“Maybe you could let me go,” Peggy whispered, leaning forward. “I know what he just said, but you’ve done that before, right? You let some people go. Maybe you could do the same for me? I can be back at my house in two hours, packing my kids and husband up. We’ll run, and you’ll never have to see us again. Just open the cage, and I’ll be out of here.”
She sounded desperate, and I couldn’t blame her for that. How many people didn’t really get what they signed themselves up for when they went to demons? She had four years of a good life, and maybe she thought that would’ve been enough to get her daughtered settled with someone else. Maybe she didn’t think she’d find another husband or have a baby. But she did.
“Please,” she begged, her eyes latching onto mine. “Please, let me go. Don’t do this to my daughter.”
“Even if I let you go, that wouldn’t keep you safe,” I said, shrugging. “For all I know, you could run to China, and they would still come after you.”
“So, you’d let me die?”
I didn’t know what to do. My eyes drifted over to the phone. Derrick’s face floated at the forefront of my memory, his once dark eyes looking so haunted. My stomach twisted around, and I had to breathe through my mouth. “It feels like the room is the size of a small car,” I said.
Lochlynn touched my back, rubbing small circles meant to soothe me. I focused on the motion of his hand, my eyes closed, taking in the feeling of his touch. If I could just let it comfort me, then maybe I would remember how to breathe. Getting air into my lungs proved harder than I thought.
“It’s all right,” Lochlynn said.
I turned to stare at him. “I’m not sure if you know this, but nothing about this situation is all right.”
He brushed his thumb against my cheek, smoothing the tear I hadn’t been aware of away. “It’ll be all right,” I told me. He twisted my chair around, so that it faced him again, and knelt in front of me. Both of his large hands engulfed mine. “I already know what you want to do.”
“No, you don’t,” I said.
Lochlynn looked at the woman in the cage. She had crawled forward, pressing her body against the bars. Her wide eyes watched us, begging for us to do what she wanted. I didn’t even know if we could open that cage door. I doubted Landers would’ve left us with one that could be so easily manipulated after what happened Nigel’s place. All those people…most of them had gotten captured again, and I no longer knew if it had been worth it.
What if the rest of them got caught too? If only one managed to get away, would it have been worth it? Worth either ending my friend’s life or this woman’s? What about two? Or three? How many made up for the destruction this would cause to so many people?
“Don’t kill me,” she said.
“I don’t want to kill you,” I answered.
Lochlynn kept my hand, squeezing them. “Her life is forfeit either way. It could take a few years, but she’ll eventually die from her soul being drained. It’s really a matter of suffering at this point. She can either go in agony, insane, barely even a person anymore. Or she can die quickly, not having to suffer through forgetting her children’s face, her husband’s name, her own personality.”
“No,” I said, pulling my hands away from me. “No, no, we’re not doing this.”
Lochlynn looked up at me. “We don’t have a choice. Even if we don’t choose, we do. If we sit here, and do something, then Derrick dies.”
He was right, and I knew it. More tears popped into my eyes. They started to fall, and I wiped them away with shaking hands. I shot up to my feet, and Lochlynn followed me. He didn’t pace the room in manic bursts like I did, but he had more experience with pretending that his world hadn’t fallen apart.
“You don’t want to drain this woman’s life,” I said, gesturing to her.
“No, I don’t,” Lochlynn said, turning his eyes away from mine. He looked all around the office, at everything that his father had. “I don’t want to do this to anyone. I’d rather go the rest of my life without the benefits of draining someone than do this to another person.” He gestured to the woman.
“Then we won’t,” I said. “There you have it. Our answer, plain as day. You don’t want to do it, and I absolutely refuse to let you.”
Lochlynn turned to stare at me, and he let his mask slip. He looked…worried. Bothered, even. “It’s not that simple,” he said.
“Yes, it is. I saw the way you looked when you told me about that Caroline girl. It would kill you a little to be forced into doing this, and I am not going to do that to you. I am not going to kill a little piece of your soul, just so that I don’t have to deal with this pain that I’ve been avoiding for six months.”
“It’s not like he’s already dead,” Lochlynn said, his voice soft. “Derrick is alive, and here’s your chance to finally do what you’ve always wanted. You could bring him home. It’s not the same as mourning him. It’s living with the fact that you could’ve saved him, for the rest of your life. Looking at your friends, and having to lie, or worse, tell the truth. I met them, remember. You think Seamus would forgive you for letting him die.”
“He wouldn’t forgive me for killing her, either!” I shouted.
“He’d blame me,” Lochlynn said, shrugging. “He already hates me.”
