Chapter 13 — At Least He Doesn’t Hate Me

I searched the entire house three times. Something in my brain insisted that the wind couldn’t have closed the door. Each time I searched, nothing turned up. It got to the point where I felt paranoid and stupid, so I went to sit in the kitchen. I didn’t want to assume that the stress had gotten to me, and I made up reasons that the door couldn’t have shut on its own. The wind probably did suck it closed… but my gut argued.

Shaking my head, I pushed all that aside, and looked at the clock. I had another hour before Kier showed up with the kids. Which meant that I had an hour to figure out what to tell him about our buddy downstairs.

I walked over to the basement door and stood there with my arms crossed tightly over my chest. I shuffled my feet and had a nice mental debate. One half of me thought I should check on him, to make sure that he hadn’t broken out of his restraints. The other half of me thought that going down there would be the worst mistake I could make. In the end, though, every horror movie that I’d ever seen prodded me down the stairs.

In this situation, I didn’t have a good option. I could assume that Emerald hadn’t moved and then have him come up behind me with the same cast iron pan that I’d hit him with. Or I could assuage my fears, put my life in danger, and go down there to see what happened. All things considered, I figured assuaging my fears would be the better option.

The numerous boxes kept me from being able to see the man from the stairs, so I had to go further into the room. The dull lighting of the basement didn’t help my nerves, nor did the sound of thunder outside.

I turned the corner, looking through the boxes. Emerald sat on the ground, blinking his eyes myopically. He looked confused as he stared at the chain around his wrist, and then even more confused when he followed that chain to the pipe that I’d attached it to. I wondered if he could rip the pipe out of the wall, and what that would do to the house. The basement. And because I worried about that, I’d also tied his feet together with Amber’s jump rope. When he saw that, Emerald blinked again, looking even more confused.

He couldn’t have spent too much time around humans, so this must’ve come as a surprise to him. It sure as hell surprised me. I didn’t think myself capable of this kind of thing.

It surprised me even more when he started to chuckle. He brought his feet closer to his face, but he couldn’t get them to his bound wrists. I worried for the briefest second that he would try, but then he leaned back against the wall again. Still chuckling.

“I know you’re there,” Emerald said. “I can smell you.”

That didn’t scare me, like maybe he hoped it would. I hadn’t been going for stealth, because I didn’t think I needed to.

Swallowing past the lump in my throat, I walked around the boxes to stare at him. I hadn’t brought a weapon with me, because I knew blind luck had allowed me to knock him to the ground. I wouldn’t get a second shot like that, so I might as well face him head on. Let him see me for what I was. A small, easily startled human who jumped at the slightest sound or fast movement.

“How’s your head?” I asked.

Emerald stared at me with an odd expression. “It feels like someone hit me with a pan.”

“Do you want something for that?” I asked. “I’m sure Kier’s got something in his medicine cabinet.”

Emerald did his best to sit up, but he couldn’t do much with his hands bound. He managed to rest his shoulders against the wall and bring his legs up so that he could lean comfortably. I didn’t feel guilty for putting him in that position, because he would have done worse to me if he’d managed to grab me.

“Generally speaking, enemies don’t offer each other painkillers,” Emerald said.

“Do you work with Kier?”

“Yes.”

“Then I don’t want to be your enemy. I don’t want to make his life harder when he’s already helped me out so much.”

“You’re failing, if that’s the case. You want to make his life better, then you should get the hell out of here. Leave him alone.”

Everyone kept saying that to me, and I started to wonder if I should do it. Just leave and let Kier live his life. Then I remembered the look on his face when he had chased me down after trying to drop me off at my house. I didn’t think he would let me go that easily. Not unless I wanted to leave, and we both knew that I didn’t want that.

“Is that a no to the drugs?” I asked.

Emerald cocked his head, staring at me again. “No, thank you. I wouldn’t trust anything that you brought me.”

“Yes, because Kier’s got something dangerous on hand, when there’s a bunch of little kids in the house. That sounds like him.”

“He brought you into the house. Maybe we misjudged his worthiness of raising young,” Emerald said.

Fury sparked in my chest, and I resisted the urge to step forward and kick the bastard. That would only serve to prove his point. “Kier is great with the kids. I would never hurt them. The only people making life difficult are all of you. If you know I’m here, then I have to assume Brook told you?”

His face tightened, and the man looked away. I nodded, knowing that I’d nailed it. “She didn’t like me much either, and just like you, her dislike comes from my being human. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

He laughed. “Sure you haven’t. Lying about your home life isn’t wrong at all.”

