I shouldn’t have stopped to listen to her muffled whimpers, but I did. And they burrowed under my skin, forcing my feet back upstairs.
I waited for the click of Titus’s door and peeked into the hall to make sure he’d gone into his room before creeping back to my mom’s. My attention snagged on the knife and cult mask still lying on the floor in the hallway.
Stooping to pick them up, I yanked on the mask and fisted the knife before entering the room.
The second I was inside, I paused.
Why had I come in here? To hurt her? No. Titus had asked if I wanted to kill her along with his dad, but I’d let her live. I didn’t hate her enough to want her dead.
I wanted answers. Before I could leave with Titus, she had to answer for what she’d said about offering me up in her place.
When I approached the foot of the bed, her sniffling stopped when she noticed me, her face paling. She was shaking, weakly tugging against the bindings holding her wrists to the headboard, trying to escape.
Ezra Leeds’ corpse lay beside her. His body was a grotesque mess, with his chest cavity torn open and his horrified expression boring into the popcorn ceiling. His blood had soaked into the sheets, staining everything red.
My mom arched off the mattress in a vain attempt to escape the wet sheets. It was a pitiful scene.
By the look that flashed over her eyes, she thought I’d come back to kill her. She started to sob again, tears cascading down her cheeks. I approached her side of the bed and, with a shaky hand, pointed the knife at her throat. “I’m going to remove the tape. Scream, and I’ll kill you.”
With her nod, I peeled the tape off.
“L-Lorelei?”
I ripped the mask off, angry tears pricking my eyes. “So you knew it was me?”
“N-No. Not until you just spoke! H-Honey. Please let me go.”
“You told Titus to take me as an offering in your place! You’d have me sacrificed to save your own skin!” My voice started to shake along with the hand holding the knife. “You’ve always been selfish. But this is a new low, even for you.”
Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks. “I didn’t mean it. Oh, honey, you can’t think I meant it.”
“What was I supposed to think? You…you…” My voice broke.
“You didn’t think I meant it, did you? I thought you were another one ofthem.Oh, honey, I never would have brought you here if I had known how twisted Ezra’s son is.”
“Why do you think Titus killed Ezra, mom? He was never in love with you.” I jabbed the knife in the corpse’s direction. “He was the twisted one! He was never a pastor. He leads a cult that worships the Jersey Devil. He never loved you. He lured us here so they could strip us of our souls as offerings to their god. He wasn’t even human. None of them are, except for Titus. His mom was an offering. Ezra lied to her, just like he lied to you.”
By her expression, she thought I was crazy.
Maybe she was right. I was running away with a murderer, after all.
But I wasn’t wrong about this. Titus had told me that the entire population of Bishop had descended from the Jersey Devil, the Lord of the Forest. Now they lived in service to him, luring human souls here to keep him strong.
I had seen the proof of what Titus was. I’d felt the ridges of his black horns when I’d held on to them for dear life as he’d fucked me. I’d seen his impossibly long tongue and felt that too.
In fact, the only thing I was certain of when it came to the enigma that was my dickhole of a new stepbrother was that he wasn’t human, and that he was probably the only devil in Bishop who didn’t want to feed our souls to the Jersey Devil.
“I’ve seen him, Mom. But he’s not like Ezra. Titus is good. He cares about me, even if he likes to pretend he doesn’t sometimes. He’s more human than devil.”
“Then let me come with you! The three of us can escape. We can leave this awful place and get out of here together.”
My heart clenched. I didn’t need her. But even if we never went on to have a picture-perfect mother-daughter relationship, at least she would be alive. If I let her go, there would always be a chance to have the mom I knew before my dad died.
“Titus has the truck ready. We don’t have time to pack anything. You’ll have to leave all your precious possessions here.”
I expected her to put up a fight, and that would push me into leaving her behind. Because there was that lingering anger still in the back of my mind, telling me to.
“Of course, honey. So long as I get to leave here with you. You’re the only thing that matters, baby girl.”
