The Merciless (The Merciless #1)(42)

“How?” I say into her neck. I pull away from her and wipe the tears from my cheek with the back of my hand.

For a moment no one says a word. I look from Riley to Grace to Alexis, but their faces are all blank.

“You didn’t humble yourselves,” Brooklyn’s voice cuts through the silence. Riley turns, and Brooklyn smiles at her wickedly. I picture her glowing red eyes, her mouth dark with blood, but force the image away. That wasn’t real, just a trick my fear played on me.

Alexis takes a step away from the ladder. “What are you talking about?” she asks.

“Your sins,” Brooklyn says. She leans forward, pulling at the ropes binding her to the beam. “None of you told the truth about your sins, did you?”





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN


“No one lied,” Riley says, too quickly. Heat climbs over my face, and I shift my eyes to the floor. I lied, but I can’t admit that now. Riley nearly cut off my hand for trying to untie Brooklyn. I can’t imagine what she’d cut off if she found out I lied to God.

“Guys, tell her,” Riley hisses. Alexis stares at her feet to keep from meeting our eyes. Grace backs up all the way to the wall, pulling her sweatshirt sleeves down over her wrists.

“They’re not the only ones who lied, Riley.” Brooklyn’s face stays blank, but her voice seems almost amused.

Riley’s face hardens. “I didn’t lie,” she insists.

“You didn’t tell the whole truth, though,” Alexis says. She clenches her hands in front of her, and the tips of her hair brush against her fingers. “None of us told the whole truth.”

“Does that mean you want to start?” Brooklyn asks. Alexis winds a strand of hair around one finger, saying nothing. “How about you, Riley?”

“Shut up,” Riley says, staring down at her knife on the ground. But she doesn’t move toward it or threaten Brooklyn. “I told the truth,” she insists again.

“What about Grace?” Brooklyn searches the shadows in the corner for Grace. “Did you admit the whole truth about your little addiction?”

Grace’s eyes shift first to Alexis, then to Riley, and finally to me. She hunches up her shoulders, nearly disappearing into her oversize sweatshirt. “I told you I had a problem with drugs and I did,” she says.

“Ritalin,” Brooklyn corrects her. “Is that all you’ve ever tried?”

“No.” Grace’s voice breaks. She picks up the backpack off the floor where Riley dropped it and pulls out a bottle of wine. She yanks out the cork and swigs it back.

“What else have you tried?” Alexis asks. Grace takes another drink of wine.

“It was only Ritalin at first,” Grace admits. “I was only going to take a few to study, just like I said. But the high felt so good. It was like my brain went still, like everything fell away except for the thing I was doing. Everything just got so . . . easy.”

Grace pauses for a beat and shifts her eyes back down. Brooklyn taps her combat boot against the floor.

“Well?” Brooklyn says. “Don’t stop now. You were just getting to the good part.”

Grace weaves her hands around the wine bottle nervously. Her electric-blue nails stand out against the dark glass. I stare at them, remembering when I first met Grace, when she seemed impossibly exotic and cool. Now she’s vulnerable, naked.

“You don’t have to tell us this, Grace,” I say.

“We all have to come clean before God,” Riley murmurs. She stares blankly at the wall ahead of her. “She does have to tell.”

“You all do.” Brooklyn looks at me when she says this, and now I’m sure I hear amusement in her voice. Her eyes seem to peel away my skin and see directly into my brain, to the things I’m most ashamed of. I turn back to the wine bottle, focusing my attention on Grace’s chipped blue nails again.

“I should’ve stuck with Ritalin,” Grace says, almost to herself. “But I found Xanax in my mom’s bathroom one morning. That was even better. After that, I tried my dad’s Ambien and some X from a girl at school.”

“Grace, the Lord forgives you,” Riley says in a hushed voice. She takes the bottle of wine from Grace’s hands and drinks. “We all fall. All of us.”

Grace smiles through her tears. The candlelight flickers, reflecting the lines they made down her face. From behind her, Brooklyn starts to cackle.

“Are you kidding me?” she says. She leans her head against the pillar, laughing harder. “You’re still lying!”

“Grace, just tell her. Let’s get this over with,” Alexis says. Grace grabs the bottle back from Riley and raises it to her lips. This time, she drinks deeply. A red drip oozes out from the side of her mouth and dribbles down over her chin.

Gasping for breath as she lowers the bottle, Grace continues. “When my brother broke his leg this summer, he left his Oxy pills in the bathroom like they were nothing. I had to stare at them every morning while I was brushing my teeth.” Grace hiccups and takes another drink of wine. “What would you have done?”

Alexis takes the wine bottle out of Grace’s hands. “It’s okay,” she starts, but Grace shakes her head.

“It’s not okay!” she yells. Tears fall down her cheeks, faster and faster. She hiccups again. “I want to be cured. I want to be better. But . . . but I . . .” She can’t talk now—she’s crying too hard. She lowers her face to her hands, sinking to her knees. “I want to be better,” she sobs.