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His eyes flash, and before I can even make sense of it, he shoves me inside the room and slams the door in my face. A second later, a lock engages, and when I rattle the door handle, terror claws its way through me.
My first instinct is to run through the connecting door to my room, but the moment I do, I hear another lock engaging on the main door.
“Azrael, please!” I beat my fists against the wood. “You have to listen to me!”
The echo of his footsteps drifts away and leaves me colder and more shattered than I ever thought I could be.
He told me I could trust him.
Now I know that was a lie.
26
AZRAEL
I return to Bec’s room.
No, not her room, I remind myself. This is the one we had set up just like a hospital room in the best of Society hospitals with all the best possible equipment. We keep it separate of Bec’s actual bedroom because I want her to have some sense of normalcy. Her illness, this mysterious, tricky thing that has her by the throat, is a part of her life right now. It cannot—I will not allow it—to become the whole of her life.
To steal that life.
My brother is at my side at the bottom of the bed. He is massaging her foot, wanting to make sure she knows we’re here with her, that she’s not alone as we try to keep out of the way of the doctors and nurses.
Bec lies there motionless, her eyes closed, looking so small, so fucking fragile.
“She was better,” Emmanuel says. “I swear, last night, she was better.”
Don’t terminal patients have a last surge of energy before the end? But no, she’s not terminal. She’s too young, not quite sixteen. She is not terminal.
I squeeze Emmanuel’s shoulder and watch his face in profile, his eyes not once leaving our sister. I don’t give voice to the words my mind conjured.
One of the machines finally makes a noise that isn’t an alarm, and the doctor working on her exhales. He looks visibly relieved, his flushed face beaded with sweat. He’s in his thirties, and I’ve seen him a few times even though he’s not her main doctor.
He looks up at his team and nods. “Let’s give her some space,” he says, drawing the blanket up to Bec’s narrow shoulders. A child’s shoulders.
“What happened?” I ask the doctor as we step away from the bed. Emmanuel goes to Bec and takes her hand in his. She doesn’t move. “She was good last night.”
“Azrael,” he says, shaking his head, very clearly perplexed. “I don’t know. Very honestly, I simply do not know. I’ve ordered more tests, but the poor girl has been through them all before and the vitamins and supplements we’ve prescribed… she’s been taking them in varying dosages for more than half a year. They wouldn’t cause this.”
“Vitamins and supplements? She was complaining her medication hurt her stomach.”
His forehead furrows. “They shouldn’t have.”
“Doctor,” one of the nurse’s calls.
“Excuse me,” he says to me and turns to answer the woman’s question.
I move to the other side of my sister’s bed. I can’t help but think of the timing of this.
In two days, it will be the first anniversary of Abacus’s death.
I squeeze Bec’s small, too-cold hand, my throat closing in that way it does. I say a mental prayer, something I haven’t done in a very, very long time. I’m not even sure to whom I’m praying. But I ask whoever is listening to please spare her. Spare Bec.
Don’t make me bury two siblings only a year apart.
“Azrael,” Salomé calls from the doorway. She glances at Bec, and I recall what Willow said, that she’d been in Bec’s room.
What was she accusing our grandmother of? She may hate Salomé, and with good reason, but to suggest she was the cause of Bec’s sudden turn for the worse is inexcusable.
“Will you stay with her?” I ask Emmanuel.
His face is ashen as he glances at our grandmother and nods to me, pulling a chair closer and sitting down beside Bec’s bed.
“We need to talk,” Salomé says.
“Now isn’t a good time.”
“I think it’s exactly the right time,” she says with a glance at Bec. “I’d think you’d agree.”
I study her, see the hollows around her eyes, the shadows of a woman who rarely sleeps. She looks more gaunt than usual. The incident must be weighing on her even if she doesn’t want to show it.
“Was she up last night? Did you hear something?” I ask.
“What?”
“Willow mentioned she thought you’d gone to Bec’s room.”
Her gaze narrows on me, and she tilts her head back, cocking it to the side. “That witch was roaming free in our house? No, I shouldn’t be surprised. But do tell. What was she accusing me of exactly?”
“I’m just trying to understand, Grandmother.”
