Page 30 of These Monstrous Ties

Nicolas stares at me, clearly annoyed.

“You know no matter what I say, you have to kill him, right?”

I shush him. “Not part of the game, Nicky,” I croon.

He swallows. I watch his Adam’s apple bob up and down. “Yes.” And then he throws me a bone. “Julie is the mother.”

Julie.

Another punch to the gut. If I ask the rest of my three questions, I’ll probably kill Lucifer right now, as soon as I can find him.

“Did he really burn down Brooklin’s house?”

I know Jeremiah meant what he said when he offered me my freedom. Or rather, my freedom within reason, within the confines of this mansion. But I don’t know if he’d lied about the details.

For some reason, Nicolas seems nervous. He spins the bottle faster in his hands, watching it carefully.

“Yes,” he finally says. “With the help of his Unsaint fiends.” This surprises me. Not the Unsaints, but I thought his nerves had to do with the fact he was going to reveal a lie from my brother.

Two more questions. I shift in my chair, put my hands back in my pockets and clear my throat.

Nicolas raises his brows as if to ask, ‘Is that enough?’ But it isn’t. Not even close.

“Does my brother love Brooklin?”

Nicolas jerks back, nearly dropping the bottle in his hands. He squeezes it in one, fingers blanching against the glass. He didn’t expect that one. But I already know the answer before he confirms it.

“Yes.”

My throat goes dry, and I don’t even know why. If Jeremiah loves her, maybe he’ll stay off my back. He doesn’t seem to be doing that, though. But maybe I don’t want him to. Maybe I like his overbearing cruelties. Maybe they make me feel loved.

My face burns with that thought. I look down at my knees, knobby and full of bruises from God-knows what. Then I remember. Kristof throwing me down on his marble floor. Something my brother had let him do.

One more question.

I take a breath and glance outside, at the neat hedges that line the windows.

I can feel Nicolas watching me.

I don’t know if I want the answer to the one question beating against the side of my brain like a wild animal.

“Does he know I’m here?”

Nicolas freezes. His grip on the bottle tightens so much I think it might shatter in his hands. He seems to stop breathing. I think I know the answer.

But shocking me, he shakes his head.

I gasp at him. “You can’t lie!”

He smiles, but it doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “I’m not lying. He probably thinks you’re here. They all do. But if they knew, they’d have tried to get to you before now. Anyway, no more questions. No explanations,Sidney.”

I shoot him the bird. My name isn’t Sidney. My mom, probably cracked out and half-awake, had written “Sid” on my birth certificate when I was fresh from the womb, still in the hospital.

Well then.

Lucifer might not know I’m here, but he knows something about me. Knows something happened to Jeremiah that night, to make him leave the Unsaints without a word. And Nicolas had given me a hint. He generally showed his emotions around me, but I knew very well he could have hidden them too, when I asked if Lucifer knew where I was.

Nicolas usually kept his feelings to himself, like he had those first two weeks I was here. When Jeremiah kept me in a cell because he didn’t trust me in a room by myself.