Landers knocked on the door before he walked in. “Weird, I know, me knocking on my own door. I figured that you kids could’ve been doing anything, though, and far be it from me to interrupt.”
I didn’t know whether to roll my eyes or gag. Maybe I should’ve done both. Lochlynn and I still sat in our chairs, but we had moved them so that they faced the desk again and had stopped holding hands. It felt like the kind of thing that his father would use against us given half the chance. Of course, he already knew that we had a thing for each other. I supposed it couldn’t get much worse than that.
“We’re not,” Lochlynn said, dryly.
Landers smile reappeared, and it started to really get to me. That bright, cheerful smile, that never seemed to reach his eyes. He threw it around without hesitation, and I wanted to punch it off his stupid face. I couldn’t. Even if I tried, someone would be cleaning up small bits of Tomorrow off the floor for the next week.
“Well, I just remember what it was like to be your age. It was very different then. Humans liked to pretend that their virtue meant something, and they would hold themselves back from things they actually wanted. I can’t tell you how many souls my father got because the person just wanted to have sex. Times were easier, and harder. So many people thought that god wouldn’t forgive them. The cynicism of today means that most of you don’t believe in that god anymore.”
Lochlynn glanced at me, and I almost laughed from surprise. He looked so…irritated. Like any other teenager with an annoying father. The only difference being this father could kill us both where we sat. I couldn’t think of a reason why he wouldn’t, either. Landers didn’t have much of a heart, and he certainly didn’t have a drive to protect his son like I thought he should.
“What are we doing here, Dad?” Lochlynn asked, leaning back in his seat.
I looked from him to Landers, watching every move they made.
“I know that the girl doesn’t understand the kind of things that she did, when she had you open up that cage,” Landers said. “She didn’t understand the danger she put every person in. She didn’t understand the financial danger, either. You did.” Landers looked at his son with disappointment. “You understood, and I want to know why you still opened that door.”
“Because I wanted to,” Lochlynn said.
Landers nodded. He looked so relaxed and almost friendly. If I hadn’t seen those bruises underneath Lochlynn’s clothes, I would almost believe that he didn’t hold any anger toward his son.
Almost. His eyes always looked too cold.
“You were willing to ruin everything just to defy me?” Landers asked.
Lochlynn’s jaw worked, and he met his father’s stare without hesitation.
Landers nodded. “I knew that you disliked me, but I must say, I never suspected that you held this much animosity. No matter. Times fixes everything, and I’ll get you fixed one way or another, Lochlynn. For now, I have to make good on my promise to Nigel that I would punish the two of you.”
“Why Tomorrow?” Lochlynn asked. “She’s human and outside of this. I’m the one that knew the codes, I’m the one that opened the door. She didn’t do anything.”
Mostly true, actually, if you ignored my influence over Lochlynn. I didn’t think Landers would be so kind as to do that.
Landers smiled again, and that creepy crawly feeling started to spread throughout my body. He leaned forward, putting his elbows on the table. “I’m well aware of everything that’s happened, and how it happened, too. She might not have let the people out herself, but she did encourage you to do it.”
“She still doesn’t belong here.”
Landers pulled open his drawer and produced a blue tinged stack of papers. He turned it around, showing it to Lochlynn. I didn’t understand their significance, but Lochlynn’s jaw tightened.
“What’s that?” I asked.
Landers turned that dashing face to me, which only made my skin crawl even more. “This is your father’s contract,” he said.
My stomach plummeted. I pictured my father standing in this room, a pen in his hand, hunched over the desk. Had he looked unsure of himself? Had he been worried about the mistake he had been making? Or had he just signed the papers, trusting that he did the best thing for his daughter, even though he hadn’t been. We needed him more than anything, and he hadn’t been there.
“A big contract, I know,” Landers said, running his hand over the first page. There had to be fifty in total. “We had a lot to haggle about. Your father wanted to make sure that your girls were taken care of after his death. He wanted us to promise that we would never hurt you, and that if someone did, they would be punished accordingly.”
“If that’s in there, then you’ve already broken contract,” I said, looking at Landers again. “You’ve hurt me a lot, actually.”
“Clever girl. Like a shark. However, it states in these pages that Blackwell Industries is exempt from certain clauses. It’s our job to make sure that you and your sister stay alive and have the kind of lifestyle that your father thought you deserved. There are college funds, house funds, trust funds, car funds, all of them just waiting for you to get old enough. Or for your guardian to give you the right tool to accomplish what you want. We’re supposed to protect you from any harm, including from us…Unless you do something that harms us first.”
Lochlynn’s hands balled into fists. “In what way did she harm you when you cracked her soul?”
