Chapter 19

"He's bleeding again," I told the crowd of concerned faces as they watched me walk to the front door of the Syndicate house. "You wrapped the ribs too tight, and he can't breathe. That's why he's moaning. Your bandage isn't going to do it. You'll have to cauterize the wound."

"Absolutely not." Paesha leaped from her seat in the small sitting room full of mismatched furniture and a patterned rug tamped down to its last days. "That's dangerous."

I rested my hand on the knob, considering my words carefully. "Unless you know for sure the hellhound cannot kill in this world, he's on the brink. I know what death smells like. And even if they can't, if they are somehow bound to the same rules as the rest of Requiem, his skin will remain shredded unless you bind it together. At the very least, he needs to be stitched."

She shifted toward me, a fight in her hands and fury in her eyes. But she said nothing else. Instead, she turned. "Hollis, start a fire." Her voice softened as she faced the little girl and her dog. "Quill, take Boo and go to your room. Practice your singing, okay? Cover your ears."

"No." The child set her glare. "I can help. I'm not afraid."

"It is not your fear that we're protecting, Quilly. It's your innocence. Go on now," the old man said, kneeling before the child.

She turned, patting her leg for the dog to follow. "Come on, Boo. We're gettin' the boot."

"Where are you going?" Althea asked, as I twisted away once more.

"Anywhere but here," I answered, opening the door and walking out.

The rooftop of the Syndicate house was soaking wet. The rain had poured down as thunder boomed and lightning cracked across the sky. It hadn't muted the screams, though. Nor the smell of burning flesh that wafted up from below. I rubbed my palm, all too familiar with that putrid scent.

"Why would you choose to stay up here rather than in the house?" Althea's question hadn't surprised me. I'd heard the rooftop door squeak open.

"I don't understand any of you." I watched the rain fall, darkening her hair to a coppery hue. "There hasn't been a single explanation as to why Orin married me, why he tried to kill me, why I was captured, why I was locked up, why I'm just allowed to be free now, or why you expect me to stay. I don't know why I'm still here. Curiosity, I guess."

"You have nowhere else to go. That's why we're all here. This house is a refuge for those who need it. A meeting hall for others. But Orin does things for his own reasons, and we can't speak for him. If he didn't want you to be here, you wouldn't be. That's enough for me."

I crossed the roof to stand before her, rain dripping from my lashes. "Why did he marry me?"

"Why did you marry him is the better question."

"I married him because he lied. He tricked me. Now, answer at least one of my questions."

"If I do, will you come out of the rain?"

Frustration grew inside me, the swell of defiance growing. I balled my fist and turned away. "You people are insufferable."

"Then go. Because no one is sleeping with you lurking around on the roof anyway. We all know who you are. We feel what you're capable of in our own ways. But Hollis says there's still a soul in your body and we should try. So, we are trying. For Orin."

"Hollis has fond memories of a sister with a terrible history. Whatever he has built in his own mind to make her murders okay, he's wrong."

"He watched his mother die and his sister, Dahlia, turn into a monster. He never said she was a good person." Althea stepped toward me, grabbing my hands, her calluses rough against my own. The human contact jolted through me. "He only said you still have a soul, and I don't think he's wrong, Deyanira."

"Until your name shows on my palm."

A twinkle lit her eyes. "You wouldn't care about that if you were truly a monster."

"I don't," I lied.

"Come inside, Deyanira. Sleep in a warm, dry bed. Find your own place tomorrow if you want, but don't stand out here in the rain, circling your own misery. This world has enough of that."

I let her pull me into the house. Let her guide me through a dimly lit hall and down a set of stairs. Not because I was weak and lonely, as I'd let her believe, but because this was exactly where I needed to be to start searching for answers.

She pointed, her voice barely a whisper. "That's Orin's room, remember."

"I'm smarter than I look."

"Perfect." She gestured to a set of wooden stairs without reacting to my sarcasm. "Down there's Paesha's room, next to mine. You wake her before the sun comes up and she'll eat you alive. And you can have this room. It's nothing special, but it's yours if you want it. At least until Orin comes and kicks you out."

She smiled as she opened the door, and I forced one of my own. Maybe that was her sarcasm peeking through. A faint creak outside the room moments after she'd left was the only sign that Althea had crept away, leaving me to my own thoughts once more. I checked the brass knob twice to make sure she hadn't locked me in. The air was heavy with the masculine scent of musk buried with age, as if the room had been sealed off from the world for far too long.

My fingers brushed against the cool, weathered wood of the bed frame. The texture was rough, yet there was a certain elegance to its design, hinting at its former grandeur. I imagined the man who once occupied this room had a taste for finer things. But they'd said this house was a place for people to come and go as they needed, so maybe it was the composition of many and not one man in particular.

I woke to shouting in the hall. To Paesha and Althea screaming at one another. But when I swung my door open and found Orin standing in the frame of his own, pants hung loose on his hips, a fresh bandage wrapped around his chest, tucked all the way to his armpits, everything in the world went silent.

"Ah," he said as he grunted. "Now it makes sense. You might want to find a different room if you don't want to wake up with a knife in your chest."

"Since when do you care if I'm a pin cushion?" I asked, crossing my arms. "And how are you standing right now? You should be fighting for your life."

His eyes scanned me, lingering on the bottom of my shirt before I remembered I wasn't wearing pants. "I don't care. And let's call it residual adrenaline from being burned, which I'm told was your idea. Did you stay just to watch?"

"Yes," I snapped, walking back into the borrowed bedroom. "Your screams sang me to sleep, asshole."

He somehow managed a dark chuckle over the sound of the door slamming.