“You signed it, too. Sealed it with blood. The contract,” he said.
“Ridiculous.” I coughed out a disbelieving laugh. “I was…a child. I didn’t know that?—”
“Your lines are entangled with his. The blood in your veins was his. The rules don’t care about what you don’tknow. Trust me, I wish they did. I’ve been trying to get them to care for decades. They only care about what is.” He was closer now, hot breath on my face. The smell of burnt rubber stung my nostrils. “And here’s what is: your uncle made a deal with me. Seven years of good luck. Prosperity, and then his soul was mine to do whatever I pleased. Except he died before I could collect. Poor old man and that pesky disease of sadness.”
His fingers stroked my cheek. I stilled under the cold and prickly touch. His nails were sharp enough to pierce skin at the slightest jerk.
“So when he killed himself,” he continued, voice softened at the fact.
I remembered his death. A phone call my mom had gotten when I was around ten. I hadn’t seen him since that last argument when I’d been drawing with the chalk.
“I was freed. So, I roamed. I lived. I fed on the souls of those who begged for salvation. No more isolation at Elmwood. I don’t know how you stand it.”
My stomach twisted as if it’d been starved for days.
“See, back then, I was new at this. I wasn’t good at…picking them. Didn’t think of long-term investments.”
Uncle Anthony was back. He sat at a bar, six shot glasses in front of him. A sweating beer bottle in hand. Some woman wasn’t keeping eye contact as he leaned into her, talking faster than the local news cycle. I couldn’t hear what he said, but that didn’t matter much because I became distracted by a thick, black aura outlining his body. It was like oily sludge, circling him slowly.
“I thought,” the demon whispered into my ear, “that he looked absolutely divine. Far better than any of my other meals in Alpine. People here are desperate, but I’d never seen a desperation like his. I could feed on that desperationand depression for a decade at least. And whenever he spoke of his family coming to visit him, well, that was icing on the cake. I’d get to survive off you all because I could see how the sadness ran deep in each one of you. So, I talked to him for the first time that night. He told me he needed time. And I told him how to call on me whenever he was ready. I knew he’d be ready.”
He whipped his chained hand in front of my face. I jumped, falling back into the overgrown field.
“I didn’t have to fear being pulled back into the Pit.” He crouched in front of me, still in the cuffs. “If I fed well, then I’d stay strong enough to fend off those fucking hellhounds.”
“They take you back?” I asked in a shaky breath. Underneath his frustration was an echo of familiar panic. Fear. It’d wrapped around every one of his words like a barbed wire fence.
“Drag me,” he said with a dry laugh. “You don’t want to know what it’s like to be dragged by one of those things. To not be strong enough to fight them off. Octavia, we all owe someone something. And when your uncle died, he took an early exit, leaving me in the cold.”
We were in an apartment. The smell of old food and the poor attempt at masking it with fragrance spray had me coughing. Fruit flies buzzed near my ears. I swatted them away, refusing to look up because I knew what this place was. I’d seen the brown carpet underneath my scuffed, black Mary Janes. People were saying sorry to me and hugging my mom. I clung to her, waiting for a chance to ask her if I could call Wilson. Because she’d lost her brother, I kept worrying when I’d next see mine.
“I get it!” I yelled at the demon. “Take me back. I don’t need to see this part; take me back!”
He opened his mouth as if to challenge me to watchagain. But then, we were back in the field. Grass scratched at my wrists as I knelt on the ground.
“The contract should have been void. I couldn’t find that thing, but it shouldn’t have mattered because death should have voided it.” He kneeled in front of me. The vibration floating off him had simmered to a gentle buzz. Something that could have been nice if he wasn’t a demon picking through parts of my brain.
“But then, you signed that deed. Elmwood’s deed. And I was forced back here,” he said through gritted teeth. “The contract re-upped because I owed your bloodline seven years. Except…Octavia, you’re going to love this, your goddamn uncle figured out how to seal a contract before he signed. I can’t touch it to destroy it after the deadline, which means even after time’s up, I will remain chained to you and Elmwood. Every year that passes the seven, you will keep a piece of my soul. You will bleed me dry and not the other way around, like nature intended.”
I blinked away the burning tears. “Sealed?”
Was he kidding me?
“Are you…I could have gotten it! I could destroy it. All you had to do was ask?—”
“You think if it were as simple as asking, I wouldn’t have already done it?” He laughed so hard that he fell back into the grass. The storm clouds that’d been rolling in stopped a few miles away. “When he figured out how to make a trap for the contract, he also found out how to link it to your bloodline. I’m locked toyoulike one of those Ancestral creeps. Except I can’t feed off generations because it’s just you. No one’s fear will ever satiate me like your bloodline can now. Nothing will keep me as alive and strong a Daniel’s fear will. Everyone’s else’s may as well be a couple of drops of water. A fucking stale cracker every other day.
“You will own a part of my soul forever. With each year that passes, you’ll own another, taking my power. I used to be able to talk to people after resting for a few hours. Now it takes weeks!”
“Sorry…I can’t empathize with stealing your power when you’re threatening everything I love,” I muttered.
“Of course not. I don’t expect empathy. I’d never offer it to you. That’s not how this world has ever worked. We don’t care unless we have to.” He sighed, quiet for a moment.
“Why can’t I destroy it? If you give me time, I could figure out how to break?—”
“You can’t destroy a contract bound in blood,” he said. “It’s the oldest rule. It’d be like an attempt to destroy the Earth with a plastic spoon.”
“Then what do you want from me? Why did you bring me here?”
