“I’m not going to ditch him.” Reed Taylor watched me intently as I answered, his beautiful green eyes flashing. “I’m sorta into this guy right now, and no demon is going to talk me out of it. You guys are all liars, anyway.”
Mouth’s eyes narrowed. “Watch it, Luna. I’m going out on a limb to try and help you here.”
I yawned. “Whatever.”
Reed Taylor turned toward the invisible presence. He nodded. He turned back to face the demon, his eyes scanning the air for something he wasn’t able to see. “My friend here says you aren’t lying, demon. He says something big is up. Why are you trying to help us?”
The demon snorted. “Oh, I’m not doing a thing to help you. You can burn, for all I care. In fact, I hope you do.” He sharply turned his back to us.
“Good riddance,” I muttered.
“Oh, Luna,” Mouth called over his shoulder. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Chapter Twelve
It was a week later and I was still hot under the collar. I fairly sizzled with anger. Even stabbing innocent passers-by at work did little to appease me. I ranted. I grumbled.
“That demon is a pain,” I said. “They’re all pains, but that one’s just extra irritating.” I shook the bottle of hair dye viciously while I talked. “He just pops up, starts talking like he’s my best friend come back from the dead, or something. You know, he really—”
“Don’t you need to be calm for this?” Reed Taylor asked me. His voice was tight.
“What, Reed Taylor, are you scared?” I brandished the bottle of dye at him like a weapon. “Of this? This right here?”
“Watch it! That stuff can blind me. I read the package.” He shuddered and wrapped his arms across his skinny bare chest. I told him to lose the shirt so the dye didn’t ruin it, but secretly I was enjoying this way too much. Fan service.
“Yeah, you read it like a million times. Relax. Think I’d steer you wrong?”
“You say that an awful lot,” he pointed out.
I caught his eye and winked. “Hey. You. Honestly. Do you really think I’d let anything happen to you?”
He grinned, and I grinned back.
“Okay, pretty girl. Make me a star.”
It wasn’t hard. A bottle of vibrantly red hair dye, a few white streaks here and there, and a haircut later, Reed Taylor was exactly my kind of man.
“I love it,” I said, and sat on his lap. “You’re perfect.”
“You’re not so bad yourself,” he said, and ran his hand down my newly black hair. “Seriously, these blue tips rock! Who would have thought a little hair stuff could make such a big difference?”
Me, but I wasn’t going to remind him how blah his hair had been before. There was nothing blah about him as a person, and now he looked as striking as his personality was. He looked like fire personified.
“Any other girl so much as gives you a second glance, and I’m killing her,” I said sweetly. Reed Taylor laughed. “No, I mean it,” I insisted. “I’ll track her, beat her down with a shovel, and throw her body to the gators.”
“Where are you going to find gators out here?”
“I’m resourceful. I’ll come up with something.”
But even while I was smiling at him, I was thinking about Mouth and his warning. As much as I wanted to ignore him, he was pretty persistent in trying to warn me about Reed Taylor. Maybe it was worth looking into.
Maybe later. My phone rang, and suddenly I had other things to think about.
“Hey, big brother. What’s—”
I didn’t get the chance to finish. “You know who just called? Sparkles. You know what she wants? Lydia.” Seth’s voice was absolutely wild. He had abandoned all attempts at calm. I leapt off of Reed Taylor’s lap.
“Where are you? Where’s Lydia? Is she trying to do this legally or by force or by—”
Again, Seth interrupted me. “I don’t know. Legally, I guess. By force. I have no idea. I just… I mean, she walks out. She just walks out, and suddenly she cares about her daughter? She never cared about Lydia! The second she was born, Sparkles ran out and found herself that guy, and—”
This was approaching meltdown.
“Seth. Seth, listen to me. We’ll figure something out, okay? Sparkles is one nasty beast. She’s a terrible mother. Nobody will ever give Lydia to her.”
