“Money! That might work for my brother, for the kid, but me and you have a little more history to work through, sweetheart.”
His brother. Martin was his brother. The same blood running through them, and me. As if the thing that turned them dark was not a quirk of fate, but something deeper, something I could feel simmering within my bones, too….
I had to get out. I had to get help. They weren’t just here for money. Samuel wanted something more, and he was still using me to get it. I had to run. I had to try. Had to get to the road and make a call, and then come back for her.
Front door, back door. I checked out the window of the dining room, looking for Eli’s shadow, out in the trees. Saw no sign of him at the gates. The fog might be hiding him deeper in the trees, but it could hide me, too, if I made it that far. Front or back, Kelsey. A fifty-fifty shot, but I had to try….
I turned the front door knob slowly, slowly, trying not to make a sound. Pulled the door inward, and gasped. There, standing in the open doorway, facing me, was a boy about my age.
“Hello,” he said. Eli, with his deep-set eyes, mismatched parts, and now a crooked smile, blocking the front door.
I backpedaled until I was in the middle of the living room. Eli closed the door behind him, stepped closer, walking toward me like I was an animal he didn’t want to spook.
The entire room hummed. I stood frozen in the middle of the living room, moved my arm slowly to my back pocket for my cell, but Eli shook his head.
“Won’t work,” he said. “It’s useless.”
All the hairs rose on my arms, the back of my neck, and the room narrowed into focus.
Everything I thought I wanted—answers, my mother—was replaced instead with the simple basic instinct: Run.
The back door. The bedroom windows. The hole in the safe room floor.
The back door was closest. I still had the phone in my hand—useless, he’d said. But it wasn’t. I hurled it at his head, and as he ducked, I spun around, sprinting for the back door. Three strides, four, my hand on the knob, pulling it back—and then a hand was flat on the door beside me, slamming it shut. Slamming my body against it at the same time. My front was pressed up against the wood, and Eli was pressed up against my back.
I felt him breathing against the side of my face. “Not this time,” he whispered. He smelled of sweat and stale cigarettes, and I fought back a gag.
He wrenched one of my arms behind my back, still using his weight to pin me to the door. I stomped on his instep in a move that was second nature, and he released his grip enough for me to spin around and grab the handle again. But I couldn’t get it open in time. He backed me against the door again, jamming his forearm into my neck. I couldn’t breathe. I started clawing at the skin of his forearm, drawing blood, the world turning hazy, and then he suddenly released me, breathing heavily.
I slumped to the floor, preparing to kick him in the knee as he came closer.
But then I heard her again.
The high-pitched voice. The word no. All the tension, transferring from her to me. I twisted my head toward the hall, toward the basement, and in that moment of distraction, I didn’t notice the fist coming for the side of my face until it was too late.
A sharp sting, my head ricocheting off hardwood, and the world gone black.
—
It must’ve only lasted a moment or two, because I opened my eyes to see Eli crouching in front of me, his face contorted into panic. I was slouched against the back wall, but this time he was holding me up.
“Come on,” he mumbled. Then he glanced over his shoulder, and I fought for clarity.
He must’ve felt the tension come back to my body, because he hauled me up to my feet.
“Who are…where are…”
But I didn’t fight him as he walked us toward the basement, floating on my feet. I didn’t fight him, because I knew where we were going. I was still falling—only now I was doing it willingly. I was doing it to find the person at the bottom.
The voices stopped as we stumbled down the steps. From this angle, I only saw shadows elongated across the basement floor from the spotlights set up in the corners. Like ghosts stretching across the distance.
“Look who I found,” Eli said, pride in his voice.
I couldn’t see the people yet, but someone saw me. “No.” My mother’s voice, echoing across the concrete, off the cinder blocks, cutting straight through the chill.
“Mom?” I shook out of Eli’s grasp at the bottom of the stairs, barely registering the two other shadows, unable to see her clearly through the tears as I raced across the room to where she stood. I fell into her arms, felt her inhale suddenly as her arms came around me, one hand over my hair, a face buried close to my ear.
She was so slight, and cold, but she was standing and here and alive.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.” Her whole body was trembling, and I fought to hold her still.
It was only when I pulled back slightly that I noticed the bruises on her face, the cuts on her hands, the dried blood caked under her nails as she reached for my cheek, her fingers resting on the spot Eli had hit me.
Eli had me by the back of my shirt again, tugging me out of her grip.
“What did you do to her?” a low, calm voice asked from the corner. He stepped forward, into the light, and I recognized him from that night. Large frame, down-turned mouth, eyes that were the same as mine, like looking in the mirror. Samuel. Samuel Lyter, his name humming through my blood. Was it possible to want to come face to face with someone while also wanting to wipe him from existence? To bury him in a dark room of my mother’s mind, and let him stay there?
His eyes darted from Eli to me and back again, and he stepped closer. “I said, what did you do?” His voice, I now noticed, had the faintest hypnotic drawl to it. Something that pulled you in, made you want to lean a little closer, hear a little better.
“Nothing,” Eli said. His hands were held up as if he were surrendering. “I caught her. She was inside the house, and she tried to run, and I caught her this time.”
Samuel grabbed my chin in his hand, turning my face from side to side. His hands were rough and callused, and I wanted to move back, wanted to smack his hand away, but I held my breath, held myself perfectly still. He smelled of leather and something sharper, a faint whiff of gasoline, and my instinct was to jerk back. Careful, I thought.
“You did more than catch her,” he said. I felt the burn on the side of my cheek, the constant throbbing, the ache in my head.
He pressed his lips together, gave Eli a look that made even me wither, but then he refocused on me and smiled. “Kelsey, then. So nice to finally meet you.” He spoke through his teeth, the smile firmly planted, a cat with a bird caught between his teeth.
Whatever I’d been fighting against, the hum in my blood, it was here now. The truth. The mirror. A tangle of lies, my entire existence, the dark basement from which I grew. The lies that were woven into my bedtime stories, the fears that were planted to keep me safe, the truth staring me back in the face. And now rage, clawing its way to the surface, balling my hands into fists.
“Let go of her, Samuel,” my mother said, and I noticed her fists were clenched as well. Sometime during the conversation, Martin had grabbed my mother around the shoulders, restraining any further movement. He was a little shorter than Samuel, and he had a scar over his lip. But the similarities were otherwise too strong to deny. This was his brother, and this was my origin. An entire family of bad blood, currently coursing through me. If fear could be inherited, couldn’t this, too? It was not a random turn of events, but a thread running deep inside the both of them, and so it could in me as well. I felt sick, and it wasn’t the fear. Not this time.