by Logan Fox
“Asshole!” I throw him the finger, glaring at him as I storm over to the door and let myself out.
Everyone around here is crazy.
As I walk back to my room, my dirty clothes bundled against my chest, Alice in Wonderland plays on repeat through my head.
We’re all mad here.
We’re all mad here.
We’re all mad here.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Trinity
“Come.”
My heart flutters uneasily at Gabriel’s command. I tug at the waist of my dress before letting myself inside. The dark, long-sleeved dress—a creation that would have better suited Wednesday from the Adams family—sits tighter than I like it. I even considered opening some of the buttons that run down the front, but I was afraid I’d end up looking like an eighteenth-century prostitute. Mom bought the dress for me about two years ago and I guess I’ve filled out since then.
The smell of cigarettes and wood smoke wash over me as I open the second door leading into Gabriel’s living area.
He’s wearing a button-up shirt tonight, sleeves rolled up to mid-arm, and a pair of dark slacks.
“Good evening,” he says, turning from the fire to greet me.
I smile and lift my hand to wave.
He comes over, spreads his arms, and draws me into a hug. When I don’t hug him back, he hurriedly steps back and releases me.
“Is everything okay?”
Wet concrete pours into my stomach. “Yeah, of course,” I manage, although my voice is anything but steady. “I’m just a little tired. I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“When would you like to eat? Sister Miriam mentioned that you weren’t at lunch today, so I’m guessing—”
Is he keeping tabs on me?
He cuts off as if I’d asked the question out loud.
I guess if anyone’s going to notice I’m missing, it’ll be Miriam. And I’m much easier to spot than one of the hundreds of boys in this place.
You’re jumping at shadows, Trinity.
“I’m okay.” I force myself to move closer, pretending to warm myself by the fire. I’m already starting to sweat, but if I keep my distance, he might become suspicious. I can’t have him wondering if I have an ulterior motive for being here tonight.
Someone slipped another note under my door a little less than an hour ago. It wasn’t Cass’s handwriting, thank God. I assume it was Zachary’s.
Keep him busy until eight.
You’ll have 15 min alone.
Good luck.
It’s half-past seven. I should have asked for supper if only to pass the time, but I can’t eat when I’m this nervous.
The drive is hidden behind the elastic of my underwear. The dress’s fabric is too thick for it to stand out, but to me it feels like a massive, ticking bomb you’d have to be blind to miss.
“How was your…trip?” I hazard. It’s as good a question as any right? I have no idea where Gabriel’s been the past few days, so—
Checking in on the children he has holed up in a basement somewhere of course—children like Zachary and Reuben and Apollo and Cass. Maybe the Keepers in his newest hidey-hole fucked up and he had to go sort some shit out. Or maybe he brought some new Ghosts through for a tour of the premises.
These are the bunk beds our little sex slaves sleep in. Here are their chains. This is where we feed them, but only if they’ve been good little boys.
Jesus fuck, Trinity. What the hell is wrong with you? You’re here to prove Gabriel is innocent, or did you forget?
Still, I hear myself blurting out, “Where did you go?”
Gabriel lets out a soft laugh. “Nowhere interesting. I had a last-minute meeting with the construction company fixing up this old place.” A rueful smile touches his mouth. “I truly hope their estimate is accurate. I can’t have them gutting the school’s finances.”
Repair estimates and finances? Pointless. I have to get him talking about something personal. So I ask him the first thing that pops into my head.
“Were my parents good people?” I ask.
He frowns at me, and then slowly sinks into his chair. His eyes never leave me as he nips at the tip of a cigarette from his box and draws it out with his teeth to light it.
“Sit, child.”
I obey without thinking. Thankfully there’s already a chair near my ass else I’d have ended up on the floor because I obey without thinking.
“Would you like a drink?”
I nod. Gabriel sits forward in his armchair, twists to the side, and pours out two glasses of wine. One is little more than a splash in the glass, the other is close to the brim.
The sissy inside me wants to refuse his offer, but I push aside Trinity the Wimp just as she starts yelling about how wrong this is.
“Why didn’t you attend Father Quinn’s counseling session?” Gabriel asks.
I had just brought the glass to my lips, but I snatch it away again. “He told you?”
Father Quinn replaced Gabriel when he’d left Redmond. I’d never liked him—he stank of Fisherman’s Friend sweets because he somehow thought it would cover up his halitosis.
I don’t remember much about the week after my parents were killed. I do remember hearing words like “shock” and “therapy” bandied around everywhere I went.
I’d also forgotten that he’d offered counseling. More than once.
“I couldn’t talk to him,” I say truthfully.
“Can you talk to me?”
I look up. He’s watching me with a most familiar look in his warm, brown eyes.
Patience.
Sympathy.
And with the wholehearted belief that whatever sins I had committed, we could overcome them together.
How the hell can a man like this possibly be involved with Ghosts and Keepers?
I almost want to tell him everything, just so we can have a good laugh about it and the world can go back to normal.
But I know my life will never be the same again, so does it matter what degree of fucked up I land on?
