Page 26

“Hey, little bro,” I say, wrapping my own arms around him. He’s sobbing against my shoulder, and my throat goes thick with emotion. I don’t have words, just a deep gratitude that I am able to see him again. To touch him, to talk to him, to laugh with him.

He’s all I have left.

“I’m sorry,” he says into my chest. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, Remy. C’est bon, petit frère,” I say, rubbing my hand down his back.

He’s four years old again, and I’m protecting him from the sight of our decapitated mother’s body.

The image of her head rolling away from us and the scent of her blood had lingered, and I can imagine the sight plainly now.

I’ve always been there, ready to defend him, but I hadn’t been able to protect him from that.

I haven’t been able to protect him from his mental illnesses either.

My hand clenches again, fingernails digging into my palm once more, when I think of all the ways I’ve failed my brother.

My free hand rubs over his back, not allowing him to see my emotions.

This is the way of things. I take care of him, and he keeps my humanity intact.

Without him, I’d kidnapped someone who destroyed everything.

I won’t take this for granted.

“How are you here? How did you find me?” he asks. “Are they dead? Did you kill Sasha?” He holds my shoulders at arm’s length, searching my face for the answer. Genuine fear furrows his brows, and he bites his lip.

I wonder if Sasha has managed to burrow beneath his skin like her parasite of a sister did to me.

“Gwyn gave you up,” I say, not able to tell him about our uncle. In blood, I’ve added one more sin to my list. After inscribing the words ‘kin killer,’ I don’t know if there’s any point in keeping track of all that I’ve done. Not anymore.

I don’t want Remy to know yet.

“She just…gave me up? What do you mean?” he asks, and all I can do is stare at him. My baby brother is alive. Every haunting nightmare I had that involved his blood being drained from him shouldn’t matter anymore, but the stain those imaginings have left on my soul lingers.

“She did,” I nod, and suddenly I need to know every single thing that occurred up to this point. I should console him, and just live in this moment, but I want to know what the fuck she did to him.

I need to know exactly what Gwyn’s role is in all of this. Each word, each action, each punishment she has doled out—will be paid back in kind to her before I’m finished.

“What happened?” I ask. “How did you get mixed up with Susan?”

“Roman, really?” Margot calls from the hallway, admonishing me for bringing up Hale’s mother, the sorceress who’d organized the hit on Gwyn’s parents. “Do you really think now’s the time?”

“Margot?” my brother asks, laughing. His smile lights up his entire face, and I have to look away.

Otherwise, I’ll be forced to confront just how much I missed him.

He’s the opposite of me in so many ways, and the past year we haven’t spoken, the past few years while he’d been banished, has taken a toll.

Like a sailor with sea legs getting used to dry land, I’ll have to figure out the new balance of things.

My friend peeks her head around the corner. “Hi, Remington,” she teases, grinning as she uses the stupid nickname she came up with years ago. “It’s been a while.”

When my brother smiles at her, I want to push away my questions and just enjoy this, but I know I’m not capable.

I’m fucking greedy, incapable of leaving well enough alone—especially when it comes to Gwyn.

I’m about to say fuck it and start grilling him for details, but he pulls the blanket off himself and hops out of bed.

The anti-tear smock goes down to his knees, and he looks a bit ridiculous in it, but Margot doesn’t mention it when he scoops her into a hug.

Nearly my height, he towers over her, and he kisses her forehead as he spins her around.

“Thanks for keeping him from killing everyone,” he says. “I know that was probably a lot of work.”

“You have no idea,” my friend says, and I level a glare at the two of them.

“I’m sure you’re both tired,” he continues, lowering her to the ground as he gives me a timid glance. “But I need your guys’ help with something.”

“Let’s get you home first, and then—” Margot begins.

“There’s no time. We might already be too late, as it is.”

“What is it?” I ask, wishing that all the bullshit would just fucking stop. It’s starting to feel like battling a hydra. For every one head we chop off, two more appear.

“You have to help me find Kayla,” he says, dragging a hand through his thick hair. “They took her because of me.”

“Rose’s daughter?” Margot asks, and I’m taken back to the moment I’d found his dead girlfriend’s necklace swinging from Gwyn’s rearview mirror.

