Alfie’s voice reaches my ears, his tone slightly defensive. Perhaps he realizes his earlier comment didn’t quite sit right with me, to put it mildly.
“I did take care of her for the short time she was with me. She would’ve been out on the streets without me. I even gave her a camera. She wasted it all on those pictures.”
I take one of the photos and study it. This can’t be Oakley River. It’s far too clean.
“Where were these taken?”
“It’s that lake over in Astley,” he mutters. “But I told you guys that already.”
I freeze, my hand still crisped around the photo. I feel a little queasy, all of a sudden. “What guys?” I ask slowly. “I’ve never been here before.”
“That other Devil guy. What’s his fucking name? The one with the dark brown hair. Vale Jameson.”
I inhale sharply. Vale’s been here. Vale knows.
He found out we faked her death. Maybe he never believed we’d killed her to begin with. If so…
A tiny bubble of hope rises in my chest. Maybe Vale knows something more than me. If he’s been on her trail, he probably heard about the blood found at Ben Duncan’s. But he’s still looking. That means he might have reason to believe she’s alive.
“How long ago was he here?” I ask through gritted teeth.
“Oh, an hour or so. I don’t know. Maybe more.”
The bubble of hope bursts. One hour is long enough.
No time for the slow death, after all. I take the gun from my back pocket, aim it at his head, and before he’s even had time to register a thing, I shoot.
29
Seraphina
Earlier.
“Take this and disappear.”
Logan presses a wad of cash into my hand before slamming shut the car door and driving off. I find myself alone in the pitch blackness of a street in Oakley, blinking in confusion, trying to wrap my head around what’s happened.
I just spent the last few hours convinced I was going to die. First, at the hands of Angel, and then at Damien’s and Logan’s. When Logan told me he wasn’t going to kill me, I struggled to believe him. When he assured me that Damien had devised this scheme to protect me, I nearly laughed.
They all want me dead. I know it.
This must be a trick. They must have decided to send someone else to end me.
By now, I’d almost welcome it. I have no idea what to do with myself. The idea that I won’t see Damien again—and that if I do, it will be to die at his hands—is unbearable.
I think I’ve finally hit the lowest point in my life. I close my eyes, embracing the darkness, willing it to take over for good.
In the distance, I hear a car. No car ever drives down this shitty street at night. I glance at it and see it’s a black, shiny vehicle, sorelyout of place in this dump. Must be the guy they sent to kill me.
I wait, my heart hammering, even as I tell myself that I accept my fate. But the car hangs back at a distance, and after a while, I start to walk, numbly.
That damn survival instinct. It won’t let me collapse. It never does.
I don’t know where I’m going. I just continue, my body going through the movements on automation, my eyes dry, my skin cold. But at some point, I turn onto a street with a familiar house at the end of it. Well, guess I’m going back to Ben.
I sigh in passive acceptance and walk down the little side stairs that lead to his basement door. I try to open it, but for once, it’s locked. He must have managed to get up long enough to turn the lock.
Sighing again, I knock.
