by Eva Chase
Apparently that protection came with an expiration date.
He was gliding toward me faster now. I couldn’t have outrun him in my current state even if I’d wanted to abandon Trix and the others. If I had to do this, I’d better get it over with quickly so I could be here for her when it mattered the most.
I touched Ryo’s shoulder just long enough to get his attention. “Go,” I said, not leaving any room for argument. “I’ll come as soon as I can.” Then, squaring my shoulders, I pushed myself forward to meet the old man.
He had the same cold expression I’d been met with so often during my childhood. In some ways, living under his rule had been like living here at Roseborne—a place of perpetual cloud where the slightest rays of sunlight or moonshine beaming down became something precious. I’d gotten enough warmth to manage to grow, even if my perspective had ended up warped in ways I hadn’t realized until too late. Was it any wonder my sister had gone off the rails when he’d iced her out so thoroughly from her first reckless moments as a little kid?
That was the last thought that passed through my head, and then he grabbed me, wrenching me from the darkness beyond Roseborne’s mansion through a dizzying whirl and out into the stately atmosphere of his apartment’s dining room.
With a jolt up my spine, I dropped into the chair where I’d always sat. The antique clock in the corner ticked; the familiar wood polish smell rose off the broad mahogany table and the matching sideboard and china cabinet.
Between the furniture and trimmings, this place echoed the college’s vibe more than I’d remembered. My grandfather had always wanted to build his history in this country backward as well as forward, as if the trappings of old money would deepen his roots and make them even more unshakeable.
He paced the floor on the other side of the table now, like he always had when he’d been displeased with me. That was the ritual: I sat here, and he lectured me until he’d unloaded all the frustrations and demands provoked by whatever misstep I’d made, no matter how small.
How old had I been the last time that had happened? Shortly after I’d moved out into my own apartment at nineteen? He’d had fewer opportunities after that… but mostly I’d been so indoctrinated by his views that I’d given him very few reasons to feel he needed to.
Not now. Now he turned toward me with a fearsome expression that would have set my pulse thumping twice as hard when I’d been in elementary school. Even at twenty-five years old, I couldn’t stop my heart from stuttering briefly.
He rapped his cane against the floor. I didn’t think he actually needed the thing to help him walk—he’d taken it up several years ago mostly because he liked the intimidating gestures he could make with it. I’d never seen him carry it outside the apartment. It was to make statements to us. He wouldn’t want to risk any stranger thinking him weak because of it.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” he asked in his brutally commanding tone. “You really couldn’t have made more of a mess of things, could you? Have you forgotten everything I ever taught you?”
I also couldn’t fend off the frigid wave of shame that pummeled me in the wake of that tone and those words. Four and a half years without seeing him, of realizing how much his style of “parenting” had screwed me up, and all it took was a few seconds for him to cut right through me again.
I had to stay focused. Trix might need me out there in the real world—and the last thing she needed was to get distracted trying to help me. I was going to get out of this vision on my own, and fast.
“What are you talking about?” I said, managing to bring out the smooth voice I’d cultivated for business meetings and negotiations. “I followed the principles you taught me to the letter. You can’t really be complaining about that.”
He jabbed his forefinger at me. “You’ve let yourself become weak. Let others get the better of you and take charge over you. No DeLeon should accept that.”
“I’ve been biding my time,” I said, putting the situation in terms I knew he’d respond better to. “When your opponents have more power than you, sometimes you need to wait and pick your battles rather than go charging in. Wouldn’t you have told me that?”
My grandfather ignored that point. He started to pace again with sharp strikes of his cane against the floor. “And now you’ve tied yourself to this girl. What prospects does she have? What could she possibly want from you except to leech off your success and security? You’ve let your heart go too soft, making stupid decisions like your sister did.”
My temper flared beneath the cool I’d been keeping. How dare he talk about Trix like that? How dare he talk about Gloriana like that?
My hands started to clench under the table, but I forced them to relax. He wouldn’t respect anger. If I lost my cool, he’d only sneer at me more.
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘tied to.’ I’ve enjoyed her company. She’s helped me become stronger, not weaker. And she’s become the key to getting out of this mess you’re so upset that I’m in, so it’d be stupid not to stand with her. I’m thinking of my own best interests here.”
He scoffed. “A boy’s excuses for following his dick rather than his brain. You think I can’t tell the difference? Maybe it’s best that this place swallowed you up. Spared me having to find out what a disappointment you’d turn out to be too.”
My face flushed, shame and anger warring in my chest. This was taking too long already. Why couldn’t I find the right words to free myself from this scenario? It’d always been difficult to convince my grandfather of anything he didn’t already agree with, but I knew him through and through. I should be able to come up with a strategy that would change his mind—
Unless that wasn’t the point.
I studied him for a moment across the table as that idea sank in. The other visions I’d experienced and that Trix had talked about—those had been about making amends. What amends did I need to make with my grandfather, really? If anything, he should be apologizing for the mistakes he’d made raising me.