Seth sighed. “Luna, that isn’t the way things work. Kids usually end up with their mothers unless their mothers are horribly abusive monsters.”
“But she—”
“She never abused Lydia. She just didn’t care. And face it, with our family history, and your proclivity to…well. It doesn’t…I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
He hung up before I could say anything. I stood staring at my phone.
Reed Taylor came up from behind me and put his hand on my shoulder.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
I shook my head but didn’t turn around to face him. “Seth’s wife wants custody of Lydia. It sounds like Seth has already given up.”
He stood quietly and waited.
Finally I broke down.
“Reed Taylor, I’m part of the problem. Everybody thinks I’m crazy. Like Dad was crazy. I thought moving in to help Seth was the thing to do, but maybe I’m more of a liability than I thought. And Sparkles, well, she isn’t normal, you know. I mean, a normal bad mother. She walked out on my brother with some guy, which was terrible enough, but somehow she got involved in the whole demon thing.”
“Involved how?”
I turned and looked into his fantastic eyes. He wasn’t judging me. He wasn’t laughing at me. For the first time in my life, somebody believed me wholeheartedly. It was terrifying. It was also wonderful. He made me want to tell the truth.
“It’s like there is a protective layer on the soul. Your soul. That soul belongs to you, right? But you can keep doing things to damage that layer, until finally it’s thin enough a demon can just hop on in, take a ride around with you. Sometimes you know they’re there, and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes the person actually digs it. That was Sparkles. She got herself a demon, and they made quite the team.”
Reed Taylor looked wry. “That sounds like my last ex-girlfriend.”
“It sounds like everybody’s last girlfriend. Sparkles and her demon, they liked to hurt. If she wants Lydia, it’s not because of motherly love, that’s for sure. There’s something else going on.”
“So what are you going to do?”
I sighed. Curse it all.
“You’re a good time, Reed Taylor, but Seth and I need to scheme. It sounds like I need to gear up for demonic battle.”
Chapter Thirteen
I walked in the front door and knew something was wrong. The house didn’t feel right.
“Seth? Lydia? I’m home,” I called out and dropped my backpack on the floor. Nobody answered.
“I’m leaving my jacket on the couch like a slob. I’m wearing my boots in the house, and I didn’t even wipe them. You should come yell at me.”
Silence.
The sticky weight of the atmosphere nearly took my breath away. The Mark between my shoulder blades tingled and burned, making me slightly nauseous. I tiptoed to the kitchen and peeked through the door. Nothing. I reached in and slid a heavy duty kitchen knife out of the block, just in case.
“Seth? Are you here?”
I walked through the downstairs, checking closets and under tables as I went. The knife shone dully and I swallowed hard. I hoped I didn’t have to use it. I took a deep breath and nearly decided not to go upstairs, telling myself I was obviously alone in the house, but the sickly, oily ambiance made me grind my teeth and continue on.
“Stupid demonic presence,” I muttered to myself as I climbed. I pressed my back against the wall and held the knife tightly in front of me. I thought of Seth, I thought of Lydia. I thought of this whole mess, and the idea of Sparkles ending up with sweet Baby Girl. Wasn’t gonna happen.
Seth wasn’t
in his room. He wasn’t in Lydia’s. Not in mine. With every door I opened, I felt my hope turn to something ugly and full of despair. Where could they be? Why did the house feel like this? It felt like back in the old Sparkles days, but worse. Much, much worse.
There was only one door left. I turned to the bathroom and felt like my legs were going to give out. It was so quiet. So unnatural. I could barely get my legs to move. Had I ever been this frightened before? My hand fluttered up to my heart, which was pounding almost painfully. I gripped the knife tighter and forced my legs to walk. One step. Two steps. Maybe I was under a lot of emotional duress. Maybe Seth and Lydia were at the park. Maybe I was just going crazy. Please, let me be going crazy. I’d been expecting that for years. I was prepared to handle it.
I turned the door handle, and even before I pushed the door open, I knew. I knew.
