Page 108 of Some Kind of Haunted

I want to cry, but I can’t. I won’t.

For my grandmother and my mother. For Cleo.

For Logan and Nora. For Jack.

They were all strong for me. I’m going to return the favor.

I can’t avoid looking at Harrison forever, so I make myself do it. Not just the moving, gooey shadows in his eyes, but down to where he’s holding a knife in his hand.

I tell myself that’s a relief. That it’s a knife. I was thinking poisonous demon claws or something unimaginably worse. I want to wipe the blood from my face but I don’t—I don’t want to let go of my little talismans.

And when I say I don’t want it, I mean everything in me shouts to keep them right where they are, curled up tight in the palms of my hands.

Harrison hefts the knife again, and something about it seems to spark something in me. I think about that last night on the flood wall. The night I found Cleo. I remember the blood on my hands, and the shape of it. The knife the policeman found with Cleo’s body.

And he doesn’t have to tell me. I know it’s this one.

I know that this man took the knife he’s holding now and used it against Cleo. And me, too. Maybe I sleepwalked straight into the middle of it.

That would explain how I woke up.

I decide I don’t want to know how he got it out of police custody.

I want to take that knife from him and return it to sender, with the kind of malice aforethought my brother is always telling me is problematic. I think about all the times my temper tantrums were petty. Silly.

Tonight I’d like my temper to bear a little fruit.

Harrison waves the knife between us.

“Last chance,” he says, and his voice changes octaves as he speaks, making my ears feel like they’re popping. “Give your blood freely. Make your own deal. What has this world ever given you anyway?”

His voice shifts back to the Harrison I thought I knew. Kind and soothing—but I remember that first day in the antique store and how disconcerting he was, leading me to needlepoint representations of this horrible tower and smiling while he did it.

Oh, yeah, I think. He’s been twisted all along.

“Nightmares and doubt,” Harrison is saying, answering his own question. Telling me what the world’s given me. “Pain and suffering. Loss. Loneliness. Confusion. Crazy little Lexi, pitied by all who know her. What kind of world is that?”

He isn’t wrong. I have felt all those things. I almost want to laugh at him for offering this to me, but I can’t. Because I’m pretty sure that if Harrison had extended me this deal in some of the harder years, I might have taken it.

Because I was desperate. Because I hated my life.

Because I was tired of being me.

But this world gave me my father, who I truly believe did his best. My stepmother, who has always meant well. Maybe they couldn’t understand or help me as much as I needed them to, but they supported me. They loved me and never turned their backs on me, even when it would have been easier to wash their hands of me and all my drama.

This world gave me Logan—my anchor in any storm. I survived the hard stuff because of him. Because he was always there to hold my hand, to clean up my messes, and to tell me to get over myself.

And then this world brought me here. To the memory of my grandmother, who I didn’t know, but who cared enough to bring me back to this place I think it’s clear she loved, despite the demons. To the example of a woman who took care of those around her and was ready and willing to sacrifice herself when the time came. That was how much she believed—not just in the same fight that I’m a part of now, but in me. In my ability to fight on.

She told everyone here I was the harbinger, a tool for good, and I have to believe she was proud of that. Maybe even of me.

The world brought me to Midas, and Midas gave me Nora and Cleo. Friends. Family. Whatever you want to call it, it happened fast and felt like forever. That’s all there is to it.

It also gave me Jack. The first time a man has said he loved me because he really, truly does. Because he sees me, believes in me. Because he knows me in ways no one ever has, not even Logan, really. Because we are meant to end this. I know we are.

A Bellamy and a Darling, the two founding families who sealed the deal, just like it was at the start.

How could I turn my back on all of that to make a deal with the thing that has haunted me my whole life—the thing that made my life hard from the start?