30. Jet
JET
The room is empty. I know it before I even step inside.
I reach for my gun, instinct, but remember both the Glock and the small pistol are gone.
“Amal?” I speak. Maybe she’s in the bathroom.
But the silence is wrong.
My towel is still on the foot of the bed from where I’d tossed it when I got dressed. I knock on the bathroom door.
“Amal?” I ask again, my voice sharper, my heart beating in slow thuds.
Still no answer.
I open the door and just as I thought, the bathroom is empty. I see where she discarded her towel after her shower. I look around the room. I wasn’t gone more than ten minutes. Fifteen at most. Shit. I shouldn’t have left her, not for a second.
I’m about to stalk out to find Jameson and demand to know where my wife is when I see the bed’s been disturbed.
One of the pillows is askew. I move it and behind it, I find her mother’s diary.
She must have shoved it here quickly because it’s open and a page is bent.
I know how she took care of this. How important it is to her.
Someone must have surprised her for her to shove it under the pillow like this. She was hiding it.
I straighten out the bent page with the intention of closing the diary when something in the passage catches my eye. A single sentence the ink of which is smeared by droplets. Tears. I’m sure.
I knew before I took the test. Knew before I peed on the stupid stick. I know my body although ever since that night, it hasn’t been mine. I can tell you exactly how far along I am, too. I tried to get the test sooner but it’s not like I’m free to come and go as I please. Thank God for Kelly.
Two months.
Two months I’ve been carrying their monster in me. Growing another monster.
A baby, not a monster. That’s what Kelly says. It’s half mine. I have to stop calling it a monster. But every time I think about it, I’m sick to my stomach. I think of him, of all of them, touching me. Their hands on me. Inside me.
God I want to throw up and it’s not nausea from the pregnancy. Shit. Shit. This is a nightmare except that a nightmare has an ending, and this is only the beginning. And I will never wake up from it.
It takes my brain a few minutes to process what I think I’m reading.
I check the date of the entry and although I can’t see the month or day, I see the year. The entry is from twenty-three years ago.
Feeling a chill, I turn a few pages and read another:
I can’t get rid of it. I thought I could.
But when I got there, I couldn’t go through with it.
It’s not for any reason I can make sense of.
I don’t believe in any god. If one existed, he’d have struck the beasts down.
If there was a god, he wouldn’t have allowed this to happen to me!
But it happens every day, doesn’t it? Women are raped every fucking day, aren’t we? But like this? Like they did me?
But she’s my baby too.
What if she has the monster’s face? What will I do? No, I can’t think about that so instead, I imagine tiny hands and feet and a little face. Half her blood is mine. That means something.
Oh! Oh! I feel her! There. Again.
It’s a tiny fluttering like a butterfly’s wings. Timed perfectly. Like she wants to tell me it’s okay. She wants to say she’s not a monster because monsters don’t touch you with butterfly wings. Monsters grip you with fingers that dig into your flesh to leave marks.
She. It’s a girl. I know it. I feel it. At least it’s not going to be a boy because boys become men and men become monsters.
I need to figure this out. Stay strong. Because if I don’t get away, she’s just as doomed as me.
The entry ends there. There are doodles in the corners, the same thing she keeps drawing. There’s something familiar about them.
I need to find Amal.
As if on cue, the door opens and for the briefest most fleeting, most stupid moment, I feel a relief like I have never felt because for that instant, I think it’s her. I think it’s Amal.
But that relief is replaced quickly by a dark dread when I see Robertson moving out of the way to allow Senna to enter.
That same sensation I’d felt when I’d first met the man overcomes me. It’s a feeling of ants crawling over my entire body and I’m unable to move. To swipe them away.
I shove it all down. Bury every emotion. It takes all I have but I do it.
“Where is my wife?” I demand, dropping the diary and stalking toward him. “Where is she?”
Senna continues to take in the room before he bothers to look at me, all calm confidence in that grin I hate.
I think about Sev. About what they did to him. I imagine Councilor Senna standing on his raised dais condemning my brother to have the mark of The Society removed by branding.
“Where the fuck is my wife?” I say in red-hot fury as dread grips me. If they hurt her, if they fucking hurt her, I will kill them! I stalk toward Senna. He’s barely six feet tall and I expect him to cower, but he doesn’t.
“Crude language, Mr. Blackstone,” Senna says.
