Chapter 19 Kate #2
“Which is exactly why we need to hear what he has to say.” Eric’s eyes never left Zane, and I saw the anger there, and the fear. But I also saw understanding. Eric knew a bit about having ties to a demon. “Keep going.”
Allie hadn’t moved from her spot by the door, but her face had gone pale. She was staring at Zane as if she’d never seen him before. Like everything she thought she knew had just shattered.
“Explain,” I said, my voice cold.
Zane flinched as if I’d slapped him. Good. Let him flinch. Let him feel some fraction of the fear Trevor must have felt.
But even as I thought it, another part of me saw the way his shoulders were curving inward, the way his whole body seemed to be trying to make itself smaller. The way he couldn’t meet my eyes.
“He’s been using me. Since I was ten.” Zane’s voice had dropped to barely above a whisper.
“Small things at first. Deliver a message to someone. Leave a mark on a door. I didn’t know what any of it meant.
I didn’t even know what he was, not really.
He just...he was my dad. The dad who’d never been around, who showed up out of nowhere when I turned nine and said he wanted to be part of my life. ”
He laughed, and the sound was so hollow, so utterly devoid of humor, that something in my chest cracked despite my fury.
“My mom was thrilled. We were flat broke, and she’d been a single parent my whole life, working two jobs, barely keeping us afloat. And suddenly, this guy she’d been with once was offering to help. She didn’t ask questions. Neither did I. We were both so goddamn desperate to believe.”
“He had you deliver messages,” Eric said, his voice tight. “What kind?”
“Weird stuff. Tell the man at the bookstore that the shipment is delayed. Leave this symbol on the door of some church.” Zane spread his hands.
“I didn’t understand any of it. But when I did what he asked, things were easier.
Better. My mom got a promotion she’d been passed over for three times.
I aced a test I hadn’t studied for. Little things. Good things.”
His face darkened.
“And when I didn’t...”
He trailed off. His jaw tightened, and I watched him wrestle with something—some memory he didn’t want to share but knew he had to.
“What happened when you didn’t?” I pressed.
“My mom got sick once. Really sick.” His voice had gone hoarse.
“The doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong.
She was in the hospital for a week, and they kept running tests, but nothing made sense.
Nothing worked. She was dying, and I couldn’t—I didn’t—” He broke off, breathing hard.
“There was something he’d asked me to do.
Something I’d been putting off because it felt wrong.
I did it.” Zane’s hands were shaking again.
“She was fine the next day. Just...fine. Like nothing had happened. The doctors called it a miracle.”
The silence that followed was suffocating. I could hear the old house settling around us, creaks and groans that usually faded into background noise but now seemed deafening.
“He was conditioning you,” Eric said quietly.
“I know that now. But I was a kid, and I wanted a dad. Especially after Mom was killed. I was fourteen. Car accident. That’s when I got really tight with Sam—that’s what he called himself as my dad.”
He dragged his fingers through his hair. “I should have figured it out by then. It shouldn’t have been so easy for a kid to keep an apartment. I never had a clue, though.”
“Convenient,” Eddie muttered. “Do whatever Daddy wants and blame it on manipulation.”
“Eddie,” I warned.
“No, he’s right.” Zane’s voice was steady now, steadier than it had any right to be. “It is convenient. It’s also true. Both things can be real at the same time.”
Zane met my eyes for the first time since his confession had started. What I saw there wasn’t defiance or excuses or even hope. It was pure, unvarnished self-loathing.
“I didn’t know what he was. I thought maybe he was in the mob, or some kind of secret society.
And I told myself the stuff he asked me to do wasn’t that bad.
I mean, I never hurt anyone—or at least, I don’t think it did.
And he told me about the good things he did.
About how he could save lives. How he could heal. ”
I stiffened, thinking about Eric and the rite that had saved me.
“I told myself he was some kind of immortal protector,” Zane continued. “Some awesome guy getting down and dirty in disguise as he worked behind the scenes to fight evil.” His voice cracked. “How pathetic is that? A teenager still believing in fairy tales.”
