Page 106 of Some Kind of Haunted

Harrison looks disappointed in me and for once, I don’t give one shit about letting someone down. “Once you give me your blood freely, the deal will be sealed for eternity. I will decide who lives and who dies. Who succeeds, who prospers. I will decide, and I will shape Midas as I see fit. And you can join me, Lexi. You can be powerful, too.”

The things he’s saying swirl around inside me like foul demons all their own, but the theme seems pretty obvious. I have to give my blood freely. I have to choose to make this deal for him to get what he’s after.

Which, apparently, is being the local god of Midas, Iowa.

I might have come to like this place, and some of the people in it. A lot more than I would have thought possible that day we missed our connection in Des Moines. But I still think king of the small town no one’s heard of sounds like a piss-poor reason to throw in with the murderous demon horde.

It’s very male, I think. Small men are always grasping for control in the strangest places, thinking that makes them big. Even now, after killing Cleo, contributing to Amelia’s death, and teeing up mine, he doesn’t seem to realize that he isn’t the one who’ll have all that power when this happens.

“How powerful can you really be?” I ask him, trying to sound bored. It doesn’t quite play, but that’s okay. By standing up to him at all, I’m frustrating him. I can see it in his eyes. “If you have to make a deal, Harrison, I’m pretty sure you’re not the one with the power.”

He moves closer, eyes wild and filled with hate. How could he hide so much hate? Right here in front of me this whole time? “Life is about sacrifice, Lexi. I’m alive to tell the tale of mine. Your grandmother? Your cousin? Not so much. I know it isn’t in your nature, but I believe in you.” He leans in closer. “Be smarter, Lexi. Be stronger. I’ve seen it in you. Deep down, under everything, there is the spark of something like me.”

It isn’t in your nature, but I believe in you. That stings, even though I know it shouldn’t, because he wants it to sting. He’s hinting at every shitty thing that I’ve always worried about. My father calling me irredeemably crazy and locking me up. Everyone I love seeing how much more of a problem I am than a solution. All the ways I’ve been lost.

The hint is better than a direct hit, because it leaves me to do my own work. Because I know how to hurt myself better than anyone else ever could.

But Harrison made a miscalculation. He thought getting to know me would give him an edge. That he’d learn my weaknesses and use them against me—or better yet, point me at them and let me shred myself.

Instead, while he was looking for ways to break me, I found a home. I found a place where I finally make sense. I found people who don’t see my weaknesses as flaws. I watched my brother accept the reality of demons rather than hold fast to the idea I might be lost.

Time in Midas only gave me strength. Real strength—not whatever he’s abusing.

I have to use it now. I know that. “Why would I ever give you my blood freely? I’d rather die.”

He clucks his tongue, like he feels sorry for me. “Yes, you would. You think I don’t know that? How lucky that you come with a twin brother. I don’t have to ask Logan to make a choice. I can just rip off his skin in strips and feed it to my friends until you do.”

I can’t falter, I know I can’t, but the threat makes my entire body freeze with terror. I have to remind myself to breathe. I have to order myself not to break down.

“This sweet little romance you’ve built with my uptight grandson won’t last past his evisceration, will it?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer and that’s actually a gift, because the threats keep rolling and they’re all hideous, but my nervous system literally can’t handle them. They roll past me into the dank, dark horror and become a part of it. “Nora, that fucking foundling?” He practically spits the word. “Another choice, Lexi. Do they mourn you or suffer for you? Will you choose protection, or your pride?”

“They would insist that I let them suffer rather than let you do this,” I manage to say.

Harrison leans in close, eyes black with shadows and evil. “You have always worried that you’ll disappoint the people you love, lost little lunatic of a girl, the crazy mess who can never be trusted. Now you’re fine letting them suffer and die because of you?”

My eyes water at that. I feel a sharp pain through my heart and I think he’s done something to me—stabbed me straight through—but when I look down there’s no damage.

I’m just stuck here like I’m fastened to the mucky floor here while his face is pure evil, inches from mine.

“That is your weakness,” he tells me with delight, and another cackle, and the demons around us seem to hiss along with him. “Love.”

I stare at this man. Or is he a demon? It doesn’t matter. There is one thing I know without any question.

He’s wrong.

All my life I have been a problem. A mess. Someone to be worried over and protected and sheltered as much as possible. And that would have ended me a long time ago, if not for one thing.

Love.

Love is sacrifice. My grandmother and mother embodied this, literally. Maybe Cleo did, too, that night, out there in the dark when she knew better. Maybe my father sacrificed more than I can imagine by leaving everything he knew behind to keep Logan and me safe.

All of that was love. All of that is love.

If I am made of those people, if we share that blood, then I am made of that love, too.

If love is a weakness, it is a weakness that saved me. It brought me home. It kept me whole and taught me I could be happy. It let me understand that there is more to me than waiting to see how I disappoint people next.

It gave me my twin, who has never wavered in his support of me, no matter the cost. It gave me friends like Cleo and Nora when I thought that I was too off, too weird, to get to have friendships at all.