Two soldiers that must have been standing outside stalks into the room. One has an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder like we’re at fucking war. The other stalks right past Senna and stops me in my tracks.
“Where the fuck is my wife?” I demand, the soldier holding me back from him because I could snap his neck single-handed if he was unguarded.
He looks me over and raises his brows, a curl to his lip when he speaks.
“But I suppose I shouldn’t expect anything different from you. I don’t know where your wife is. Why would I? Perhaps she’s left you.”
I shove an elbow into the gut of the soldier and he grunts, curling in on himself.
The instant he does, I smash the back of my fist into his nose hard enough to break it.
The soldier’s hands fly to his face, and I grab his arm and twist it behind him, shifting our positions, hearing the very satisfying crack of a bone as I force him to his knees.
From his holster I take his gun and put it to the side of his head.
“Where the fuck is my wife?” I demand as the man with the automatic points his weapon at me and two more soldiers appear.
When they take a step, I cock the gun.
Robertson appears and holds up his hand signaling that no one shoot.
“Your wife is being prepared,” Robertson offers, sounding very put off. “What exactly is this? Remove your weapon from that man. Good God, what did you do to him?”
I look past Senna to him. “What the fuck to do you mean, prepared?” I ask, keeping the gun exactly where it is.
“For the masquerade, of course. I can assure you she is quite safe and well looked after.”
“Where is she?”’
“In her dressing room. Please, some decorum, Mr. Blackstone and we will explain. Now, can you behave in a decent manner? Our men are standing down. I ask you to do the same. Really, Mr. Blackstone.” When I make no move, he continues.
“If you’d like your wife to see you alive rather than dead, I suggest you comply. ”
The eager beaver soldier raises his gun again taking aim at my chest with a grin that says please don’t comply.
I’m outnumbered. And he’s got Amal.
I de-cock the weapon and shove the soldier with the broken nose and arm to the floor.
“There,” I grit out, tossing the gun onto the bed.
One of his soldiers gets it and helps the man on the floor to get out of the way.
“Now we can talk like civilized men,” Senna says, although I see the blood that’s ruined the carpet. “Mrs. Blackstone’s costume I assume is more opulent than those of the Blackstone brothers, Master Robertson?” he asks.
“Yes, of course. Which is why they’ve taken her to the dressing room. You’ll understand once you see her,” Robertson says.
“The Scots do things differently than we do in the states, Jethro,” Senna explains like I’m a fucking toddler. “Much more formal. Hierarchical.”
“I don’t really give a fuck. Take me to her now or I swear—”
“You will see her at the ball. As soon as you’re dressed.
” Just then, Robertson signals to a servant who must be waiting just outside to enter.
He’s carrying a garment bag and a pair of high boots.
“Your costume is here. As soon as you’re ready, I will show you to the great hall where you will be reunited your wife,” Robertson says.
Senna clears his throat. “And I’m here to tell you that at you and Severin’s insistence, we’ve expedited the paperwork. It’ll be ready for you to sign this evening. Once it’s signed, you are free to leave.”
I look at Senna, then Robertson, then back at Senna. “Just like that. We’re free to leave. All of us?” I ask because I know the games The Society likes to play.
Senna nods and watches me, waiting for my reaction.
“Why this ball? Why do we need to attend?” I ask.
“Oh, Jethro. Just let them have this,” Senna says. “Traditions are important to The Society and doubly so here in the old world. Once our business is concluded, you will leave with your brother and the woman. I tell no lie.”
Robertson has instructed the servant to take whatever costume he’s got for me out of the garment bag.
As he hangs it on the closet door and brushes the fabric, Robertson picks up the mask and looks like he’s dusting it off.
Everything is plain and black, no adornment, no luxurious fabrics.
I know what that means in The Society. We are the lowest of the low.
So, this is a shaming. Publicly displaying us in a room full of Society royalty, perhaps a warning to some, or simply for their sick pleasure.
Well, fuck it. If it gets us off the island, fuck it.
“Fine. Get out. My brother and I will find our way to the great hall where I’d better see my wife.”
Although there’s a moment, they all make their way to the door. Just before they close it, I call out to Senna
“Councilor,” he stops. Turns his head to watch me cross the room to the fireplace which is still crackling.
“If you’re fucking lying, if anything happens to my wife or my brother,” I start, picking up a brass poker.
“I will run you through with this damn poker. Old world ceremony and all.” Mother fucker.