Page 87 of The Cruelest Chaos

“Ella?” My mouth feels dry when she doesn’t look up. Doesn’t acknowledge me at all. I come into the living room, my feet sinking a little into the plush carpet. “Ella? You okay?”She’s clearly not okay.

Panic surges through me. Is she having some kind of…episode?

“Ella?”

“Who was she?” Her voice sounds distant, and she still doesn’t look at me.

My skin crawls and I slip my hands into the pockets of my shorts to keep from rubbing them over my arms. “Who was who, baby? What are you talking—”

“In the basement,” she interrupts me in that same quiet voice. “Who was the girl in the basement?”

As soon as the words enter my brain and I make the connection, adrenaline shoots through me and I have to move. I turn away from her, forcing myself to walk and not run down the hall, toward the door to the basement. I clench and unclench my fists, try to swallow down past the dryness in my throat.

She wouldn’t have. There’s no way she could have. The door was locked. The basement is soundproof. Ria doesn’t know when people are here, and she hasn’t tried pounding on the door since the first week.

But when I get to the end of the hall, I see it isn’t.

It isn’t locked, and it isn’t closed.

No.

But maybe Ria didn’t leave. Maybe she stayed. Maybe she…understood.

I flip on the light at the top of the stairs and jog down them, calling Ria’s name, my voice hoarse.

Silence answers me.

She’s not sitting on the bed. I flip on all the lights, looking around the makeshift bedroom, slamming open the bathroom door, the small closet.

Nothing.

She didn’t take any of her clothes, but there’s no one in here. I head back to her bed, rip off the sheets.

No note. No…nothing.

She’s gone.

I pull my phone out of my pocket, call the guard. They answer on the first ring.

“Have you seen anyone leave?” I hold my breath, waiting for the answer. But I already know it.

I know it in the slight pause. The tentative, “Who?”

“Anyone!” I slam my fist against the wall. “Fucking anyone?!” But Sid left before. She snuck out through Lucifer’s backyard.

The smart girls always leave, and I think about my girl downstairs. How many minutes do I have before she goes, too?

“N-no,” the guard on duty answers me.

I throw my phone across the room.

She’s fucking gone, and they’re going to get to her. They won’t trust me, not after what Lucifer did. They’re going to find her and they’re going to hurt her, or they’re going to force me to make her…mine.

Which means…

Goddamn Ella.I swipe my hand over the dresser, sending the lamp I’d brought down crashing to the floor, the bulb bursting. I don’t care. It isn’t enough.

I kick the mini fridge with my bare foot, something like a scream coming from my throat. I tear down the stupid fucking posters on the wall I’d hung up for Ria; poetry and bullshit and things that don’t matter anymore. A map of Alexandria.