A throb went through my center just thinking about it.
“She shoved me,” Landers said. “It may not seem like much, but to me, it felt like the prelude to a much more dangerous attack.”
Lochlynn shook his head. “You’re lying.”
“I am not,” Landers corrected. “How was I to know what she had planned?”
When Lochlynn opened his mouth, I touched his hand. He glanced over to see me shake my head. Some arguments were worth it, but some just felt like running in circles. He made an excuse that stated he didn’t break the contract. I didn’t know what happened when a demon broke their contract, so it didn’t matter to me. Not like they could bring my father back from the dead.
Lochlynn sighed. “So, you’re saying that contractually, you are allowed to hurt her because of what I did?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t do it,” I said to him, drawing their attention over to me. Shrugging, I continued. “We both did it, and if I’m going to be punished for it, then I might as well except the blame, right?”
“I’m really starting to like her,” Landers said, shaking his head. “She’s a gem, Lochlynn. A gem.”
Lochlynn stared at his father like he could make his head explode.
“Anyway,” Landers said, rising to his feet. “I’ve spent enough time with Tomorrow to know that she’s very stubborn. Aren’t you?” He didn’t give me a chance to respond before continuing. “Which means that this little incident probably won’t be the last. Not if you two stay together, anyway. I’d like to think that you will, because I like her a lot.”
“Yet, you’re talking like I’m not in the room,” I grumbled.
Landers gestured to me. “See. She’s got spunk.”
Lochlynn put his hand on mine this time, keeping me from spouting the words that I wanted to say.
“I thought long and hard about the best way to punish the two of you. Yes, I’ve already done some things, but physical abuse can only do so much. It done too often, then it will break someone’s spirit, and I don’t want that. And if done to someone like either of you, then it won’t have the effect that I want. The best way to handle this is to make you regret your choices. I have to hurt you emotionally.”
He walked around the desk and I braced myself for anything. He walked by us, though, going out the door. I watched him, turning to stare at Lochlynn. Our gazes locked onto each other. He had his mask on, but I thought that he felt as worried as I did. “Do you have any idea?”
“No,” Lochlynn said.
We heard some kind of dragging noise from out in the hall, and then Lander’s voice. “Be careful of the wood floors. You have no idea how noisy it is to buff out scratches on those things. Hurry it along, c’mon.”
The door opened again, and then Landers pulled open a second door as well. I had been so distracted coming in, I hadn’t realized that he had double doors to his office, like some kind of douche.
The scraping sound echoed down the hallway again, and people’s footsteps followed. Landers came into the room, looking too proud of himself. Behind him, two werewolves followed, bringing a cage in with them. One werewolf pushed and the other pulled. The cage didn’t look very big, but more than large enough to fit a single woman inside.
She had long blond hair, crystalline blue eyes, and she wore a dress with flowers on it. The woman also looked absolutely terrified, rubbing her hands down her thighs. She looked all around the space, her chest pumping up and down.
The werewolves brought the cage to the center of the office, and then left without Landers even having to flick his hand at them. As they disappeared, I looked over at Lochlynn. He had stiffened as if someone had injected steel into his veins. He spoke through his teeth. “What is this, Dad?”
“Your punishment,” Landers said, walking around the cage. The woman’s eyes followed him, that fear never leaving. “This is Margaret. She likes Peggy, though, so you can call her that. Her husband cheated on her, what was it? Four years ago?”
“Four and a half,” she answered, still panting. She balled the hemline of her skirt up in her hands, as if she just needed something to grip.
“Ah, my mistake,” Landers said, pacing around the cage. “Peggy wanted away from him, you see, but she had made the mistake of signing a prenup. You two know what this is, right?”
“Yes,” I said.
Lochlynn nodded.
“Good. Well, she would’ve lost everything, and probably ended up homeless, on the street, hungry. With her daughter, no less. A cute as a button two-year-old whose father hated her. Lovely, right? What did you do, Peggy?”
Her hands relaxed around the hemline of her skirt, and she stared down at it. The fabric had wrinkled. “I made a deal.”
“She made a deal, like any good parent would. She wanted her husband’s money. The PI hadn’t managed to get any pictures of the cheating asshole, which only left one option. Us. She’s been rich, and happily remarried for two years. I’m glad to say that your new husband will probably take care of your daughter after this.”
She kept staring down at the hemline of her skirt, looking lost. My chest twisted around, making it hard for me to think. It sounded so similar to what happened with my father. He had signed a contract to give us a life he thought we needed. This woman had done the same thing. Everyone took the easy way out, it seemed. They did what they needed to do, until it became too hard. Then they stopped and blamed everyone else for how things went wrong.