Seth was fully clothed in the filled bathtub. His head was flopped to the side, half of his face submerged.
“Oh, Seth!”
I dropped the knife and ran to him. I fell to my knees and lifted his head out of the water.
“Seth! Seth, can you hear me? Wake up!”
He didn’t move. I felt for a heartbeat, but my hands were shaking so hard that I wasn’t sure if I felt a pulse or not. If he still had one, it was terribly weak. I pushed his hair out of his eyes and tried to take his pulse again. My knee bumped into something on the floor. It was a bottle of prescription medicine. A bottle of Lortab that I kept around for when my old injuries flared up. It had been nearly full. Now it was mostly empty.
“Why would you do this? What about Lydia? Where’s Lydia?”
I tried to pull Seth out of the tub, but he was too heavy. Panicked, I yanked the stopper out of the bottom of the tub, bouncing from foot to foot while the water drained. I needed to call the ambulance, but I couldn’t just leave him unconscious with the tub full of water. My head was spinning. My stomach roiled. I stopped, covered my face with my hands, and took a deep breath. Then I was back in action.
The water drained to the point where I felt I could race for the phone without Seth drowning during my absence. I ran downstairs, grabbed the phone out of its cradle, and dialed 911 as I took the stairs two at a time.
“911, what is your emergency?”
“My brother is dying and my one year-old niece is missing!” I gave them the address and dropped the phone. I pushed Seth’s hair out of his eyes, and whispered that I loved him. I told him I needed him, that he couldn’t leave me alone, that I wasn’t strong enough to lose Mom, Dad, and now him, too.
“And Lydia! Where’s Lydia?”
He didn’t move. I couldn’t feel any breath. His skin was white and his lips were blue.
I sat down on the floor next to my only brother, put my head on my knees, and sobbed.
Chapter Fourteen
Somebody was banging on the door.
“Paramedics! We’re coming in.”
I leapt to my feet. Somewhere along the line I’d picked up the knife again. Somehow it made me feel a little bit better.
“Up here! Up here, up here,” I screamed, and ran for the stairs. The paramedics were already on their way up.
“Where is he, Miss?”
“The bathroom. That door. I don’t know if he—”
“We have it from here.”
They pushed past me in the small hallway.
“He’s alive,” one of them yelled. I wrapped my arms around myself and started to cry. The other paramedic turned back to me.
“Miss? Do you have somebody to call? Somebody to give you a ride to the hospital?” He eyed me. “We have a current policy that we can’t take anybody with us, and you’re in no condition to drive.”
“I, uh, yes…” Somewhere in the back of my brain, I realized I was only getting in their way. I pulled myself together. “Yes, I have somebody to call. Excuse me.”
The paramedic nodded and turned back to his work. I stepped into Lydia’s room and dialed Reed’s Taylor’s number.
“Yeah, this is Reed.”
“It’s me.”
“Luna! Listen, I was just about to call you. I think we should—“
“Seth just tried to kill himself.”
A beat. “You’re kidding me.”
“I’m not. The paramedics are here. He was in the bathtub, and he had taken a whole bottle of pills. He always was prissy like that, hated to get dirty. Dad was always after him about it.”
“You’re rambling, baby. Where’s Lydia?”
I started to cry again. I had never cried so much in my life.
“I don’t know. She isn’t here. I looked, before I saw…the house has this strange feel, and I couldn’t find them anywhere. I had a knife and—”
“Hold on. I’ll be right there, Luna. Don’t go anywhere, do you understand me?”
He hung up, and I cradled the phone to my chest just to be closer to him. The paramedics had Seth on a stretcher and were maneuvering him down the stairs.
The blond paramedic looked very weary. “We’re taking him to St. Marks. See what we can do.”
I nodded. I didn’t know what else to do. I followed as they loaded Seth into the ambulance, turned on their sirens, and roared away.
Chapter Fifteen
I had my helmet in hand by the time Reed Taylor squealed into the driveway. I climbed onto the bike behind him, wrapped my arms around his waist, and rested my head against his back.
