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On my way out, I saw the two mysterious men stand up and move out of the shadows. My heart picked up the pace, my blood boiling hot in my veins. I knew them very well. Leopold Saint-Germain and Francis Saint-Germain Senior, father and son. Leopold’s father had been the one to leave Europe in search of the elixir of life. The New World had no elixir to offer him, though, only a secret cult and a monstrous creature sleeping underneath the ground. What are they doing here? Since I became one of them, a revenant, it was as if they never wanted me to be alone with the members of the Council.
“Congratulations are in order, I believe,” my boyfriend’s father said in a nasal voice that made the hairs on my arms stand on end.
“What for?” I was still walking, eager to put some distance between me and them. They kept up with me easily. Despite their age, they looked just as young and agile as any being who’d gained immortality by nasty means. They both had mossy green eyes and brown hair.
“Your first blood sacrifice, of course,” Leopold Saint-Germain said. “My grandson told me it all went well. We were glad to hear it. I know how much he loves you, and even though I personally believe he could have found someone more suited to him and his legacy, alas…” He sighed theatrically. “As long as we only have to see each other at Thanksgiving, all’s well in the world.”
I huffed. “I’m not spending any Thanksgiving with you. Rich, filthy, murderous…” I would have gone on, but I had the feeling my anger only amused them.
“I feel like pointing out you’re describing yourself, and doing a marvelous job, too,” the other Sai
nt-Germain laughed morbidly. Then, to his father: “She may be more suited than we thought.”
I stopped and turned to face them. Corri lost her balance and regained it by pulling harshly at my hair. I winced.
“Listen, I am not like you. I didn’t choose this. I did what I had to do to survive, but that doesn’t make me…” Words failed me. “It doesn’t mean I’m part of your family. And Francis is not like you, either. He hates it! He hates you for choosing for him, for murdering him in his sleep and throwing him in your god’s lair to make him immortal. That’s right! I know. He told me what happened. How it happened. You are two horrible, sick monsters, and you don’t deserve Francis.” I was almost done. “And you know what? I’m going to find a way to kill your Great Old One. I won’t rest until I either banish Yig from this world or teach him what death is. Our universe, our rules, and we have death here. What lives must also die.” I wasn’t sure where that had come from. The two Saint-Germains weren’t impressed, but Corri clapped her tiny hands in admiration, which was still something. “I don’t even care about Morningstar. I’ve made my peace with the fact that I won’t be the one to retire him, and I have a new mission now: to retire your disgusting god.”
“That is impossible,” said Leopold, “but for argument’s sake, let’s say that you did find a way. You are aware your life belongs to the Great Old One now, yes? Francis’s, too. If anything happens to Yig, you will both rot from the inside and die. We would, too, and all the other revenants Yig has saved from the clutches of death.”
“I’m not sure saved is the right word…”
“Would you do that, Mila? Would you kill yourself? Would you kill him?”
I bit the inside of my cheek until I felt blood in my mouth. The wound healed in seconds. He’d pushed me in a corner, and now he was gloating.
“That’s what I thought.” He gave me a sinister smile. “Why don’t you give us a chance to show you this isn’t a bad life, after all? I want to invite you to a little gathering. Yig has faithful servants in Salem and the cities nearby. His wells cover a lot of land. Maybe if you meet our sisters and brothers, and see we are all just normal people trying to make the best of what the Great Old One has gifted us, you will change your opinion.”
“Never.”
“You will never want to meet them, or you’ll never change your opinion? I’m confused.”
He was mocking me. I turned on my heels and left the room. The second I was over the threshold, I teleported back to the Academy.
“Maybe it’s a good idea to meet other revenants,” Corri said as she landed on one of my pillows. She pulled out the post-it with the names I’d given her. “They might help you adapt to your new condition.”
“The condition of having to sacrifice young women every three months?” I was fuming.
The pixie shuddered. “If you put it that way…”
“I’m taking them all down with me.” I paced my dorm-room frantically, tripped over some clothes GC or Paz had left on the floor, cursed, and kicked them hatefully. “I don’t care if I die, if all the revenants on this part of the world die. That thing will not be allowed to live and eat people anymore. I won’t allow it.”
“And Francis?”
I sighed and plopped onto the sofa. “Don’t start with that…”
“Would you kill Francis, too? I thought you loved him.”
“I love him. And because I love him…” An idea occurred to me. It was probably stupid. Like all my ideas had been, lately. “Maybe the Saint-Germains are wrong and the revenants don’t necessarily have to die if the god is banished back to where he came from.”
“That seems like a stretch. We all saw how your… err… body changed when you refused to feed the creature. If he’s banished, you can’t feed him. Hence…”
“Ugh!”
I felt trapped. Again. God, I was trapped in so many ways! All my life, that was all I’d known. Trapped, trapped, trapped. At first, I was a human trapped in a world I felt I didn’t belong to, with a family who’d made my childhood pure hell. Then, I was a human trapped in an Academy for supernatural beings, and oh, how they’d all made sure I knew I didn’t belong here, either. Now, I belonged. Kind of. Trapped because I couldn’t dream jump, trapped because I couldn’t get to my mother, trapped because I couldn’t do shit about Morningstar, trapped because my life now depended on a monster that was anything but vegetarian.
“What do you have for me?” I changed the subject.
“I checked these people, like you wanted. You know more than half of them are dead, right?”