“Why are you telling us this?” I asked, looking at Landers. “I don’t see how this is punishment.”
He pulled a phone from his jacket pocket and turned it around. “Press play.”
I clicked the screen on, finding it didn’t have a passcode, and looked at the video that had already been cued up. My heart twisted around so painfully that I had to open my mouth to get some air into my lungs.
Derrick’s face stared back at me. He didn’t look quite right, but it was still my friend. He still had the same features that I had memorized from his pictures. They just all looked off. His hair had been cut so close to his head that I could barely see the curls anymore. His once deep, powerful brown eyes had lost some of their color. They looked almost gray now, and I knew that came from people feeding off his soul. I’d seen it several times by then. And his skin looked paler, like he hadn’t seen the sun in a long time.
I lifted my head up, staring at Landers.
“Press play,” Landers said, nodding to the phone. “You won’t know if that’s an old or new video if you don’t. You want proof of life, right?”
“Like in a hostage situation?” I asked.
“If that’s how you want to think of it.”
It certainly felt that way. I looked down at the face again, and I wanted to press play almost as much as I didn’t. I could see the misery in his eyes, the way this life had started to wear Derrick down, and I couldn’t fix that. I couldn’t make him feel any better, or make his life hurt any less. If I pressed play, then I’d be setting to motion whatever events Landers wanted. It felt dangerous to do that.
Lochlynn reached over and hit the button for me. “There’s no point in not doing it,” he said. “We’re almost in the spider’s web.”
My hand tightened on the phone as I watched the image starting to move. Derrick settled in a chair, his eyes looking just above the camera, at whoever held it. Probably another demon.
His eyes shifted back down, and he looked tired. The deep kind of tired, that leached into your bones, and made life so unbearable. He had lines on his face that hadn’t been there before, and it looked like he had lost some weight. I wanted to reach through the phone, just to put my hand on his shoulder, to let him know that he didn’t have to be alone anymore.
To let him know that life didn’t have to hurt anymore.
It would’ve been a lie, but one I would’ve happily told if that meant he didn’t have that look on his face anymore. The weary, dragged down, bogged down, hollowed out look. I wanted to fix him, whatever that meant. I wanted to fix everything.
Derrick took a deep breath that seemed to bring some life back to his eyes. “It’s really me,” he said. “They told me that I’m talking to Tomorrow, but if the rest of you are there, then hello to all of you. I’m not really sure what’s happening.
“What’s the date,” the person holding the camera asked.
“It’s six o’clock in the morning, on January twenty-second. I’m out in Arizona, with some demons.”
Derrick paused, looking around the room. “I’ve been here for the better part of the last six months.” He sounded dead when he said that. “I don’t know what you did, Tomorrow, but it had to have been bad, if the demons are talking about you. You should have just left me be, like I asked. You shouldn’t have come after me, if that’s what you did.”
“Don’t you miss her?” the demon holding the phone asked. It sounded like a woman, which made me think that it was Savannah, the one who had taken him in the first place. The one I hated more than anything in that moment. She had put that look on his face, and she caused him to tense up, and she had been the reason that we couldn’t save him at Nigel’s house.
“That doesn’t matter,” Derrick said, looking up at her. “None of that matters, because she shouldn’t be wherever she is. I shouldn’t be making this video.”
The camera shifted as the demon moved. “That’s not what I asked. I asked if you missed this little human, this troublemaker human.” She sneered the word, as if my humanity had made me filthy.
Derrick continued to stare at the demoness, and for most, that stare would’ve been enough. He had so much hatred in his eyes, so much pain, so much emotion that it made me uncomfortable. Then we had Lochlynn, who never showed that much emotion. I looked over at him, and his face had shut down. I thought he knew what his father had planned, and that scared me all the more.
“Answer the question,” the demon demanded. “Answer.”
“Yes,” Derrick said. “I miss her. I miss Seanan and Seamus, too. And my parents, and my little sister, and the life that I gave away. I miss all of it.”
“This life isn’t enough for you? I’m not enough for you?” Savannah asked, sounding crazier than she had moments before. My heart twisted around, and I tried not to think about what that meant. I tried not to think about anything, because my brain had started to hurt.
“You are my captor,” Derrick said. “Why would you be enough.” He spat the words with more venom than I’d ever heard from my soft-spoken friend. He’d spent six months with demons. I didn’t know if I’d ever get the boy that I had known back, and it made my heart hurt even more.
The camera tilted down, showing me a pair of long legs clad in jeans, and heels to go with it. “You disappoint me,” the voice said.