We’re all mad here.
No, we’re all fucked up crazy here.
“Trinity?”
My eyes snap back into focus. I take a tiny sip of wine, and then another because I barely tasted the first. It’s not as brutally sour as the one the Brotherhood poured for me.
“I don’t know how much you can help,” I say hesitantly before taking another sip. “You weren’t there at the end.”
Gabriel looks down, and shadows darken his eyes. For a heart-wrenching moment, I think I’ve already blown my cover and pissed him off. I fully expect him to toss me out of his room. Instead, he lights himself another cigarette.
“You don’t smoke, do you?” he asks.
“No.”
“You’re right to sound disgusted,” he says through a faint laugh. “It’s a disgusting habit.” A thick plume of smoke jettisons from his lips. He sips from his glass, and then sits back in his seat, his eyes on the fire.
“I often wonder if they would still be alive if I’d stayed at Redmond,” Gabriel says.
The wine glass clicks against my teeth as I turn to face him. I hurriedly lower it into my lap. “Why would you say that?”
“The same reason you wonder if you’d be dead had you been in the car with them.” He drags hard at his cigarette, his voice tight as he speaks without expelling any more smoke. “One of Satan’s many games, keeping us fixated on the past.” Finally, he empties his lungs and then takes another sip of wine. “So easy for him to slip in without you noticing when you’re so busy replaying events over and over to see if there ever would have been a different outcome. Like a spider crawling in under the door.”
The longer he speaks, the tighter my chests grows. I’ve never heard him talk like this. His sermons are dry—all repetition and loosely connected anecdotes taken out of context—but this?
If this is how his conversations went with my parents, then no wonder they’d stay downstairs
for hours after I’d been sent to bed. Our house had thick doors. Even with my ear pressed to the wood, all I heard was the murmur of low voices.
“Your parents are dead, Trinity. That’s not something you can change or control. What you can control is how you feel about it.”
“I’m angry,” I say, without waiting for him to ask.
“At them, or yourself?”
I squirm in my seat. “Both.” Then I shake my head. “No. Just myself.”
“Because you didn’t go with them to church?”
I nod.
“And why is that? Why did you stay at home that night?”
I run my finger around the rim of my glass. It’s practically empty, but there wasn’t much of it to begin with. I don’t dare ask for more. I need Gabriel to see me as the same girl I was when he left Redmond—sweet and innocent and naive. Definitely not the undercover spy I turned into.
“We had a fight. They left without me.”
“What did you fight about?”
My cheeks warm-up, and I know it’s not from the heat of the fire, or the sip of wine.
“Something stupid. Something really, really stupid.”
Silence settles between us. The fire pops, shooting a spark onto the hearth. It pulses like a dying heart before it fades to nothing.
There’s a distant rumble. Is it starting to rain?
“No one alive is a good person, Trinity.”
My eyes snap to him.
He smiles faintly, but without looking at me. “You asked if your parents were good people.”
Suddenly I don’t want to know the answer. Instead, I absently sip at my wine before remembering it’s empty.
Gabriel holds out his hand. I give him the glass. This time, he fills it. But when he passes it over, he doesn’t let it go straight away.
We lock eyes over that forbidden wine, and I can see his hesitation from the way he frowns at me.
“It’s probably better if I don’t—” I begin, releasing the glass.
“They shouldn’t have treated you like that,” Gabriel says. His warm brown eyes are cold now, a muscle in his jaw ticking.
My heart claws its way up my throat.
Oh my God.
He knows.
He fucking knows.
I only realize I’ve gulped down a mouthful of wine when it scorches the back of my throat. I blurt out a hoarse, “How did—?”
But Gabriel doesn’t let me finish. “The way they confined you?” He glances away as he shakes his head. “Keeping you from the world like you were a sin?”
What the hell is he talking about?
His gaze touches me again, hot and livid, before jumping back to the fire. “I never wanted that for you, child. I told them time and time again that you had every right to lead your own life, but they refused to listen.”
“My…parents?”
“An immune system must be exposed to bacteria and viruses for it to build a resistance against them.” He waves a hand in my direction but without taking his eyes from the flames. “They left you defenseless.”
Why is he so upset? Did bringing up my parents hit a nerve? I know he was close to them, but—
“If no one’s good, does that mean everyone’s bad?” I ask.
He turns to me, blinking as he focuses on my face. “We are all born into sin. Only through confession and penance can we cleanse our souls.”
“I haven’t confessed in a long time.”
“Not since your thirteenth birthday.”
I swallow hard, and wish I could look away. Mom made me do it. She made me climb into that cubicle and confess my sins to Father Gabriel.
“Don’t let such silly things plague you,” he murmurs, a ghost of a smile coming back to his mouth. “There are worse things in the world.”
Worse than having to admit you’d been discovered touching yourself? Worse than feeling such overwhelming shame at your changing body that you swore never ever to even look down there again? And you’ve kept that promise ever since.
So worse, maybe, but not for me. Not back then.
Except, quite possibly, this moment. Because all that shame just came crashing back like a fucking tsunami.
