“Listen, I’ve got to go,” he says. “We’ll have dinner when I get back, catch up. We can discuss it then. I bet you anything, there will be nothing to discuss by then. These things have a way of working themselves out.”
I slam my phone down on the coffee table so hard a jagged spiderweb appears from the impact, the glass surface splintering with cracks. Dr. Jekyll hops onto the arm of the couch and perches there, staring at me with round, startled eyes.
“I’m worried too, buddy,” I say, patting the couch. He slinks down, and I hold him to my chest, petting his head.
Mercy wanted to go to Frederick, but Angel wouldn’t let her.
She must be there now.
I want to pick up the phone and call the police like Dad said. That’s what you do when someone is missing, when something goes wrong.
But Angel told me not to last night, and after what I did, I can’t go against his wishes. She’s my sister, but she’s his girlfriend. And I sent her away in tears, to walk across campus at night, alone and heartbroken. This is my fault.
I have to figure it out.
I set Jekyll down and head out. I go back to the boys dorm and bang on Nate Swift’s door until my fist is sore, but he never answers. He must be in class.
When I leave, though, I remember it’s Saturday.
I crisscross the campus searching for him in all the places I think he might be—the library, the computer lab, the study areas—and then the ones I don’t expect to find him—the gym, the football field and hockey rink, the locker rooms. By evening, I’ve searched every inch of campus, but there’s no more sign of him than there is Mercy.
Maybe this is my punishment. Not just for letting her go last night, but for what we did.
I picture her face, the pain and determination on it as she pulled aside her panties and bared her sloppy cunt, still dripping with our cum, and slid it down over my cock until I was sheathed fully inside her tightness. The whimpers and moans she let out as I slammed into her raw pussy, even as she refused to speak the words I dared her to say—no, stop, I don’t want this. Because she did want it. She couldn’t tell me no because she’s always wanted it, for as long as I have.
Maybe this is punishment for us both, for our sin of lust, for giving in to temptation. A lifetime of suffering for opening my sister’s sweet, pink pussy and wrecking it with my thick cock until she sobbed aloud with pain and pleasure. Or maybe lust was always my sin, and she was sent to be both my temptation and my punishment.
Maybe I should have let her go a long time ago, when Dad did.
Or maybe I need to stop letting go of the people I love and hold on tight instead. Fight for them until my dying day. I can’t change what I’ve done. I can only do better now.
“Hey, sailor.”
I look up to see Salem Sincero standing on the rickety front porch of Sinner’s Tower, a cigarette dangling from her fingers, a pout on her full, red lips.
I’ve been wandering the campus for hours, first frantically and then automatically, in a daze of determination and sleep-deprivation. I lost track of where I was going, but I must have decided to check this corner of campus now that I’ve been everywhere else three times already.
“You look lost,” Salem says, a touch of flirtation in her tone. The corners of her lips twist upwards into a coy little smile. “Come a little closer. Maybe I can show you the way.”
Fuck it.
No one else knows where she is. Maybe the Sinners have some information.
I step between the gargoyles and over the yellow crime scene tape someone tore down, and Salem’s smile stretches. She runs her tongue along the sharp edge of her teeth, stopping at one of her pointy canines. She probably had it filed that way so she could look more like the blood-sucking vampire she is.
That’s what I’ve heard, anyway. In truth, I don’t know the Sinceros as well as Angel and Heath do. I’ve seen them inchurch, but they’re not the sort my father approves of, so we never associated with them. Their family is rumored to have brought Diablo’s Disciples to Faulkner, and the enemy of my friend is my enemy, so I’ve always kept my distance.
“That’s right,” she teases. “A little closer now. Don’t be scared.”
I stop at the foot of the steps. “What do you want?”
She throws back her head and laughs. “A siren doesn’t stop singing until you’re marooned on her island.”
“Yeah? And then what does she do?”
“Hypnotize you,” she says, making a spooky little gesture with her fingers. “Chain you up and make you our slave. Maybe shave off that luscious mane.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not hypnotized,” I say. “Where’s my sister?”