The video stopped there. I almost clicked play again, just so that I could hear Derrick talking some more. Instead, I turned the screen off, and leaned back in my chair. “What was the point of doing that?” I asked, not looking at Landers. If he just wanted to hurt me, then mission accomplished. It felt like someone had ripped a hole right through my chest and left me to bleed.
That couldn’t have been it, though, because why bring the woman in the cage, if he just wanted to hurt me with Derrick.
Landers’ hand came into view, reaching for the phone. I handed it over without hesitation, just to get him away from me. I didn’t trust myself right then. It took all my willpower to stay in my seat.
“I think Lochlynn understands, don’t you son?”
I looked over at Lochlynn, agreeing with Landers’ assessment. Still, I said, “I didn’t ask Lochlynn. I asked you.”
At that, Landers laughed. “Lochlynn, explain.”
“He wants us to choose,” Lochlynn said.
“What?”
“And the boy wins!” Landers called out. He stood by the cage now, his hand resting on the cold bars. The woman continued to watch us with her eyes wide.
“What?” the woman asked.
Landers continued to smile. “Well, Peggy, my son and his girlfriend, they want to be heroes. They want to do something that helps people. That boy on the phone? He’s her friend.” He nodded to me. “Tomorrow has been trying to save him for the past six months, doing increasingly stupid things. A few days ago, she even broke into my friend’s house, and let a bunch of his humans go. He still hasn’t recovered all of them.”
Good. I wanted them to keep running. They could change their names, they could have a new life, they could do something. Nigel didn’t get to decide who lived and who died anymore.
“Now, I’m giving her the option to do what she always wanted to do.”
My heart jumped into my throat as the pieces started to fall into place. I should’ve figured it out sooner, but the last few days in that room, it had worn me down. My mind felt sluggish until that moment, where adrenaline pumped throughout my body. Suddenly, I felt like I could’ve punched through a wall.
No. I can’t do this. I’m not going to do this. Too much. Just…it’s just too much, and I can’t do it. Won’t do it.
Landers kept smiling, even as Peggy started to shake. “You’ve got a daughter and a son, both of which need their mommy. You’ve got a life to get back to, and Tomorrow can relate to that. She had a father who left his two children behind, thinking that he could give them a better life that way. How did that work out for you, dear?” He turned to stare at me as he said that.
I swallowed but didn’t answer. My mouth felt dry.
He continued to smile. “Then there is her friend. She’s known him her entire life, and she’s made it her mission to save him. Either choice will kill her inside.”
I shook my head, as if I could erase this entire day. “This isn’t a proper punishment,” I said, thinking out loud.
“Oh, it is,” Landers said. “Because if you choose to save Derrick, then my son has to take this woman’s soul.”
The entire room felt like it came to a stop. My chest hurt so much. “What?” I asked, having trouble breathing.
Landers nodded. “If you want to save Derrick, then Lochlynn has to take this woman’s soul. If you choose that, then I will purchase the boy from Savannah, and bring him here. He’ll live the rest of his life out of demon hands however he chooses. I think you’ll find that he was better off in a cage, personally. If you choose not to drain Peggy here, then nothing changes. She will go into my holding facility, where she will be drained as I see fit until the day she dies. And Derrick will remain with Savannah until he dies. I suspect that he won’t last much longer. He looks about as suicidal as a boy his age can. At this point, it’s just a matter of finding sharp object to use.”
He had done. Landers had found the right punishment for me, because my entire body started to ache. Not like it had when he’d cracked my soul, or when I had woken up in that holding cell. It ached with the realization that I couldn’t win. Either I took a mother away from her two children, or I killed my best friend. Either I tormented my boyfriend, who didn’t deserve that kind of pain, or I killed my best friend. I had to shatter someone’s life. Lochlynn’s or my own.
Essentially, Landers had put a bomb in my relationship, and I had to figure out if I wanted to detonate it.
Suddenly, I wanted my friends and sister. If we could all talk it out, then maybe we could come to some kind of conclusion. One that hurt the least.
Peggy continued to shake, and Landers stepped away from the cage. He set the phone down on his desk. “In case you want to listen to the message again, I’ll leave this here. I’m sure that Derrick would be thrilled to see you again. Be sure to think it over really hard, though.”
I watched as Landers left, too scared to look at anyone else in the room. I hated him then, more than I ever had before. He had given me a thousand reasons to hate him already, with what he had done to Lochlynn, and the kinds of things that he had done to me.
The people in that room, where they would die.
Nigel.
Derrick.
My father.
This entire house deserved to be engulfed in flames. And instead of doing that, I had to figure out if I wanted to make Lochlynn a murderer, just so that I could save a friend who didn’t want to be saved.