“St. Marks,” I said.
“Hold on, baby,” he answered and took off. I closed my eyes. I tried not to think about Seth. Instead, I tried to figure out where Lydia could be.
Seth wouldn’t do anything to hurt her, so obviously she wouldn’t be in the house when he tried to…do what he did. Is she at the babysitter’s? Except I am the babysitter. Who could she be staying with?
It didn’t make sense, not any of it. My brother would never do this.
Except that he did.
Did something happen to Lydia, and that’s why Seth didn’t think he could go on?
My eyes snapped open, and I flinched.
“What’s going on?” Reed Taylor yelled back to me.
“Just thinking,” I yelled back. He nodded and kept up his breakneck speed.
No, if something had happened to Lydia, Seth would have called me. No matter how bad it was, we would have figured something out. It has to be something else.
I remembered the atmosphere in the house, the dark depression and loathing that hung in the air. I felt like I’d be combing despair out of my hair tonight. The ambiance felt greasy and that could only be one thing:
The demonic.
We reached the hospital. Reed Taylor pulled up to the doors, and I hopped off.
He reached out and took my helmet. “I’ll park the bike and meet you inside.”
I nodded and ran through the doors. The signs pointed toward the empty registration desk and I slapped my hand on the table until somebody peeked out from behind a partition.
“My brother. Seth Masterson. Attempted suicide, pills and drowning. The ambulance just brought him in.”
The girl looked at me with wide cow eyes. I wanted to poke them out with my thumbs.
“I’m sorry,” she began.
I slapped the desk again. “Tell me where he is. Can I go in? Do I have to wait outside?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. The woman who works at the desk just ran to the bathroom. She’ll be back in just a minute, so if you can wait until then…”
I leaned over the desk, and I’m sure that every demonic visage I have ever seen had nothing on my expression then. I could feel the hatred and anger in it.
“Listen, lady. Tell me where my brother is, or I will run all around this hospital and find him myself. I will call upon the powers of Hell to help me. And believe me, you don’t want to know what that will be like.”
I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“Hello, ma’am. My name is Reed, and this is Luna. She’s a little upset righ
t now. Will you let Seth Masterson’s doctors know we’re available in the waiting room, please? Thank you so much.”
He steered me over to a seat and sat me down. “Coke?” he asked.
“I’m not thirsty. I can’t sit here in a waiting room. I need to see Seth. I need his help to figure out where Lydia is. The demons…”
Reed Taylor walked to the vending machine and got two sodas. He set one in my hand and opened the other one.
“Luna,” he said after a swallow. “I’m sorry about Seth, but they’re not going to let you in there while they pump his stomach. You know I’m right.”
He was right. I scowled and sucked down my soda.
“Ms. Masterson?”
I turned to face a short policeman with a jolly face.
“Yes? Oh, good. You’re here to look for Lydia. Look, I have a picture of her here in my wallet.”
“Lydia is with her mother, ma’am. She’s safe.”
I felt my whole body jerk.
“She’s with Sparkles? And you call that safe? Where are they? I need to get her back.”
The officer held out a warning hand. “Sit down, Ms. Masterson. You’re getting excited. There is no reason to—”
I didn’t sit down. Instead, I put my fists on my hips. Reed Taylor whistled and took a step back from us.
“Listen here, officer. Sparkles is a terrible woman who walked out on her family with some pretty young thang. She has no love in her cold, black soul. She only wants Lydia because she doesn’t want Seth to ever be happy.”
“Now, miss—” he began.
“What? You think I’m lying?” I felt like my eyes were sparking, I was so angry. A demon slid along the floor on its many legs like a centipede. It flowed over the policeman’s shoes, but I ignored it. “She’s a nasty woman. She’s a demonic presence. I don’t know how she even got into the house because she is so utterly wicked that she shouldn’t have been allowed in.”
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Page 6