“You can stop calling, Milayna. He doesn’t have his phone with him,” Mrs. Roberts said on the other end of the line.
“Oh.” Several moments of silence stretched between us before I said, “Have you heard anything?”
“No.” She started to cry.
“I’m so sorry.” My voice was thick around the huge lump in my throat.
She clicked off the line. The last thing I heard was a mother’s sobs over her missing son.
***
I’m sitting on the swing on our back deck. The same swing Chay and I sat on together hundreds of times. I sway slowly, waiting for him. He jumps the back fence, and I smile.
“Hi,” he says, jogging up the deck stairs. Bending down, he kisses me before sitting next to me. He threads our fingers together, smiling.
“Hey,” I say. “I wondered when you’d get here. What took you so long?”
“There was something I had to do first,” he answers.
“Well, I’m glad you’re here now.” I lay my head on the back of the swing and watch the sun slowly creep below the horizon. The sky is painted in shades of orange and yellow as the last rays shine through the puffy, white clouds. “Pretty.”
“Yeah,” he answers with a squeeze of my hand. “I love you, Milayna. Always remember that.”
Turning to look at him, I watch as he slowly fades away. I look down where our hands are intertwined. I don’t see his hand, but a sickly gray one with long, black nails. I look up. A demon sits next to me, smiling a grotesque smile. Razor-like teeth hanging below its lip.
“He warned you he’d take away the ones you loved,” the demon hisses.
I sat up in bed, screaming. Muriel jumped out of her bed and hurried to me. “Milayna? It was just a dream,” she said, her voice soft and soothing.
My parents ran into the room. My mom sat on the edge of the bed, pushing the hair out of my face. “Another nightmare?”
I nodded my head, hot tears burning my eyes.
My mom lay down next to me and wrapped me in her arms. I closed my eyes, but I still saw images of Chay disappearing and a demon taking his place, so I kept my eyes open. I didn’t go back to sleep. Lying in the dark, I wondered where Chay was. What he was doing. If he was okay.
It’d been a week and no one had heard from him.
***
Two weeks. Still no word from Chay and no new visions of someone trying to kill me. I wouldn’t admit to myself that the visions stopping had anything to do with Chay’s disappearance. It was just a coincidence. That was all.
“Mil-lay-na,” Friendly called. I hadn’t seen the hobgoblins since before Chay left. I’d hoped they were gone for good. I should have known better. Until Abaddon was out of my life, the hobgoblins would be around.
With a sigh, I walked outside. “What do you want?”
“Nice digs,” Scarface said with a scowl.
My family and I had finally moved out of Muriel’s and rented a small house just a few doors down from our old one. We were close enough to oversee construction on our new house, but we had our own home—no more sharing a room with Muriel or fighting for bathroom time. But I still didn’t have my own room, not really. Since the night Edward tried to throw him into the pit with the demon, Ben had slept with me. He had nightmares nightly of demons and a glowing hole. I understood his nightmares, so I let him stay in my room.
“Thanks, but somehow, I don’t think you’re here to talk about my living arrangements.”
“Abaddon’s pissed.”
“And I care why?”
“You aren’t supposed to be alive.” Scarface scowled.
I shrugged a shoulder. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“Where’s Chay?” Friendly asked.
“Home.”
“No, no, no,” he said in his girly voice. “We’ve been watching. He’s not there.”
“Why have you been watching?”
“He is mad at him.” From the hushed tone the goblin used, I knew who ‘he’ was.
“Why is Abaddon mad at Chay?”
“He didn’t do what he was told,” Scarface growled.
So Abaddon was behind Chay’s visions after all.
“Chay was stronger than Abaddon’s spells.” I laughed. “Abaddon must really hate that.”
“No, Chay isn’t stronger.”
“No? Then what?”
“Love.” Friendly giggled, clapping his hands together and squeezing them so hard his fingertips bulged.
I tilted my head to the side. “Why’d Abaddon pick Chay then?”
“Abaddon didn’t pick him,” Friendly said. “He picked the other one.”
“Who’s the other one?” Generally, the hobgoblins were confusing. They talked in circles, using riddles, and never gave a straight answer. But at that moment, they were even more so. My head hurt, and my convo with the red munchkins from Hell wasn’t helping.
“That’s no fun. You have to figure that out yourself.”
“So… why did the other one pick Chay?”
“Stupid question, Milayna,” Scarface taunted.
Because I trusted him. He was someone I’d never see coming.
“Because the other one couldn’t do it,” Friendly sang, dancing around my feet.