“I don’t want to do this to you,” I said, shrugging helplessly. “Is it so wrong that I want to be the one person in your life that doesn’t hurt you. I mean, yeah, I’ve already failed if you include the start of our relationship, but I haven’t hurt you since then. I don’t want to start now.”
“You didn’t hurt me then, either,” Lochlynn said. “Your friends did, but you and your sister just don’t have much malice in your bodies.”
I laughed. “You don’t know Yesterday very well.”
“She’s rude, she’s blunt, and she’s protective,” Lochlynn said. “But has she ever hurt someone when she wasn’t trying to keep someone else safe?”
“No,” I said.
Lochlynn made some vague gesture, as if to say, there you go. And I had to admit that he made a lot of sense with that. My sister had always been the hard one, but that didn’t make her mean. She just said the things that no one else had the balls to say and did the things that no one else had the guts to do.
I wondered what she would’ve done in this situation.
“Don’t let him talk you into anything,” Peggy said from her cage. “Listen to him. He’s just like all the others, He’s trying to take my soul because he wants it. He wants the power that it gives him. Don’t let him do that, please. Please, please, please.” Her hands tightened on the bars so much that I could hear her nails scraping against the metal.
“Even if we don’t hurt you now, you’ll still die here,” I said. It had been a nasty little thought in the back of my mind. “It’s not like I’m saving you over Derrick. I’m just choosing not to blacken my own soul so that I can get my friend back. You still die. Just not today.”
“But you’d be giving me a chance,” Peggy said. “You’d be giving me the chance to get away. Every day that I’m alive, that’s another chance for survival. Don’t you get it? Selling your soul, it isn’t a death sentence.”
“Yes, it is,” Lochlynn said. “Or damn near it.”
“Then why did you let those other people out, if you don’t think you’re saving anyone?” she demanded.
“For the chance that they don’t die,” Lochlynn said. “We let out as many people as we could, and if they’re lucky, five of them will make it. You are one person.”
“I’ve got money, though,” Peggy said. “I can get us out of the country in a day.”
Lochlynn offered that bitter smile that I can become so familiar with. “It wouldn’t matter,” he said. “The second that your contract was due, you went into the system. Every airline now has your picture, and you couldn’t get a ticket, no matter what tricks you think you have up your sleeve. You could grab a bus, and drive, but…It’s possible to escape your fate, if you just wait until the demons mark you as a loss. It’s just very hard.”
“But you’re taking away my chance!” Peggy shouted. “What kind of monsters are you?”
I closed my eyes and thought of my father. He had left this huge hole in my life when he died. Yesterday had to feel the same way. I’d spent so many hours thinking about him, wondering if he would be proud of me, or if he would regret the girl that I had become. I thought about whether or not he regretted his choice, and if he would’ve done something different if he could see us now.
His little girls, all grown up. Would that have changed anything?
I had wondered why he made the decision that he made. Why had it been so much easier to take a deal with a demon and walk out? To spend so many years with us, knowing that it would all come to an end sooner than it should have.
This woman’s children would have the same thoughts.
I rubbed my hands down my thighs, starting to pace again. My heart thrummed in my chest. “It sounds like an excuse,” I said. “To tell myself that she would die here anyway. It sounds like an excuse, so that I don’t have to feel guilty.”
“It is an excuse,” Peggy said. “You can’t predict what would happen if you left me alone!”
“It’s also the truth,” Lochlynn said. “I’ve lived in this house for my entire life. My father brings in anywhere from ten to thirty humans a month. There have only been ten that tried to run before the demons came for them. All of them were captured and brought to where they belonged. Of all the humans that have passed through this house, fifteen have tried to escape. Half of them were killed in their attempt, and the other half were drained dry the next day to prevent a second attempt. No one has escaped.
The more he talked, the more I regretted letting those people out of their cage. The more it felt like a mistake.
My pacing got worse.
“But there has to be one that managed it as some point,” Peggy said. “The world is full of demons and magic and vampires and werewolves. You cannot tell me that something is impossible.”
“I’m not saying impossible,” Lochlynn told her. “I’m saying that you signed your life away, and almost no one gets a second chance at that. We can let you most likely die and kill Derrick in the process. Or we can definitively save someone. That is our option.”
“But to save someone,” I said, turning back to him, “we have to wreck ourselves. We have to take everything that we know about ourselves, about each other, and we have to grind it under our heels.”
Lochlynn’s jaw tightened, and he let his mask slip again. I saw the pain there, the horror at the things that he suggested. “Yes,” he said. “But we are wrecked either way. Either way, we have killed someone.”
