Chills tear up and down my spine as I race to the opposite side of the house, away from the party and the people and the loud, incessant thrum of music.
It doesn’t matter how much distance I cover, I can still feel it vibrating through the foundations. Hear their grating laughter as they sing and dance and do shit I never got to experience. I was supposed to be like them. I should’ve had friends, and gone to parties, and smiled ear to ear at the promise of a good night. I shouldn’t be stuck in this crumbling house.
Instead, I’ve stolen someone’s phone with a half-cocked plan.
I don’t know what exactly I’ll do with it yet. Maybe there’s something on Reddit that will solve my situation. Or an Etsy witch who might be the answer to my prayers.
Except once I make it into a spare bedroom and unlock the phone—no passcode, thankfully—growling when it slips from my grip a couple of times, that’s not what I search for. When my fingers fly over the screen, it’s my sister’s name I’m typing.
The press had something to say when it was her birthday. There can’t possibly be anything further, but I don’t trust either of my parents. They’ll never miss an opportunity to lift themselves into a position of power, even if it means using my sister’s corpse as a stepping stone.
I need to know whether they did it again—whether they used Ella as a publicity stunt to have another five minutes in the limelight, to remind people they’re still around, that an Eldrith still holds power.
I stop breathing entirely as the screen loads, imagining everything they could’ve said. Best-case scenario, they say nothing. The worst case?
My stomach sinks into the floor at the headlines that appear at the top of the screen, and my fingers tremble as I click on the first link. Red-hot fury pumps through my veins with every word I read.
They did talk to the press. Only it wasn’t about Ella.
They were discussingmeand my “troubling” disappearance; the days they’ve spent trying to reach me.
The rage bubbles and boils until I can hardly breathe. Why the fuck were they trying to reach me?—
I’m adrug user?Excuse me? Calling me a problem child, I can understand. A runaway? Sure, that’s what they called me all the times I disappeared off into the basement.
But an addict? Not once have Ievertouched anything because I spent every minute of the four years after the Feds came trying to keep Ella alive. Even once she was gone, I steered clear.
This would’ve been the first time they’ve reached out to me since they were imprisoned. They spoke to Ella but never me. And now they’re looking for me, and when I don’t answer, their very first assumption is that I’m on a bender?
They told the reporter I’ve stolen Ella’s ashes so they can’t bury her with the rest of the family—as if I’m some kind ofmonsterwho’dstealhuman fucking remains. If they’d spoken to her, they’d know that Ella didn’t even want to be buried in the crypt. She wanted to follow in Grandma’s footsteps.
They don’t know her—they don’t knoweitherof us.
I expected them to use Ella’s death for fucking clout. But this? Turning me into the villain in their story to garner the world’s pity?
What did I ever do to them? How am I always in the wrong when I haven’t done a single thing? What sins did I commit to deserve any of this? I was just a child. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. I didn’t know how to be like Ella. Why wasn’t I ever enough for them?
I run my fingers through my hair. They’ve filed for an appeal. They—what if they get out? What if they’re granted parole? I don’t know how any of that works.
If they win the appeal, that could mean they get the manor, right? Because they’re my next of kin. And I’ll be stuck here with them.
There’s no stopping the scream that was brewing in my chest. It rips right out of my throat with a force that could generate shock waves and send this decrepit house toppling from its frame.
White-hot tears burn my eyes, and I can’t stop that either.
The energy inside me builds and builds until it feels like it’s going to consume me from the inside out. I throw the phone across the room. It shatters into pieces as the aggravating music pumps in the background, and the cold trickles through my coat, and the musty, cloying air stains my lungs, and that fucking phone—the cracked screen is frozen on the article.
So I scream, and I yell, and I cry, and I wrap my fingers around every object that has the misfortune of being near me. I let out every swallowed retort, every broken promise, every time another crack tore through my heart.
The world already decided I was trouble. So I might as well be.
16
Lynx
This…humanwon’t leave me alone.
She’s sitting beside me while I count to one thousand, internally losing my mind the longer Sable is nowhere to be seen, and this girl won’t. Stop.Talking.
