off the tower walls and slamming into me like feedback from a speaker, not that he seems to care.
“I know you now. I know what you are. Amelia thought she could bring you to Midas early and stop me?” He shakes his head, a dark joy spreading his lips wide.
“Instead, it gave me the opportunity to learn. We all have a weakness. You think I don’t know yours? ”
He leans in close. I’m trying not to hyperventilate, because of course, I have a million weaknesses and have no reason to
think I can stand up in the face of this—except the fact I’ve survived every dream version of this so far. And I’m not dead
yet.
It doesn’t feel like enough, but hey.
“Your self-righteous grandmother’s weakness was thinking you could stop this, so she had to die rather than make the deal,”
Harrison tells me, and his eyes are gleaming with satisfaction in a way I really don’t like. “If she’d given herself over
to the inevitable and surrendered to the demons the way she knew she should have, everyone would be just fine.”
I don’t know how to process what I think he’s telling me here. I also don’t know how it makes any sense, given that what demons
do is feed, but he’s not done.
“And your cousin Cleo.” He sneers. “She was selfish, Lexi. She could have stopped all of this by giving her Darling blood
to me freely, but she fought me instead.”
That processing I couldn’t quite manage happens fast, like a sucker punch. “You . . . She fought you?”
I inhale sharply against the pain and this knowledge I don’t want. He killed Cleo. And is involved in Amelia’s death, too,
even if he just pushed her to it. Because neither one of them would make a deal.
His deal.
“She shouldn’t have listened to that addled grandmother of hers,” Harrison is seething at me.
“Virginia always was a mess, Lexi. A lot like you.” That’s meant as an insult, I’m sure, but I remember meeting the old woman’s gaze, and refuse to be insulted.
He keeps going. “Cleo should have let it be. She shouldn’t have tried to save you from what was coming.
She should have known that the harbinger always has a choice.
They all should have known that you and only you have the choice. ”
That choice thing again. He’s been harping on that this whole time, and I thought it was benevolent. I thought he cared about me and the kind of life I was living, or what Midas was asking of me. Now I get that he only wanted me to have a choice
so that I’d choose his way.
The demon way.
He’s scowling now, and I can tell he expected me to be falling apart. Wailing, maybe. Shaking and cowering in fear. Or convinced
my tenuous sanity had finally cracked up for good.
I can tell he’s underestimated me and it gives me a strength I didn’t know I had in me. To look him in the eye without even
a little cower—even if my insides are shaking apart.
“What choice did you make, Harrison?” I ask him.
He inhales—dramatically, in my opinion—and lets out a slow exhale that ends up another chuckle. “I always do like your questions.
Insightful girl, despite how disastrously messy you are. I’m no harbinger. I’m not bound to any choice. I am a founding family ancestor. If my ancestors could do it, why not me?”
Harrison asks this as though it’s the most sensible thing in the world, and it’s wild that no one asked this before. He shakes his head in a kind of aw, shucks way that is actually terrifying under these circumstances, and I have to fight to maintain my composure.
“Why should we be bound to a bargain made two centuries ago when this place was little more than mud?” he demands. “Why not
ask for more?”
“More horrible slurping deaths?” I suggest, my voice maybe a little higher pitched than necessary.
But he doesn’t even hear me. “More power. More chaos.” His gaze is getting flat and hot, not exactly markers of sanity, and
I would know. “More for me, Lexi. My father thought he could weasel his way out of the original deal our forefathers made, and both he and my mother died. So I dedicated my life to knowing everything about that deal so I could make my own. When I finally had all the pieces,
my wife refused to join me, and she died. Bloody. Brutal. And completely avoidable.”
I look for some kind of grief in him, because maybe that would be the place to press for weakness, but if he ever felt anything
for these people—his family—it’s long gone.
There’s only a frustrated kind of disgust inside him now when he turns his gaze to me.
And gets quiet. And worse, sure. “They were weak, but I am strong. With knowledge. With understanding. With blood. I made my deal, and I am already imbued with the strength and power to do what needs to be done.”
“Great,” I manage to say, also trying to keep it quiet, like we’re just having a friendly chat here in the tower of hell.
“Then you don’t need me.”
Harrison looks disappointed in me and for once, I don’t give one shit about letting someone down. “Once you give me your blood
freely, the deal will be sealed for eternity. I will decide who lives and who dies. Who succeeds, who prospers. I will decide, and I will shape Midas as I see fit. And you can join me, Lexi. You can be powerful, too.”
The things he’s saying swirl around inside me like foul demons all their own, but the theme seems pretty obvious. I have to
give my blood freely. I have to choose to make this deal for him to get what he’s after.
Which, apparently, is being the local god of Midas, Iowa.
I might have come to like this place, and some of the people in it. A lot more than I would have thought possible that day we missed our connection in Des Moines. But I still think king of the small town no one’s heard of sounds like a piss-poor reason to throw in with the murderous demon horde.
It’s very male, I think. Small men are always grasping for control in the strangest places, thinking that makes them big.
Even now, after killing Cleo, contributing to Amelia’s death, and teeing up mine, he doesn’t seem to realize that he isn’t the one who’ll have all that power when this happens.
“How powerful can you really be?” I ask him, trying to sound bored. It doesn’t quite play, but that’s okay. By standing up
to him at all, I’m frustrating him. I can see it in his eyes. “If you have to make a deal, Harrison, I’m pretty sure you’re
not the one with the power.”
He moves closer, eyes wild and filled with hate. How could he hide so much hate? Right here in front of me this whole time? “Life is about sacrifice, Lexi. I’m alive to tell the tale of mine. Your grandmother?
Your cousin? Not so much. I know it isn’t in your nature, but I believe in you.” He leans in closer. “Be smarter, Lexi. Be
stronger. I’ve seen it in you. Deep down, under everything, there is the spark of something like me.”
It isn’t in your nature, but I believe in you. That stings, even though I know it shouldn’t, because he wants it to sting. He’s hinting at every shitty thing that I’ve always worried about. My father calling me irredeemably crazy and
locking me up. Everyone I love seeing how much more of a problem I am than a solution. All the ways I’ve been lost.
The hint is better than a direct hit, because it leaves me to do my own work. Because I know how to hurt myself better than
anyone else ever could.
But Harrison made a miscalculation. He thought getting to know me would give him an edge. That he’d learn my weaknesses and use them against me—or better yet, point me at them and let me shred myself.
Instead, while he was looking for ways to break me, I found a home. I found a place where I finally make sense. I found people
who don’t see my weaknesses as flaws. I watched my brother accept the reality of demons rather than hold fast to the idea I might be lost.
Time in Midas only gave me strength. Real strength—not whatever he’s abusing.
I have to use it now. I know that. “Why would I ever give you my blood freely? I’d rather die.”
He clucks his tongue, like he feels sorry for me. “Yes, you would. You think I don’t know that? How lucky that you come with a twin brother. I don’t have to ask Logan to make a choice.
I can just rip off his skin in strips and feed it to my friends until you do.”
I can’t falter, I know I can’t, but the threat makes my entire body freeze with terror. I have to remind myself to breathe.
I have to order myself not to break down.
“This sweet little romance you’ve built with my uptight grandson won’t last past his evisceration, will it?” He doesn’t wait
for me to answer and that’s actually a gift, because the threats keep rolling and they’re all hideous, but my nervous system
literally can’t handle them. They roll past me into the dank, dark horror and become a part of it. “Nora, that fucking foundling?”