My hands buried in my hair, and my lungs tightened. My knees wobbled. I lowered myself to the ground, unable to keep pacing. Again, he stated the facts as he knew them. I could either have this woman killed, this woman who would most likely die anyway. It wouldn’t be wasting her life, because it would go to saving someone else. Someone I loved, not that she cared about that. Not that her life mattered more than Derrick’s in the grand scheme of things.
Or I could kill Derrick. The guy that I had known for years. The guy who I’d gone to see movies with, who had called when he thought that I was upset, who checked on me when I had been sick. Derrick, Seanan, Seamus, and I had all gone to a dance together, partying like nobody’s business. I loved him like a brother, and I had suffered to save him. I had suffered, and tried, and failed, and tried again.
“To save him, I’d have to hurt you, though,” I said, looking back at Lochlynn. I had my arms wrapped around my middle, as if I needed to keep my guts securely in my stomach. “It shouldn’t matter as much as everything else, but it does. You would have to give in to Landers, and I don’t want to make you do that. He would think he’s one step closer to breaking you, to bringing you into the family business.”
Lochlynn’s face tensed as he approached me. He knelt down, putting his arms around me. They felt gentle. Not like the arms of someone who could kill another person. “I know.”
“I can’t do that to you,” I said again, shaking my head. “I can’t do that to you. I just can’t.”
His arms tightened, as if he could hold me in one piece. I wanted to curl into his body, but just stayed put. It felt like if I moved, the entirety of my being would come apart at the seams. “You wouldn’t be doing anything to me. It would be my father, like it always is.”
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Peggy said, her voice cracking. I looked over at her, to see her panicked eyes. They darted around the cage, as if she could break out on her own. “You can’t do this.”
“I don’t want to,” I said, looking down at my hands. More than anything, I wanted to go back home. To curl up under my covers, and pretend like this week didn’t happen, while still having Lochlynn in my life somehow. He meant so much to me already, and I didn’t want to lose that. I didn’t want him to drift away or feel like I had hurt him.
Making him do this, it would hurt just as much as letting Derrick go.
My eyes drifted back to the phone on the desk. Sniffling, I stood up, and walked over to the phone. Derrick’s video popped up immediately when I turned the screen on, and I lowered myself back into the chair. I played it, watching as Derrick talked and looked around himself.
Lochlynn stood in front of me while I watched it, listening to Derrick’s voice. He would suffer, too. His death wouldn’t be a gentle one, and if Savannah’s voice indicated anything, it was that she didn’t like his answers sometimes.
“What do you want to do?” Lochlynn asked. “I’ll do anything that you want. I don’t care that it hurts me. I’ll be in pain either way. Just tell me what you want me to do.”
Derrick’s face stared back at me, and it almost felt like he saw me. Like he saw some hope, or anything. I turned the phone off and stared down at my feet. I couldn’t say what I wanted. It would push things forward, and the words felt so ugly. So horrid.
More than I wanted anything else, I wanted Landers to die.
Lochlynn knelt in front of me and put his finger against my chin. I looked up at him. He had let the mask, go completely, letting me see that this hurt him just as much as it did me. His eyes had gone completely icy, but pain shone through. “Listen,” he said, swallowing. “There are no good options. There is nothing that we can do to make this better. My father wins either way, because we will be in pain. Forget about Peggy, and all the things that she’s been saying. You aren’t taking her away from her family. She did that herself. Forget about the threats to Derrick’s life right now, because they will only cloud your judgement. Forget about me, too. Yes, I know you don’t want to hurt me. Believe or not, that’s enough for me. It’s enough to know that you care enough to want to keep me safe. You need to forget about all of that and tell me the truth. What do you want to do here?”
I couldn’t escape the pain. Already my soul ached in two places. “I can’t forget about hurting you,” I said.
He squeezed my hands. “You have to. I won’t blame you for this. I’ll blame my father. What do you want to do?”
My mouth opened.
“Think carefully,” Peggy said. “Whatever happens here, it can’t be undone.”
“I want…to save Derrick,” I said, and my heart constricted. “It’s the only thing that I’ve wanted to do since getting here. I want…to save Derrick. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
Lochlynn’s mask slid back into place like it had never been removed. He touched my cheek carefully, rubbing the skin. “It’s all right,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about apologies.”
“I’m so sorry, still.”
Lochlynn rose from his crouch and turned to look at Peggy. Her eyes watched him with a fear that I caused, with a horror that only existed because of me.
Lochlynn released me, and I wanted to reach for his hand again, because if I held onto him, then he couldn’t hurt himself like this. He couldn’t do this, just because I wanted to save my friend.
