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She couldn’t. But she felt me.
I couldn’t feel her yet.
Not the way I wanted to.
“I can’t afford double lunches,” I said.
“Make your own meals from now on at home, Nicholas.”
We were at the entrance of the trailer park when I turned to Sorina, annoyance swelling. “This has been fun. Thanks for saving me from the weird naked man and the ominous commands, but I think I’ll call it a night.”
Sorina was unfazed by my anger, my mocking. Instead, she walked past me toward my trailer. When I caught up to her, she looked up at me. “I have something for you. It’ll fix your problem.”
Before I could think better of it, we walked into the trees to the small cemetery between my trailer and her house. Sorina crawled onto a headstone again, quiet, like a cat.
I shook my head, and she cocked an eyebrow. “You think I disrespect the dead?” she asked.
I crossed my arms and walked to a fallen tree, using it as a seat. It wasn’t where she sat that piqued my interest; it was the way she moved. “On the ranch, we had a cemetery,” I said. “A place where we knew the face of everyone on the headstones. Well, the older people, anyway. I was young. The dead weren’t old, really. Many died young. I can see now it was … what was happening there with the …family.”
“On this … cattle ranch? This is where you grew up?”
I nodded my head. I had told no one where I was truly from or what it was like. But though she couldn’t hypnotize or control me now, something about Sorina’s eyes made me want to peel my skin off and confess my sins—whatever they were. Though I had this gnawing feeling that what I considered a sin, she would not.
“I didn’t know the word for it. Not while I was there. I just know I … hated it.”
“It was a cult,” she stated, pulling something from the inside of her shirt.
I continued. “The leader … his name was Markus. We called himFather.There were mostly women there; very few men could stay. Often they would grow up, age out, and they were pushed out of the community.”
“So Markus could fuck all the women, right?” Sorina asked, sitting completely still.
I nodded my head. “For … for the most part. My mother and father were there. He and his brother brought my aunt in. I don’t know if they would have let me stay in the end. I guess it doesn’t matter. I didn’t want to, but I didn’t want to leave the family.” I wanted to leave, to burn the place down. And when I thought about leaving, the family I didn’t want to leave was Valerie, for some reason.
We weren’t close. We weren’t blood related. We weren’t really family, not in the traditional sense.
But I felt like she was a prisoner, just as I was. I didn’t know what they did to her, if they doled out the same punishments disguised as pleasures to her. But I knew my uncle, the man who fished her from the sea of people who didn’t live on the ranch, the outsiders, didn’t want her. And I thought maybe that was a solace for her.
“And your parents are dead?” Sorina asked.
I swallowed. “Yes.”
“I’m sorry. You’re better off away from there, though.”
I stared down at my Converse, a lump in my throat. “I know. I know I had parents, but … we were allhischildren. The men who were there … they were molded after Markus, trained. And the women were—”
“Like cattle? Bred? Is this why you lied and said you were on a ranch with cattle?”
Tears threatened my eyes, and I closed them tight. “Yes.”
“What do you dream about, Nicholas? What keeps you from your bed, wandering this town at night? You should run away. Leave your aunt behind. She won’t want to leave. She can’t leave this town. He already has her marked.”
I glared at her. “Who has her marked? What are you talking about?”
“The man out there? Where you came from? Markus … he was a false God, and he’s been punished?”
“He’s dead.”
“She took you from a terrible place, but here? It’s worse. He’s seen her coming. He’s drawn her here. He’s known every move you’ve made. That man we saw earlier? He’ll devour this whole town to get to her.”