I’d let myself get wrapped up in trying to meet his approval all over again, even as I was arguing with him. Who the fuck cared what he thought of my tone now? Whether I could get him to agree with my decisions? They were mine, damn it, and that was all he needed to know about it.
With a scrape of the legs against the floorboards, I pushed back my chair and stood up. My grandfather jerked to a halt, his eyes widening just slightly. I’d never dared to interrupt one of his tirades anywhere near so blatantly.
“Fine,” I said, setting my hands on the table. “Be disappointed in me. I don’t give a shit either way. I know that I’m doing the right thing for me, and it’s my life, so my opinion matters a hell of a lot more than yours.”
He started to sputter. “You’re barely done being a boy. You have no idea what you’re talking about. Throwing your elders’ judgment back in their faces—”
I let my anger flow through me, stirring up a deeper sense of resolve. “Yeah, I will throw it back at you. You shaped me every step of the way from when I was four years old. If you can’t trust that the useful parts of those lessons have stuck with me after all that time, then clearly you don’t think very highly of yourself either. I’ve listened enough. Now it’s time for me to pay attention to what I want. What I need.”
“Oh, and what have you made of yourself striking out on your own? Your company fell apart without you; you’ve got nothing to show for all that work. If you ever do make it out of that place, you’ll be nothing but a loser and a failure.”
To my surprise, I found I could laugh at that insult. The sound felt good vibrating up from my lungs, as if it’d cracked through a shell I hadn’t known was keeping part of my emotions locked tight.
“I won’t be a failure,” I said. “Because I’ll have beat not just the assholes keeping us down at Roseborne but also your badgering in my head. You held me back in so many more ways than you helped me. I don’t need all this junk that you tried to convince me
made me more worthy than anyone else.”
I yanked at my suit jacket, designer label and tailored to fit, and tossed it on the table. The Rolex he’d encouraged me to buy, that I hadn’t seen since I’d entered Roseborne, encircled my wrist. I unlatched it and threw it away with the jacket. Just like that, my body had gotten ten times lighter.
“You ungrateful bastard of a—” my grandfather raged.
“You’re the ungrateful one,” I shot back before he could continue. “You never appreciated how hard I worked to meet your approval. And you’re the loser. Because you know the one good thing that’s come out of this hellish situation? I realized what’s really important, and that’s not how much money you make or how many employees are working under you. It’s the people you care about who care about you. Those people matter more than anything. And if you lose sight of that, you lose yourself. It’s too bad you forgot that, if you ever knew it, way too long ago.”
As my words rang out into the air, the vision around me shattered apart. I plummeted through a rush of wind and darkness back to the stiller darkness of Roseborne’s night.
The conversation that had felt so agonizing in the moment must have taken nearly no time at all in reality. Trix was still striding across the lawn toward the gate, the other two guys right behind her, but as I caught my balance, she slowed. A moment later, I saw why.
A ghostly image of a teenaged girl was drifting across the grass to meet her, eyes narrowed accusingly and face tight with rage. Roseborne’s ghosts weren’t done with Trix yet.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Trix
I hadn’t really forgotten what—or rather, who—had been waiting for me by the gate. I’d just let myself not think about it for as long as I could. The second Sylvie’s form glided into view, my ribs seemed to clench around my lungs, while a sense of resignation radiated through the rest of my body.
Maybe I’d gotten through to Cade when it had mattered most, even if I hadn’t been able to save him. Maybe I had the power to challenge the spirits who ran this school now. But I still couldn’t outrun the worst parts of my past. My reckoning wasn’t over, and I couldn’t save anyone else until I dealt with my own crimes.
“Trix?” Jenson said, shooting me a questioning look. “Do you think we can divert her?”
She was coming up on me too fast. I took a step back but didn’t let myself move any farther than that. “I’ve got to see this through. I owe her as much as I owe anyone here.” I owed her more, really. “I don’t know how long it’ll take. In the meantime, can you call everyone who’s still here and alive to come to the gate? Send someone to help Violet down from the dorms if you can, assuming she’s still there. We might need to get out fast if we want—”
I’d spat out the words as quickly as I could, but Sylvie still caught me before I could finish. My voice wrenched away from me as I hurtled into this final, most awful vision.
My combat boots thumped against the rain-slick pavement. The walls on either side of the alley loomed over me. A breath of cool, damp air flooded my lungs, and my fingers clenched around the leash I’d been gripping.
The dog at the other end of that leash tugged against my hold and let out a low growl. The hairs on the back of my neck and all down my arms stood on end. Any second I was going to hear the tap of Sylvie’s shoes approaching—
There they were, sharply staccato against the pavement. I swiveled on my feet, my heart leaping to the base of my throat, looking for a way out, a way to stop this…
I couldn’t let the dog go at her. That was what had made her panic—that’d been the key to my horrible plan. If I released him now, he’d probably still run at her. I couldn’t approach her while holding him. I didn’t think walking away from this encounter would get me out of the vision. Think, Trix.
My gaze fell on a pipe jutting from the side of one of the buildings at knee-level. That would do it. With hasty movements, I hauled the dog back a few feet and tied the leash around the pipe, giving it a tug to make sure the knot was secure. The dog strained against it and let out a huff. One part of this massive problem taken care of.