That’s when I’d known for certain that her family was involved in Remy’s disappearance, and it was the final piece that propelled me forward into kidnapping her to get some answers.

“I thought she was living in Italy with her father,” I say, leaving out the part about Rose’s death. There’s no need to make him think about her overdose on demon blood or his subsequent spiral. It’s probably something he thinks about too often as it is.

“That was nearly a decade ago, Roman,” he says, and there’s a tone in his voice I wish I didn’t recognize. Conviction and obsession had been his closest friends while he’d shivered and suffered away the poison in his blood.

“What’s going on, honey?” Margot asks, sweetly, a hand lifting up to caress his cheek.

He closes his eyes and presses into the touch.

I sit on the bed, watching them, and wondering if losing my mother’s softness is the reason he turned out this way.

And if losing her had manifested in depression and addiction in him, what had it done to me?

Remy takes a deep breath, straightening his spine.

“I got a call from an unknown number the summer before last. When I answered, the girl said she was Kayla. I mean, fuck, she’s like twenty now, so can I even call her a girl?

She’s a woman now.” He swipes a hand over his mouth before continuing.

“Kayla only got a few words in, and then a guy came on the line. A demon. He?—”

“How do you even know it was Kayla and not someone pretending to be her?” I ask.

“He sent a picture. She…she looks just like her mother.”

“He could’ve found that on the internet,” Margot interjects.

“A picture of her being tortured?” he asks, disconnecting himself from Margot. He sits down on the bed beside me, leaning forward to put his elbows on his knees. Slouching forward, he stares ahead as his fingertips massage his temples. “They picked her up at Columbia, Roman.”

He coughs out a sob. Hesitantly, I put my hand on his shoulder. He allows my touch for only a moment before he shrugs it off.

“She came back to the states to go to fucking Columbia, and they found her.”

“Why do they even want her?” Margot asks, kneeling in front of my brother.

“Why didn’t they take her before that?” I ask, dubious about the authenticity of whatever blackmail bullshit is going on.

“She was a kid, and these guys don’t deal in kids. ‘Too visible,’” he sneers.

“What the fuck do they want?” I ask, thinking about how much money I have at my disposal now that the coven is mine. I shove away the fact that it can never properly be mine, not with Gwyn still alive. It’s not pertinent to this situation, so I’ll handle it later.

“I owe them,” he says. “Well, Rose owes them.”

“And what does she owe exactly?”

“Her soul. Normally they come to collect it when you’re old and dying, but when she…

” he trails off. “I didn’t know she bartered it away.

When she died, I didn’t know I needed to contact them.

I guess the soul only lingers for a little while, in the body.

But since I didn’t know, it moved onto the other side without being claimed. ”

“They’re demons,” Margot says, squinting at him in confusion. “Can’t they just go get it from the afterlife or whatever?”

“No, they can’t. It doesn’t work like that,” I say with certainty. I know better than the two of them what can be done once a soul moves onto the afterlife. No matter how much money or tears you throw at them, some things are impossible.

“Why didn’t they just take Kayla’s when they snatched her?” I ask, knowing how the fuck it sounds. But there’s no point in mincing words. He flinches, just as I knew he would. But Margot soothes him, and I’m glad I brought her. She can be gentle with him—better than I can.

“They offered me a deal. Ten souls of their choosing to save Kayla. That’s…that’s what I was doing when…when I got caught.” He turns on the bed and grabs my hand in his. “They said I only had a year.”

“How many souls had you given them?” Despite the predicament, satisfaction courses through my veins knowing that Bill Parsons’s soul was payment rendered for a demon’s deal.

“All ten,” he says, “but I didn’t have time to check in with them after the fact. I-I don’t know what they’ve done with her. If she’s alright, if they still have her. I don’t know fucking anything.”

“You paid the debt, Remy. Demons might not have honor but they have reputation,” I say, squeezing his hand before dropping it.

He begins to argue but I’m barely listening.

The fact he fulfilled the requirements of the deal eases my worry for the girl.

It takes off the fucking heat, and I’m grateful because I need to get out of the fucking fire.

“We’ll look into it,” Margot says, smiling reassuringly at my brother before giving him another hug. Over his shoulder, she widens her eyes at me like I’m some sort of asshole.

She’s the one holding him as he cries, so maybe she’s right.