I’m suddenly so nauseated I could puke.
“Yes,” Frederick continues. “Mr. Blonde cuts off this guy’s ear and douses him with gasoline. Can you imagine? Sonofabitch would sting. But that’s not even the best part. See, the best part comes before he cuts the ear off. Mr. Blonde dances around the garage, to that Stealers Wheel song—Leo, what’s that song called?”
“ ‘Stuck in the Middle with You,’ ” Leo says in a bored tone, as if this is a performance he’s played a part in many times before.
“Ah, that’s right,” Frederick says, a smile spreading across his face. “Great song. So, as I was saying, this Mr. Blonde character, he dances around the garage to ‘Stuck in the Middle with You,’ holding this straight razor. All the while this guy’s bound to a chair and gagged. And Mr. Blonde wears a holster just like this one.” He laughs self-deprecatingly, running a finger under the straps. “Kitschy, I know, but I like it.”
Leo heaves a sigh.
Frederick starts pacing again, only to stop suddenly and face me. “Hey, I know! We can reenact the scene!” A huge smile lights up his face. He looks at his hand, and a straight blade appears there, the metal glinting in the harsh light of the office. “And look, I just happen to have props!”
“Okay!” I blurt out. “I’m ready to talk.”
“Ahhh”—Frederick looks at Leo—“she’s changed her mind!”
They both raise their hands, palms up, making mock-shocked faces at each other.
I pretend they haven’t rattled me and push my shoulders back. “Promise me that if I tell you the truth, you’ll let us go.”
Frederick laughs. “Or I could just read your mind and kill you both anyway. Why should I make any promises? I’ve never been a promise-making kind of man, Indigo. And this goes back to my aversion to lying. I make a promise and I might have to break it. Then what am I but a dirty old liar? You see the problem, right?”
Suddenly I can’t breathe. Because I just know that I’m not making it out of this office alive. I’m going to die. I’m going to have my ear cut off and be doused with gasoline and I’m going to die. I’ll never eat another bowl of Cocoa Puffs, never cheer the Renegades on to a Friday-night win, never watch reruns of Fringe with Mom on a Sunday night, never feel Devon’s lips brush against mine, never—
“Leo?” Frederick says. “Kill them.”
“No!” I rush to stand in front of Paige. “The book really is a family heirloom—that part is true. But it’s not a regular Bible.” The words tumble out on top of each other in my hurry to stop him. “It’s a witchcraft bible.”
Frederick’s lip twitches, but he is otherwise stock-still.
“It’s just a bunch of stuff written in Latin,” I continue, taking an instinctive step backward. “I don’t even know what it means.”
Frederick waves a hand toward Paige and me in a “go-ahead” gesture.
I whip my head back and forth, looking between the two men, dread and fear competing for priority in my body. “You promised. Y-you said.”
“I promised nothing,” Frederick says. “Nonetheless, I don’t think I’ll kill you just yet. Leo, can I get a hand?”
Leo rises.
I back up farther, and my heels run into Paige’s chair. “What are you doing?”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Leo says, taking purposefully slow strides toward me. “I won’t erase all your memories. Just a day or so’s worth. No big deal.” A grin pulls up one side of his lips, the other frozen with scar tissue. He stops abruptly in front of me and points a crooked finger directly between my eyes, focusing a stare down the straight line of his raised arm. That’s when I notice that his eyes are black. Not dark brown, but black. My heart skips a beat.
“You’re scared now,” Leo says. “But just think, in a few minutes you won’t remember this whole mess. Not the dead body you saw in the street, not Frederick and me. Hell, not even what went on in this office.” He winks, and a chill shudders through me.
Frederick starts for the door. “Make it quick. I haven’t got all day.”
I shield my face, tracking the sound of Frederick’s footsteps across the room. The door opens, and a rush of noises—the hum of the paper copier, the squeak of rubber soles on linoleum, the distant chatter of students—penetrates the quiet office. “Mrs. Malone, my partner is just wrapping things up with the girls—”
The door clicks shut, and the room is quiet again. And then everything goes white.
I blink my eyes and find myself sitting in a wooden chair across from a big mahogany desk. Sunlight slants in through half-cracked venetian blinds. Framed pictures of generic-looking blond children and a nameplate reading mrs. malone are on the desk, and the air is scented with middle-aged woman perfume.