“Stop saying that!” I barked, so sick of hearing those words. “Goddammit, why does everyone assume that I’m lying? I’ve done nothing to make you think that, except not walk around with blood dripping out of every hole in my face and bruises covering every inch of my skin. No wonder you had to make a law that a child could kill their parents. You guys certainly don’t know what abuse looks like!”

Emerald hadn’t looked friendly before, but his face closed down entirely after that. His eyes grew hard, and he stared at me like he wanted to rip my head off. “Don’t talk about us like you know why we’ve done anything.”

“The same goes for you. Don’t assume you know why I’m here, or why I ran. Stop judging me for things that don’t matter.”

“I trust Brook’s opinion of you,” Emerald said. “She’s got a keen sense for these kinds of things.”

“You must want to bang her if you think that,” I said.

Emerald bared his teeth at me. It should have scared me more than it did, but my nerves still felt frayed. It didn’t matter to me what he said, and if he wanted to break that pipe, I couldn’t stop him. I’d gotten into a situation where I had no power and didn’t that feel familiar. I’d grown up with no power and the understanding that if something happened, I’d die.

My father could kill me, and no one would know what happened. He could claim that I ran away, and no one would be able to argue with him. I just wanted to escape from that, but… I didn’t want this. I liked Kier and his family. I would’ve chosen to meet them no matter what. But all the extras? These people judging me when they didn’t fucking know? The way that they stared at me like I had ruined Kier’s life, the constant danger, the worry burning a hole in my chest? I didn’t want any of that. I just wanted… something safe.

I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at Emerald. “I know everything that’s happened with Brook and Kier. He told me, and I’m not going to let her beat me up, just because she wants a chance at redemption that she hasn’t earned. I’m not going to be that girl.”

Not anymore, anyway.

Emerald stared at me strangely. “Kier told you what happened? With his parents?”

I nodded.

Emerald kept staring at me, until I felt like he wanted to crawl into my head and poke around my brain. I didn’t move and tried to keep myself from squirming. “What did he tell you?”

“What if you don’t know?” I said. “I’m not going to betray Kier’s trust, just to let you know what he already told me.”

“Then how do I know if you’re telling the truth?”

“I don’t care if you know,” I said.

Emerald sighed and tilted his head back against the wall. “Can I be honest with you?”

“This hasn’t been honest?”

“You might not want to hear it, but it would be best for everyone if you went home. I know that you don’t want to go back, and who knows why. Maybe you’re telling the truth, and maybe Brook was right when she said you weren’t. Maybe you don’t want to tell your parents something, or maybe you just wanted an adventure. It doesn’t matter, because that doesn’t change the facts. You don’t belong here, and the longer you stay, the more danger will come your way. Not Kier’s way, but yours. People will forgive him for taking in a human, but no one will forgive you for being one.”

I swallowed and stared at the ground. “Enough people keep telling me that this is dangerous. I believe you. You don’t have to tell me that this is a stupid thing to do. I’m not leaving.”

“Why wouldn’t you leave?” Emerald asked.

“Because…” I scrounged around in my head, trying to find a reason, something that made sense. Something other than that thing in my chest screaming at the top of its lungs, shouting that if I left, I’d regret it. That some part of me would never recover, and my life would be emptier. It didn’t make sense. I didn’t understand this feeling, and it shouldn’t have existed. I barely knew Kier and his family.

But that feeling still filled my lungs up, making it harder to breathe.

“Because.”

Emerald shook his head. “You’re a foolish girl if you think that you can make this work.”

“Then I’m a fool. I’ve been a fool for a long time.” I should have done something sooner, something that would’ve saved me from my father. I knew that plenty of people had others that believed them. When they said they got hit, or starved, or tormented, people believed them. I didn’t know what about me made it so hard to believe. My silence in class? My good behavior? My face? My father? I didn’t know, and I wished that I could know. What made me so easy to ignore?

“When Kier gets here, what are you going to do?” Emerald asked. “You’ve already got me tied up.”

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said.

“Then what are you going to do?”

I’d tell Kier. He’d deal with this man. I didn’t want to say that, because it felt like giving away my hand. I also didn’t want to leave, because I felt like, the second I turned my back, Emerald would break free. I wondered if his superiors would even be upset if he broke my neck, or if they would just pat him on the back. Good job getting rid of that filthy human. You’ve done right. Or something like that. I didn’t know how the Nightmare society worked.

So, I stayed down there, and we didn’t talk much after that. In the long silence, Emerald would shift around on occasion. He couldn’t seem to get comfortable. I stayed put, watching him. It had to be the longest hour of my life. When I heard the front door open, I stared up at the basement door.