It felt like my hands weighed a thousand pounds. They had anchored themselves to the chair on either side of my thighs, and I watched helplessly as Lochlynn approached the cage.
“No, no, no,” Peggy said. “You can’t be doing this. You can’t be that selfish! No!”
Lochlynn put his hands on the cold metal, looking down at the ground. I watched his big shoulders left and fall as he breathed. He nodded once and lifted his head again to stare at the woman.
His magic sliced through the air like a knife. It felt cold as steel, and I shivered as it pressed against me.
Peggy started to cry, pushing her back against the bars as hard as she could. “Please,” she said, holding her hand out. “Please, don’t do this. You don’t have to do this.”
The magic pressed forward, slicing into her as neatly as could be. I knew, because she started to scream, her hands beating against the bars and then the floor.
Suddenly, her scream cut off, and she stared at Lochlynn like she had found herself looking at a god. The dumbfounded expression started to fade away, and a small smile appeared on her face. That smile got wider as her eyes became duller. Peggy crawled forward. “What are you doing to me?” she asked.
I remembered all the people in the cages, crazed and ill, but some of them looked almost like they enjoyed it. It didn’t have to hurt, Lochlynn had told me. It could feel good. It could feel like heaven, even.
Peggy kept crawling forward, though her movements had started to lose coordination. With each second, Lochlynn’s skin started to glow, that pearlescent shine bringing a vitality to him that most demons had. I always forgot that he could do that too. That he could shine like a star.
“You’re so pretty,” Peggy said, coming to a stop at the bars. She reached through, touching Lochlynn’s hand. He didn’t pull away from her, like I thought that he might. “I never thought that a demon could look like an angel.”
Lochlynn’s voice sounded strained when he spoke. “Some think that we’re one in the same.”
“Is there a hell?” Peggy asked.
Lochlynn shrugged a shoulder. “I’m not sure. If there is, then I’ve never been there. Not physically, anyway.”
“I’d be going there, wouldn’t I?” Her skin started to lose some of its vitality, and her blue eyes began to whiten. “You sell your soul to a demon, and you go to Hell. That’s how this works, right?”
“I don’t know.”
“They say that God is forgiving, but I never bought that,” Peggy whispered. “Why would he kill so many people, if he thought that we all deserved a chance at our place in Heaven?” She blinked, and her lids would barely open. “Maybe this is what Heaven feels like. Maybe this is what it is.”
I swallowed thickly.
Peggy started to slip to the side, her mouth hanging open. She had aged fifty years in the last few minutes, and I just watched as more of her life started to fade from her eyes. From her skin, from her hair. It felt like someone had left the faucet going, and it ran out of water somehow.
Her eyes clothes, and I started watching her chest. Up and down, up and down.
I couldn’t believe that I had done this. That I allowed this to happen. We could say a thousand things, absolving ourselves of the blame, but I killed this woman. I killed her, because I decided that Derrick’s life mattered more to me. That he deserved a life more than she did.
Up and down, up and down.
I’d have to look my friends in the eye and tell them what happened. Maybe Lochlynn had been right. Seamus would blame him instead of me. But what about my sister? What about Seanan? Would they see me as a hero, or as a villain in the making? What would they think of this?
Up and down, up and down.
I felt like screaming, begging for forgiveness, and crying all at the same time. I felt like some part of me had been lost the second I stepped into this house and started this path. I felt uncontrolled.
Up and down…up…and down…and stillness.
Peggy died with her eyes attacked to Lochlynn. They had gone completely white, as had her skin and hair. She looked almost like a statue, like stone.
Lochlynn stumbled away from her, his chest hitching. I stood up, rushing over to him as he started to fall. I couldn’t catch him, but I eased him onto the ground, so that his head resting on my lap. My body curled over his, like I could keep him in one piece by doing that. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, holding on for dear life. “I’m so sorry.” I didn’t want this. I hadn’t wanted this.
Lochlynn put his hands over my arms, as if to keep me there. “It’s okay,” he said in the rawest voice I’d ever heard from him. He sounded almost choked, suffocating. “It’s okay. you didn’t do this. This isn’t your fault.”
Oh, but it felt like my fault. It felt like the world had turned upside down, and I had fallen free of it. I’d fall forever, because I’d never be able to escape this day. I’d never be able to fool myself into thinking that I hadn’t done something evil.
“We can get through this,” Lochlynn said. “It’ll be all right, I promise. We can do this.”
I couldn’t tell if he wanted to convince me. Or himself.