I thought about Allie. About how badly she’d wanted to believe the best of people, even when the evidence pointed elsewhere. About how easy it was, when you were young and desperate and lonely, to believe in simple narratives. Good guys and bad guys. Heroes and villains. Fathers who loved you.
“Not pathetic,” I said, and the words surprised me. “Human.”
Zane looked at me like I’d spoken a foreign language. Like kindness was the last thing he’d expected—and the one thing he couldn’t handle.
He managed a small smile, then nodded. “He disappeared almost two years ago,” he said, the timeline matching when Allie had closed the gate. “And even though I’d told myself he was this noble guy, I was secretly relieved. I wanted him gone.”
He sucked in a breath. “But now he wants out. Wherever he’s stuck, he’s managed to get little bits out. Just thoughts, maybe telepathy. I don’t know. But he talks to me. Not often, but he does.”
“He told you how to open the portal.”
He nodded, looking even more miserable.
“Trevor,” Eric said, and the name landed between us like a blade.
Zane’s whole body contracted. Shoulders curving in, head dropping, arms wrapping around himself like he could physically hold himself together. When he spoke, his voice was wrecked.
“Sam told me to mark him. Said the boy needed to be marked. For later.” His hands came up, pressing against his face, and his next words were muffled, broken. “I didn’t know what it meant. I thought it was protection, maybe. Or—I don’t know.”
His voice cracked completely. He stood there, this kid who’d walked into our school with easy confidence and a charming smile, and he shattered in front of us.
“I didn’t know it would kill him. I swear to God, I didn’t know his blood would open—that he would—that I was—”
He couldn’t finish. Silent sobs wracked his body, and he pressed his hands harder against his face like he could push the grief back inside.
“Bullshit.” Eddie’s voice was hard. “You expect us to believe that load of horseshit?”
“I believe him.”
Everyone turned to look at Eric. He’d been silent since Zane started talking about Trevor, his face unreadable.
But now he stepped forward. “I know what it’s like,” Eric said, his voice low.
“To have something inside you that you didn’t ask for.
Something that makes you do things you don’t understand. Things you can’t stop.”
Zane stared at him.
Eric turned to look at me and Allie. “You both saw what I did when that fucker got unbound inside me. I was horrible, and most horrible of all to both of you.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“I almost hurt the people I love most,” he told Zane. “My daughter. Her mother. I wasn’t in control. I was a passenger in my own body, watching myself become a monster.”
The room had gone very still.
“You didn’t choose this,” Eric continued. “You didn’t have a choice in what he did to you, or what he made you carry, or what he turned you into while you’re too young and too desperate and too goddamn trusting to know any better. The only thing you get to choose is what you do next.”
Allie moved then, stepping forward to stand near Zane. She didn’t touch him, didn’t offer comfort exactly, but she was there. Present.
“I get it too,” she said quietly. “I know what it’s like to carry something inside you that scares you.
To wonder if you’re dangerous. To have people look at you and see a threat instead of a person.
” She glanced at Eric, then back at Zane.
“The only difference between us is that I had people who told me the truth. Who helped me understand what I was dealing with. You had a demon whispering lies.”
Zane stared at her like she’d thrown him a lifeline he didn’t deserve.
And I felt it all.
Disgust, hot and thick in my throat—because this boy had marked one of my students for death, had helped that thing in my basement claim a child’s life, and no amount of “I didn’t know” would ever bring Trevor back.
Understanding, bitter as it was—because I’d seen what Eric had gone through, too.
Pride, strange and unexpected, because it took courage to stand in front of us and confess. To hand us a loaded weapon and wait to see if we’d use it. Most people ran from their sins. This kid was running toward accountability.
Pride in my daughter, too. For seeing past her own fear to recognize a kindred spirit.
And sadness. God, the sadness. Because there was no fixing this. No time machine, no way to unsay the words that had damned Trevor or undo the mark that had killed him. The past was written in blood, and all any of us could do was carry the weight of it forward.
Eric took a step closer to Zane, waiting until the boy’s sobs had quieted to ragged breathing. Until the hands dropped, and the blotchy, tear-streaked face was visible.
“Look at me,” Eric said.
Zane looked. He was expecting condemnation—I could see it in the set of his jaw, the way he braced himself.