Emerald rested his head back against the wall. “Are you confident in this decision?” he asked. “You might want to think about how it will feel, to have Kier turn his back on you.”

“He won’t,” I said, and went up the stairs.

“Whilda?” Kier called. He looked relieved when I came out of the kitchen. Like some part of him worried that he wouldn’t see me again.

Amber, who looked half asleep, rested in his arms, her head tucked in under his chin.

The other kids took their shoes off at the front door.

“There you are,” Kier said, setting Amber down. He glanced around the house with a frown. “Did you clean? You didn’t have to do that, you know.”

“Can I… Uh, can I talk to you in the kitchen?” I asked.

Kier paused in the process of helping Amber out of her shoes. She looked up at me with her big, sleepy eyes, and I tried my best to look normal. Casual. Not like I’d hit a person over the head and tied them up in the basement.

Kier glanced at Ash, who neatly stepped in to help Amber. “What do you guys want for a snack?” Ash asked. “I bet there are still some of those brownies left. We could have chocolate milk with it.”

Aiden and Amber cheered, while Clementine rolled her eyes. “That’s so immature,” she said.

“Do you not want a brownie, then?” Ash asked.

“Of course I want a brownie, I’m not a monster. Just don’t give me milk,” Clementine answered.

I pulled Kier into the kitchen while they all talked. Once we got there, Kier crossed his heavy arms over his chest. “What happened?” he growled, his voice low and dangerous. All the softness had drained from his face, making him look cold.

Shuffling my feet, I said, “Um… I had a visitor earlier.”

“A visitor?” Kier asked. “I told you not to answer the door. Why would you let someone in?”

“I didn’t exactly let him in,” I said.

Kier’s eyelids dropped low, almost glaring. “Him?” he asked, and that dangerous tone to his voice became sharper. Harder. Almost like it could cut through the maybe-marble counter on its own. It should have scared me. Coming from anyone else, it would have. Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to be worried that Kier would hurt me.

“Yeah… him,” I said, as Ash came into the kitchen.

“All right, what’s going on?” Ash demanded, while moving around to get the brownies and milk together. I wondered what he had to say to keep the kids from following him into the room. “And don’t lie. I’ll know.”

I cleared my throat again.

“Who was it?” Kier said.

Ash looked over his shoulder at us, his face becoming more worried. I didn’t know what to say to make him feel better, so I just kept staring at his brother. Kier looked ready to murder someone already, and I couldn’t imagine him doing that. Not with the kids in the house, at any rate.

“Emerald,” I said.

Kier growled, and Ash’s eyes widened. “Wait, what? Emerald came by?” he asked. “When? How are you still here if that bastard showed up?”

“Uh, well, here’s the thing,” I said. “I didn’t answer the door. I swear to you that I didn’t. But Emerald had a key, and so I assumed that you trusted him and stuff. But it still scared me, so I hid in the pantry, and I might’ve, sorta, knocked him out with a cast iron pan and tied him up in the basement.”

Both boys stared at me like I had started speaking tongues.

“What?” Kier asked.

I repeated what I said, in a more succinct fashion.

Ash shook his head, and turned toward me, the milk and brownies forgotten. “Let me get this straight. You got the drop on Emerald?”

“Yes,” I said.

“And he’s currently in our basement, tied to a pipe with a dog collar and jump rope?”

“That’s right.”

Kier kept giving me that stunned look, and I tried not to squirm too much.

Ash laughed, and then kept laughing. “Oh, man. This is the best thing that I’ve heard in so long. I’m never going to let that bastard live it down. Please, tell me the story again?”

“Ash,” Kier admonished.

“Right,” he said. “She can tell me later. I have to get snacks out to the little monsters. Don’t forget a single detail until then. I want to hear the entire thing from beginning to end.” He turned around, grabbed three glasses of milk and four brownies, and walked out of the kitchen without dropping anything.

Kier rubbed his jaw.

“Are you mad with me?” I asked.

He gave me a sideways look. “Mad? No. Not even a little. Emerald broke into my house, and you defended it and yourself. Not only is that reasonable, but I’m glad you did it.” The tone to his voice shifted slightly, making him sound almost… proud. I tried not to blush too hard, hoping that my darker skin would hide it.

“That does leave a few problems. First and foremost, how the hell did he get a key to the house. I never gave him one. Secondly, what are we going to do with him. The moment he gets out of the house, he’s going to tell the entirety of the Authority that you’re here. He won’t be the last person trying to drag you away from us. We need to figure something out.”

