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“So we wrap things up ASAP and then we head home,” Pax said, ignoring the hard way Cain glared at him.
Cain was quickly being outvoted, and I was sure he did not appreciate that.
“I agree,” Remington added.
Stellan didn’t say a word—I was sure he knew he didn’t get a vote at the moment—but his eyes lit up with hope. I reached out and brushed his fingers with my own. I might not forgive him yet, but just as he felt he needed to live up to Sophia’s memory now, I felt the same way. I needed to look out for her idiot brother, and I needed to help her mother.
I let out a deep breath. “I think we need to go back to the house.”
“There’s nothing there,” Stellan disagreed. “The basement’s been cleaned.”
“It’s just a feeling I have. We didn’t finish before we were interrupted.”
A self-satisfied glimmer came into Cain’s eyes. “They’ll never bother you again.”
I wish I believed it was that easy. My father had many admirers.
The five of us went together back to Stellan’s house. We pulled into the driveway. I gazed across the overgrown yard to the house where I’d spent a few years.
It was a little easier to go in when I had all four of them with me. But as we started across the grass, Stellan frowned and suddenly knelt.
“What is it?” Remington asked.
“I don’t know. I just thought I saw something shiny…” Stellan trailed off, still parting the thick grass with his hands.
I knelt next to him, and together the two of us searched through the grass. After a moment, the others began to do the same.
“It's just trash,” Stellan said in disappointment, sitting back on his heels. He had a scrap of tin foil in his hands.
“Well, I found something,” Remington announced. He was still trying to unearth something from the dirt. I leaned over his shoulder and saw a scrap of chain, half-buried in the sand.
My heart stopped. I remembered Sophia playing with her bracelet over and over again. She was always tugging at it. It was her favorite way of fidgeting when she had to attempt to sit still.
Remington passed it to Stellan, and Stellan chipped away at the dirt on the charms with his thumb. His face had gone pale. He glanced from the spot in the bushes behind my old house where Sophia must have stood, to the spot at his feet where the bracelet had been found.
“Aurora, do you think there’s any chance the Demon would have taken her somewhere else? Because he knew you’d see her if he brought her into the house?”
“It’s possible,” I admitted, trying to be logical. “But I don’t think it’s very likely. He would have wanted me to see what happened to Sophia. And he never went anywhere else to torture anyone. He liked to take his time. He liked to have his equipment. The only time he took a victim out of the house was when he disposed of the body. Once they entered those doors… They were there to stay. Until he was done torturing them.”
Cain looked thoughtful. Pax and Remington looked slightly sickened.
“What if Sophia was taken by one of the cult members?” Stellan asked. “And we killed them… we’ll never get to ask them any questions. We'll never get to ask them where they buried my sister.”
“We don't know yet.” I could feel the guys watching me, as if they were curious about how I reacted to Stellan.
“Don’t lose hope, Stellan.”
He nodded, but he didn’t seem very hopeful. “She would have wanted you to have this.”
Because it obviously meant so much to him, I held out my wrist for him to fasten the dirt-crusted bracelet. I had the feeling the guys were all watching me curiously, trying to understand how I reacted to Stellan. I was sure they would forgive him eventually for running off with me anyway. Or, if my men were not very capable of forgiving, at least they would put it in the past. Their friendship was deeper and more intense than anyone would expect from this group of motley monsters. But I had the feeling it mattered to them if I forgave Stellan.
“Come on, let’s go into the house. There’s no point in standing out here in the sunshine.” And in fact, it felt like the sky darkened with every step we took toward that cursed house.
However, in the end, we found nothing inside but more bad memories. I couldn’t have told them what I was searching for. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were missing something.
We hadn’t had another message from the stalker who had written that note in blood in Stellan’s bathroom. So hopefully Cain was right and they’d killed everyone who worshiped my father to the point of bloodshed. But I couldn’t shake my worries.
Remington glanced at his cell phone. “You’ve got a message, Aurora.”