“I should go,” I mumble, wine sloshing up the side of the glass as I push to my feet. “You’re busy, and—”
He’s on his feet next. He grasps my wrist, and gently takes away my wine. “I’ll never be too busy for you, Trinity. Please. Sit.”
But my body feels like it’s constructed from rusted metal.
He urges me down, but instead of taking his seat again, he goes to stand in front of the fire. His body blocks the heat, and for that I’m grateful. But it also blocks the warm light. I feel lost in his shadow.
“There’s something you should know, child,” Gabriel murmurs. “Something I’ve been meaning to tell you since you got here. I probably should have told you a long time ago.”
Gabriel turns to face me. With his face in shadow, I can’t make out anything in his eyes. But his voice is low and deep when he speaks again, filled with…what? Regret? Shame?
“It’s about your father. I—”
A cell phone rings. I yelp at the unexpected sound, and Gabriel lets out a soft chuckle that sounds forced. “Sorry, dear. Let me just take this.”
The fuck? No!
I whip my head around to stare at him as he walks away, already putting his cell phone to his ear.
My eyes latch onto the big wall clock hanging beside his window.
Eight o’clock.
Right on time.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Zach
“I’m starting to think you don’t like me anymore.” The mischievous gleam in Cass’s eyes belies the questioning tone in his voice.
“What tipped you off?” I pull the rope tight and give it a yank for good measure.
Cass gags theatrically before slipping the noose off his head. “I’d say forcing me to fake my own suicide, but we both know it goes back further than that.”
We laugh. It’s sad that we both sound genuinely unfazed.
I sent Reuben and Apollo to watch Gabriel’s hallway. They’ll message me as soon as he leaves his room. Then they’ll keep an eye on both stairwells to make sure Trinity isn’t surprised half-way through her scavenger hunt.
“Ready?”
“To die? Yeah, I guess. I mean, I’d hoped for another few years or so, but fuck it.” Cass sends a toothy grin my way and climbs up on the chair. “Tell Mom I love her and Dad that he’s a cunt.”
We chose to stage this shit show in his English class. He hates Sister Sharon anyway, and I don’t agree with her disciplinary methods, so it’s a win for both of us. It’s been difficult doing all of this with nothing more than the glow of a cell phone screen to work with, but we didn’t want anyone to happen to look out a window and see a fluorescent lamp shining in a classroom that should only have souls in it tomorrow morning.
“May I state again, for the record, that there were easier, less lethal ways to create a diversion?”
“Cass—”
“I mean, we could have pulled the fire alarm—”
“Dorm doesn’t have one,” I cut in.
“Or flooded the bathroom—”
“Then I’d have to phone Miriam, not the provost. Keep up, Cass. It’s this or broke. Why the fuck else would I be calling him, and not one of the other staff?”
“I could snap my neck, you know.”
I snort at him. “I doubt it. But just in case—” I hold out my hand, and he glares at me before clasping it. “I can’t say it was a pleasure knowing you, but at least we both know you’ll be happier in hell.”
“Damn straight I will,” he says, showing me his teeth as he holds onto the rope and rocks the chair back on its legs. “Lucifer had me at succubus.”
I check the time on my cell phone. “Thirty seconds.”
“Jesus, just make the call,” he grumbles as he slips the noose around his neck again. “Gonna take
the old geezer like a century to get down here, and that’s if he doesn’t break a hip on the way.”
I hop onto a nearby desk and peer out one of the small windows set into the top of the wall. “Fucking storm’s turning the lawn into a swimming pool.”
“Hope fuck face can swim.”
“Making the call,” I say, ignoring Cass’s bored voice behind me.
I time his answer with my feet landing on the floor. “Gabriel! F-Father. Please, hurry!”
“Zachary? What’s—?”
Cass starts making gagging noises. I whirl around, waving at him to stop.
“It’s Santos!” I yell. “He said he’s going to, to—shit, father, he says he’s going to kill himself!”
Cass starts choking again. This time, he mimics sucking a giant dick to accompany the suggestive gagging sounds.
I wave him away and hurry out the door before Gabriel can overhear.
“Did he tell you where he was?”
“English. Sharon’s class. Uh, room 2C.”
“Are you nearby?” Gabriel’s voice rises several octaves. I hear a door slam and his voice grows choppy, as if he’s started running. “Can you see him?”
“No! I’m in the garage. I just got his text. Father, I’m not going to make it!” I tamper down a near-hysterical urge to start laughing. I’ve never pulled a prank before, but I understand why kids do it. The adrenaline rush is insane. My heart’s hammering so hard it feels like it’s denting my ribs.
“Call Brother Timothy! Tell him what’s happened. I’m on my way.” I hear his feet hitting the ground, and it feels like he’s stomping over my chest.
I end the call with a trembling thumb.
It’s now or never, Trinity.
Now or never.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Trinity
I watch open-mouthed as Gabriel disappears around the corner. I called out to him a few times, but I might as well have been mute.
Eight o’clock.
15 minutes.
Good luck.