“Do you want me to leave?” I blurted, because the thought had been circling in my head for the last hour. “Forgetting any obligation that you feel toward me, assuming that I’d be fine on my own, would you want me to leave?”

Kier stared at me, his eyes going hard and flat. “No,” he said. “If I wanted you to leave, then you wouldn’t be here. You’re staying.”

My shoulders relaxed. “I’m annoyed with your order, but happy with the answer.”

“Fine, be annoyed. That doesn’t change anything,” Kier said. He started to pace around the kitchen, thinking. “They won’t miss him until tomorrow, so we have that long to figure out what our next move is going to be. I have to be careful, because I won’t let them take the children away.”

“If it comes down to that, then just let me go. I’ll run until I find somewhere safe.”

Kier growled low in his throat, letting me know precisely what he thought of that plan. AKA, he hated it and wanted to shut me up.

“You can’t let them take the kids,” I said.

“I won’t let them take you either,” he barked, and his pacing got even more erratic and speedy.

“I’m not as important.”

He growled something that I couldn’t understand and stopped to brace his hands against the edge of the sink. I could practically feel the tension radiating off him. Any worse, and he probably would’ve broken the counter.

I walked over to him and set my hand on his shoulder. Kier relaxed immediately, and the hostility drained from his features. “It’ll be okay,” I said. “We’ll figure something out. Something that we can both live with. But we really do need to talk about the man in the basement, and what to do about him. No offense, but he’s kind of an ass and I don’t trust him.”

Kier glanced at me. “What did he do?”

“He just said some things. Nothing that you need to worry about.”

Kier shoved off the counter, and I jumped in front of him, with my hands held out. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m going to make sure that he never says something that upsets you again,” Kier responded, his teeth flashing in the overhead lights. I caught the barest glimpse of something in his eyes. Something that shined strangely. It went away when I put my hands on his chest.

“Why don’t you calm down?” I asked. “Just take a seat and a deep breath?”

Kier backed away from me and lowered himself down on the stool. That dangerous gleam didn’t leave his eyes, but I felt like I could talk him down. “Do you not like Emerald?” I asked.

“He’s like a brother,” Kier said. “He’s the one who’s been training me for the last three years.”

“Then you really shouldn’t want to kill him as badly as you do,” I muttered.

“He came into my house and threatened you,” Kier growled, so low that I could practically hear the violence in his heart. “He’s forfeited the right to be safe in this house.”

“Okay, but you might feel bad about it later,” I said.

Kier cocked his head.

“Maybe a smidge?” I asked, holding my thumb and forefinger an inch apart. Kier looked at that, and almost despite himself, smirked. The tension drained from his face, and he relaxed. His big shoulders looked less ready for murder, and his eyes settled down. I felt like we averted a crisis.

“Now that you’re a little calmer, I’d like to tell you something else,” I said.

“What?”

“Brook sent him.”

I expected him to get that wound up fury again. Instead, Kier tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling with exasperation. “Of course she did. Who else would have fucked me over like this? She didn’t get her way, and now she had to throw the world’s worst hissy fit.”

I sighed in relief when he didn’t get violent. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought that you would want to know, considering what she did.”

He nodded. “Yes, I did want to know. But now I have two birds and no stones to kill them with.”

“Do we have to do something about her?” I asked.

Kier looked back into the living room. I could see the kids playing. Ash had settled into the seat with a book, and he would glance up on occasion to make sure the kids didn’t want to kill each other. Clementine and Aiden seemed to be playing some videogame, while Amber sat on the floor with her dolls. She appeared to be making an army that would fight a giant, stuffed t-rex. I rooted for the t-rex to win.

Kier rolled his neck around on his shoulders and breathed out. “Yeah, I need to do something, but I also need to get them upstairs, so that they don’t know what’s going on. The littlest kids still like Brook. I don’t want to take that away from them. Aiden and Clementine are old enough to hold grudges.”

“They don’t already?” I asked.

Kier shook his head. “They were too young to really understand how she let us down. Me and Ash, we understood. Ash doesn’t like being around Brook because of it, but we put up with her for the little kids. The three of them deserve to have an aunt that they love.”

He rose from his seat and rubbed his head. “I’m going to call Brook and get them upstairs before she comes over. You stay here until then, okay?”

I nodded.

After Kier left, I started thinking. If we could just get Emerald and Brook to stop fighting us, then Kier and I would be able to get through the next few months. If he didn’t mind living with the stigma that I would bring, then we just had to make it until I turned eighteen.

Though, I didn’t quite understand why he wanted me around so badly. The thought of leaving him hurt me already. Maybe he felt the same way.