Vengeful (Villains #2)(19)

Victor stared at the words for a long moment, then crumpled the paper and flung it away.

They were running out of leads.

And he was running out of time.

3 minutes, 49 seconds.

“Victor!” called Syd impatiently.

He straightened.

“Coming,” he called, drawing a shallow blue box from the top drawer.

The living room was dark.

Sydney knelt in front of the coffee table, where a small altar of presents waited beside the cake. Eighteen candles burned on top, their tips sending up colorful sparks. Mitch crossed his arms, looking pleased.

“Make a wish,” he said.

Syd’s eyes shifted from the cake to Mitch before landing on Victor.

A shadow crossed her face, just before she blew the candles out.

*

EIGHTEEN candles—Sydney marveled at the number as she nudged them into even lines beside the half-eaten cake. Eighteen. Dol tried to lick a fleck of chocolate icing from the table, and Victor nudged the dog’s face away as Mitch handed Syd her first present. She took the box, shook it with a mischievous grin, then tore the paper off and pulled out a red bomber jacket.

She had seen it in a shop window a few cities back, and stopped to admire it, admire how cool the lanky mannequin looked, the S curve of its body, hands on hips through the deep side pockets.

What Syd didn’t say then was that she’d wanted the mannequin’s shape as much as the clothes resting on it. On her, the jacket was too big—the sleeves a good six inches longer than her arms.

“I’m sorry,” said Mitch. “It was the smallest size they had.”

She managed a smile. “That’s okay,” she said. “I’ll grow into it.”

And she supposed she might. Eventually.

Mitch handed her the second box, a package with Merit on the return label. Dominic. She missed him—Victor was always on the phone with the ex-soldier, but none of them had actually seen him since they left Merit. It was the one city they never went back to.

Too many skeletons, she supposed.

Now, Sydney staggered at the weight of Dominic’s present. Inside was a pair of steel-toed combat boots, each with a sole three inches thick. Syd dropped to the floor and laced them up. When she got to her feet, she made Mitch stand eye to eye with her so she could see how tall she was. She came to his sternum instead of his stomach, and he ruffled her wig playfully.

At last, Victor held out the shallow blue box.

“Don’t shake it,” he warned.

Syd knelt at the table and held her breath as she lifted the lid.

Inside, nested in velvet, lay the skeleton of a small, dead bird. No feathers, no skin, or muscle—only three dozen attenuated bones perfectly arranged in the narrow blue folds.

Mitch cringed at the sight of it, but Sydney rose, clutching the box to her like a secret.

“Thank you,” she said with a smile. “It’s perfect.”





XI





FIVE YEARS AGO


MERIT


THE night Victor died, Sydney couldn’t sleep.

Dominic had taken a handful of pills, washing them down with whiskey before collapsing on the couch, and it was only a matter of minutes before Mitch, bruised and bloody and a thousand miles away, sank into his own fitful doze.

But Syd sat up, with Dol at her feet, thinking of Victor’s body in the morgue, of Serena’s charred corpse in the Falcon Price lot, until finally she gave up on sleep entirely, tugged on her boots, and snuck outside.

It was just before dawn when Sydney reached the Falcon Price project. The darkest part of the night, Serena used to say. The time when monsters and ghosts came out.

The construction project was marked off with crime scene tape.

Sydney folded herself small and slipped behind the plywood fence, into the gravel lot. The police were gone, the noise and lights were gone, the chaos of the night reduced to numbered markers, and drying blood, and a white plastic tent.

Inside that tent, Serena’s body. What was left of it. The fire had been hot—hot enough to reduce most of her sister to blackened skin and brittle bones. Syd knew the fire was out, but as she reached a hand into the charred remains, she still half expected the bones to burn her. But there was no heat, no warmth, no promise of life. Half of the bones had already crumbled, others threatened to fold under the barest touch, but here and there a few pieces retained their strength.

Sydney started digging.

She just wanted a token, something to remember her sister, a piece to hold on to. It wasn’t until she was elbows-deep in the scorched heap that she realized what she was really doing.

Looking for a way to bring Serena back.

*

SYDNEY started dying, but only in her dreams.

The nightmares began when they left Merit. Night after night, she’d close her eyes and find herself back on the frozen lake, the one that had cracked and broken and swallowed her and her sister up three years before.

In her dreams, Serena was a shadow on the far shore, arms crossed and waiting, watching, but Syd was never alone on the ice. Not at first. Dol stayed close, licking at the frozen ground, while Dom and Mitch and Victor formed a loose circle around her.

And in the distance, walking toward them across the lake, a man with broad shoulders and warm brown hair, an easy stride and a friendly smile.

Eli, who never aged, never changed, never died.