The Merciless (The Merciless #1)(56)

“What does it look like?” My eyes linger on Karen’s face long enough to see the blood drain from her skin, and her eyes widen with shock. Good. After what she did, she deserves to be afraid. I turn back around. I want to face the train head on. The light moves closer.

Karen stops a few feet away from the tracks. “Jesus! It was just a joke.”

“A joke?” I say. “How funny do you think it’ll be when they find my body tomorrow and everyone blames you?”

The tracks tremble violently beneath my feet. It’s almost hard to keep my balance, like I’m standing on the high dive and peering over the side, preparing to jump. The train honks again, and a wave of doubt crashes over me. What am I doing? I don’t want to die.

Karen’s face crumples. She drops her beer and grabs my arm. “Sofia, get off the tracks!”

Her cold fingers tighten around my wrist, disgusting me. Maybe I don’t want to die, but the alternative—letting Karen save me, going back to the party where I was humiliated—is even worse.

I blink into the headlight, frozen. It’s close enough now that I can’t look at it directly. . . .

? ? ?

“Karen jumped in front of the train,” I whisper in Grandmother’s red-tinted bedroom. “She pushed me off the tracks. She . . . she saved my life.” I sniff and reach for Grandmother’s hand. “And it killed her.”

Lights flash from the window, painting the Virgin red and blue. I cross Grandmother’s room and push the curtains aside. An ambulance pulls up to the curb. Paramedics leap out and race for Grace’s lifeless body.

I step back, and the curtain slides back into place. Grandmother stares at me with those glassy eyes and slowly raises a finger.

“Diablo . . .” she croaks. My skin prickles with horror, not at what she’s saying, but at the rasping emptiness of her voice. It’s not my grandmother speaking anymore. The voice doesn’t even sound human.

“Diablo . . .” she says, pointing at me. I back away from her bed.

“Grandmother, no,” I say. But she’s right. I let Brooklyn go, so Grace’s death is my fault, just as much as Karen’s is. If Brooklyn gets to Riley, I’ll be responsible for that, too.

I feel like I’m standing on the tracks again, blinking into the headlight of the oncoming train. But this time I know exactly what to do. I can’t be responsible for another girl’s death, even if it’s Riley’s. I have to find her before Brooklyn does, and I have to save her life. It’s the only way I’ll ever be able to forgive myself for the blood already on my hands. It’s the only way God will ever forgive me.

I turn, stumbling as I race from the room. Grandmother’s whispery voice follows me down the stairs.

“Diablo . . . Diablo!”





CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX


I slip out the back door so Mom doesn’t see me leave. I don’t have time to explain this to her, not when Riley’s in danger. I ease the door shut and hurry, barefoot, across the yard. The dewy grass chills my feet, so I stop at the garage and pull on my mom’s gardening boots. Then I start to run.

I call Riley three times, but she doesn’t answer. I’m out of breath when I reach her driveway.

Riley’s palatial house towers over me, its windows dark. I imagine the worst: Riley’s body crumpled and broken inside the house. Brooklyn standing above her, blood dripping from the pocketknife clenched in her fingers. The horrors cycle through my head as I walk up to the house.

Perfectly trimmed bushes line her driveway. The garden hose is tied up neatly, not a kink in sight. A handmade WELCOME sign hangs on the front door. This is all wrong. Riley’s family doesn’t deserve this. Brooklyn can’t destroy their picturesque life.

A curtain in one of the windows moves. My heart leaps in my chest.

“Riley?” I stumble up the steps to her porch. I lift my hand and knock on the door. It creaks open beneath my fist.

My whole body tenses. I should run, pretend I was never here. But the second I consider leaving, my grandmother’s raspy voice whispers in my ear. Diablo, Diablo.

“Riley?” I step into the dark hallway and run my hand along the wall. My fingers find the light switch, and the chandelier hanging from the ceiling blinks on.

A bloody handprint stretches across the wall, like someone dragged their fingers over the paint. Deep gouges scratch into the wood, and the framed photographs lining the foyer hang crooked. Several have fallen to the floor, the glass in their frames spider-webbed with cracks. I take a step closer, narrowing my eyes at them. Someone’s drawn bloody smiley faces over the photographs. It looks like a child’s finger-painting. In the corner of one, I see the same pentagram symbol that had been drawn on my driveway under Grace’s mutilated remains.

Brooklyn’s been here.

A dull, buzzing noise echoes in my ears as I walk down the hallway. It’s the cicadas outside, just like always. But they sound louder now, closer. The floor beneath my feet seems to tremble, like on the train tracks the night of the party. Any second, my world could come crashing down around me.

“Riley?” I call again. I make my way into the living room, where I find overturned furniture scattered across the floor, a shattered television set, and pillows slashed open. A layer of downy feathers covers the carpet. I kick them up with my boots as I cross the room, studying the damage. The wispy white feathers stick to my jeans and my hands and my hair. They tickle my skin, sending shivers up my arms.