Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Check his pockets,” Andrew snaps when I don’t reply—because I’m too terrified to speak a word.
Stuart finds it in the right side of my breeches, yanks it out, and shakes it in front of my face. “Do you know how much this is worth, boy? Do you? This has been passed down through my family for generations, and you thought you could steal it from me?”
He pulls a knife from his pocket. It’s not like any other knife I’ve seen. The handle is black, the sharp blade a gunshot gray with engraving along the metal. As he waves it in front of my face, I notice it has the same crest as the watch. Then he presses the blade to my throat.
My eyes widen when I realize what he’s going to do. “No. Please!”
“Stealing is a sin,” he sneers. “And what happens to sinners?”
“They go to Hell,” his son says, laughing. “Do it.”
“My brother needs me,” I whisper as fear wraps so tightly around my throat, the words come out strangled. “I’m… all he’s got.”
No.Dylan.
I can’t leave my brother.
He has no one else. I promised Mom I’d look after him—I promised playtime and stew.
“Pl—”
The second the blade cuts through tissue and muscle in the middle of my chest, and the blood pours down my front, I should feel pain. I should feel like I’m unable to breathe, to think, to scream. Instead, my skin blisters from the rising heat surrounding me, and the flames engulfing my body and ripping through my soul.
I’m screaming. Yelling. Begging for them to help me.
Dylan’s eyes are there.
He’s crying. He’s looking for me. He’s…
And then I’m falling, swallowed into the ground, where everything goes black.
Then the world turns red.
And all I can hear are the screams.
1
Sable
Present day
“Have you tried turning it off and on again?”
The woman’s voice crackles through my headset. “Have I tried turning it off—you know what? That’s the problem with you people. You speak down to me as if I’m some kind of idiot whenyou’rethe reason my internet isn’t working.”
The wings of the fidget spinner make a low hissing sound before I stop it dead in its tracks. Then I flick the blade again. Rainbow lights flash with pulsing stars, casting the only hint of color onto my dull surroundings.
I stop it. Start it. Stop it again, waiting for her to stop talking so I can recite our handbook’s response.
“I’m sorry you’re having issues with?—”
“You people like to think that you’re better than me just because you’re on the other end of the fucking phone?—”
She keeps going, but I’ve finished listening. I know the drill. It always goes the same way, and I’m out of fucks to give. It’s hard to get mad at her, given her anger toward me ends when the call does, because that’s all I have left—rage.
