Page 19 of These Monstrous Ties

Chapter Eight

Present

I’m drowningin cold water. I can’t breathe. Can’t scream. My body is shivering, my words frozen on my lips. I’m drenched, every inch of my skin covered in icy water. I try to find air. Gasp for it.

For one of the first times in my life, Iwantto live.

“Up, Sid.Now.”

My eyes flash open, hands coming up to defend myself.

Jeremiah.

I scramble upright, press myself against my headboard, pull my sheets up to my chin. And only then do I notice the cup in his hand, and the cold water dripping from my face, from my hair, down onto my black tank top.

Rage courses through me.

I fling the covers off and lunge for my brother.

“You fucking threw water on me?!” It’s part-question, part-war cry.

We stumble, together, against the glass door to my balcony. The sun is barely up, Alexandria still bathed in pink and yellow, the city stretching out below, people on their morning commutes on what is shaping up to be a sunny Monday morning.

And my own brother has thrown ice cold water on me to wake me up.

I know he’s letting me shove him against the glass now. He can stop us both at any time. But a small smile plays on his lips, even as his white shirt is bunched in my fist.

“Are you done?” he asks, infuriatingly calm.

I let go of his shirt, smooth it down.

Then I slap him across the face, making his head spin. Not from my strength, but rather his surprise.

He opens his mouth, cracks his jaw, dark brows raised. When he turns back to face me, he throws his head back and laughs. And then he puts his hand around my throat, squeezing, just as Kristof had.

Just as Lucifer had.

I don’t bother fighting back. He won’t kill me now. He hadn’t gotten up so goddamn early and barged into my room for me to die so soon.

I hold his pale green gaze, hear him breathing in and out, steady. Calm. As if his good side is trying to tell his bad side to let go of his little sister’s throat. But Jeremiah doesn’t have a good side. He has a bad one. And a worse one.

He just squeezes harder.

My nails find his cheeks.

I pinch him, hard.

He shoves me away, and I catch myself on my bed, then immediately straighten, ready to go at him again if he wants to keep playing this game. He rubs a hand along his jaw, and I see with satisfaction nail marks edged into his tan skin.

“You’re a shit, did you know that?” he asks, cracking his jaw again.

I sit on the bed, my hair still dripping wet. I wrap one of the black fuzzy blankets from my bed around my shoulders.

“Why the fuck did you think tossing cold ass water on me was a good idea?” I counter.

He sighs, crosses his arms, and leans against the balcony door, his head tipped back, eyes on the ceiling. He stands like that when he has something he doesn’t want to say. Which is almost never. Jeremiah isn’t afraid of any word in the English language. Or any language, for that matter. He’s fluent in German, and that shit I do not understand. We live in North Carolina for God’s sake.

“Spit it out,” I growl, ready to get into a warm bath, my throat aching from Jeremiah’s and Kristof’s hands.