Sylvie’s footsteps stopped. Her voice carried from the courtyard beyond the alley. “Hello? I’m here like you asked.”
In that first second, my whole body froze. I didn’t want to have to look her in the face, especially not here of all places. I’d spent so much time silently resenting her and feeling usurped by her, but ultimately she’d never hurt me at all. I’d been the only villain between the two of us.
Which was exactly why I knew Roseborne wouldn’t be satisfied until I acknowledged that fact to the person who needed to hear it most.
The power that had filled me in the school foyer had fallen away as I’d tumbled into the vision. Walking to meet Cade’s former girlfriend, I felt more pathetic than strong. A shiver ran through my body. I crossed my arms over my chest as if I could ward off the chill that way, even though it was coming from inside me rather than out.
Sylvie stood in a streak of light cast by a dim security lamp, her black hair as sleek as ever, perfectly matched with her kohl-lined eyes. Like a slim, mod version of Cleopatra, I’d used to think in my more generous, envious moments. Her thin eyebrows arched when I emerged from the thicker shadows of the alley.
“Beatrix? What are you doing here?”
Behind me, the Rottweiler’s claws scrabbled against the ground. I willed him to stay quiet and calm. “I’m the one who asked you to come,” I said, managing to keep my voice steady if quiet. “It was—it was a stupid thing. I was going to play a prank on you. And maybe I was hoping you’d get hurt in the process. But I know now—I know how awful that was.”
She eyed me warily, her chin coming up. “And I’m supposed to just believe you after you admit something like that? You’ve always hated me, haven’t you? What the hell did I ever do to you?”
You took away the only person who seemed to really care about me, I thought but didn’t say. The image of Cade collapsed on the floor, the knife in his chest, came back to me with a sickening lurch of my gut—and an unexpected thought.
He’d played with my emotions so I’d always be on my toes, eager to please him however I could. So he could be sure I’d stick with him. He’d dangled affection and withdrawn it when he wanted to maneuver me. Why would I think he’d only operated that way with me? He’d used Sylvie’s presence in his life to make me anxious about losing him… How had he used me with her? Was there more to her hostility than I’d provoked?
I took a tentative step farther into the courtyard, careful not to come close enough that she might take my approach as threatening. My mouth had gone dry. I wet my lips.
“I was jealous,” I said. “Because a lot of the time Cade used to spend with me, he started spending with you instead. But that was up to him. It’s not like you forced him. I should have realized that—I should have looked at how he handled the situation and spoken up to him rather than resenting you.”
“Please,” Sylvie sneered. “He was constantly running off to take care of you. Sometimes it felt like we couldn’t get through one date without him texting you or even taking off. You were the problem.”
Was that true? I didn’t know anything about that, but Roseborne’s spirits might, since they’d had access to Cade’s memories as well. The queasy sensation inside me bubbled higher.
“I never texted him when he was out with you,” I said. “I was too worried about pissing him off by acting needy. If he said it was me he was talking to…”
“Why would he lie?”
After all tonight’s conversations with Cade, I knew the answer to that without needing to think much about it, as much as I hated that it was true. “To keep you on the hook. To remind you that he had other girls in his life. He always wanted a little uncertainty so we’d go along with what he wanted when he was giving us his attention. Proving that he could jerk us around was the only way he could feel sure we wouldn’t walk away.”
Sylvie’s
lips pursed with a tightness that suggested she recognized that dynamic more than she’d have wanted to. “He really cared about me,” she protested. “He was always saying—he was so sweet most of the time.”
“Yeah.” I knew that side of the equation too. A sudden sense of sisterhood rushed into me.
I’d resented her and, okay, maybe even hated her a little, and the whole time we’d really been on the same side, dealing with Cade’s demons.
“Did he convince you to do things you weren’t totally sure you wanted to do?” I found myself asking, even though her answer couldn’t be totally real. “Did he make you feel like—like you were letting him down somehow if you ever said no?”
Sylvie winced. “I don’t want to talk about that,” she said, her voice abruptly rough.
That was enough of an answer. I couldn’t really imagine he’d never have used the same tactics on his girlfriend as he had on me. It’d just been easier with me because he’d had so much time to build up my loyalty and dependence.
And I’d blamed her for it.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out, so emphatically my chest ached with the admission. “So fucking sorry.”
Her lips twisted into a frown. “It’s a little late for that, don’t you think? You already stole my whole life away, you bitch. You couldn’t have seen what was going on before you went off on your awful crusade?”
Heat burned in my cheeks. “You’re right. I should have. I can’t be sorry enough. But I don’t know what else to say. I’m not asking you to forgive me. You probably shouldn’t. I just want you to know that I know how wrong it was.”
“Well, I’m sorry if I can’t bring myself to really care.”
The words stung, but I deserved them. I opened my mouth, closed it again, and then ventured, “He’s gone.”
Sylvie’s expression softened with confusion. “Who? Gone where?”
