“Yeah.” I let my own eyes fall closed. I can hear the steady beat of my heart in my ears, soft and slow. “He can be a little much,” I agree, aware that maybe I should shut up and not talk about my brother when he isn’t here, especially not with his wife. But I’m too high to care, and yet sober enough to remember something is wrong with Sid.
Something is wrong with Sid. Does she know about the girl in Lucifer’s room? With Ezra? Before I can say anything about that, though, she starts speaking again, and her words sound angry.
“He’s more than a little much. He’s…overbearing.”
I crack open my eyes, and she’s staring at me. “Is this about Pammie?”
She shakes her head, and I realize we didn’t really talk much, aside from our conversation afterward. Beforehand, we were all adrenaline and nerves. Afterward, we were…I don’t know what we were.
“Explain.”
“I don’t have a car,” she bites out. “He won’t take me to get my license.” What she doesn’t say is that we both know damn well he could afford to buy her an entire fleet of cars. “He won’t let me out of his sight. He hasn’t wanted to go to Council. He’s worried something will happen to me. He has the guards stay inside the house when he’s away. I can’t breathe. I can’t… I can’t do anything without him knowing about it. And because Jeremiah—” Her voice cracks on his name, and my fists clench tighter, but I don’t say anything.
She closes her eyes again, just for a second, taking a deep breath, her chest rising and falling. “Because he’s alive…Lucifer thinks he’s going to come for me at any moment, and he…he can’t stand the thought of it.” She chews her lip, her eyes on the floor as she thinks about what to say next. I don’t interrupt her. “I stopped writing, because…I couldn’t write anything without thinking about him.” I know she isn’t talking about Luce. I know it, and I know maybe I should be angry about it on my brother’s behalf, but I’m not. For some reason—maybe the marijuana or maybe because this is finally the chance for me to be there for my sister in ways I never could be before—I can’t say anything in Luce’s defense.
“I cancelled the publishing contract.” She shrugs, still looking at the floor. “It wasn’t worth much anyway, in terms of money. Just a small indie press, and besides, it’s not like I need the money. What I do need is privacy, and even with a pen name, I didn’t feel safe putting it out there. And Lucifer…he knew what every poem was about. He knew the words about him. The words about you guys. The words about what I saw in the warehouse.” Her shoulders sag. “The words about Jeremiah.” She nearly chokes on his name again.
I think about telling her I write poetry too. I think about telling her I wouldn’t mind exchanging work with her, for no one else to see. Just so she could feel safe writing anything she wanted, knowing someone saw it. Someone saw her. I wouldn’t mind if someone saw me and my work, and until this moment, I didn’t think I’d ever let anyone see it. But I think about making that offer with her.
Before I can though, she keeps talking, as if she’s been dying to tell someone all of this shit for the past month. I feel a little twinge of guilt that I haven’t checked in on her. That I didn’t take the time we had away for our little murder to discuss this. That I haven’t tried to be there for her, because I’ve been running away from what we did. From what I didn’t do to help her when she was a child. From my conflicted feelings toward her.
“He’s a little…unhinged,” she continues in a whisper. “He’s paranoid. And he’s…scaring me.”
I tense, picking my head up, my entire body going rigid. “Has he hurt you?” I try to keep my tone even, and fail miserably.
She doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t do anything but stare at her feet, her arms crossed around her frail body, shoulders hunched.
“Sid. Why didn’t you tell me any of this on New Year’s Eve?”
She meets my gaze.
“Has he hurt you?” The cocoon of my high is bursting, cold air seeping in from my fog, waking me up in the path of my rising anger.
She shakes her head. “No.”
I breathe a small sigh of relief, but it still doesn’t really explain what’s going on with them, and why she looks like she wants to say something right now, but she bites her tongue instead. It’s not like Sid to hold her tongue. Ever.
I know what she went through at our hands was a lot. I know she probably thought she was really going to die at Sanctum, at Sacrificium, on Lucifer’s birthday. I know that she was probably scared for her life—or ready to go. And I know what happened afterward, with Jeremiah and the warehouse and Lucifer’s menagerie of dead fucking bodies hanging from the ceiling… I know that shocked her. Not to mention that she has Coagula branded on her palm. I’m not sure if she knows exactly how deep that goes; it means she can never leave Lucifer. Ever. Divorce doesn’t happen in the 6. If your spouse dies, you’re free to remarry. But otherwise…you’re stuck together. For better or for fucking worse. And usually, it’s for worse. My parents are a great example of that.
Sometimes I envy Malachi.
He got out.
I’ll never be able to.
“Angel,” I say softly, “tell me what’s going on.”
She looks at me warily, as if she’s trying to decide if she can trust me. Trying to decide if I’m just going to go run and tell Lucifer what she tells me. I don’t blame her. Usually, actually, I would. We don’t keep secrets from each other. Even with Pammie, I knew she’d tell him.
But I’m already keeping a few secrets from him right now in the form of a girl in my basement and the wounds on my back, so what’s another secret to add to the rest?
Her mouth opens, closes, and then she finally says it, and I kind of wish she hadn’t. “I’m pregnant.”
I feel sick. I know that probably shouldn’t be my first reaction to the news that I’m going to be an uncle, but it is. I want to vomit. Before I can think of what to say next though, she throws in another surprise just to make sure she completely decimates me.
“I want an abortion.”
I think I’m going to fall off of this fucking stool. In fact, I grab the edge of the island to keep myself upright. It’s still a little hard to think clearly through the haze of marijuana, but I try my damndest. For her.
And what clever advice do I come up with? This: “What?”
“And I need you to do me a favor.”
What.
I sigh, run my hand through my hair. I don’t want to do her a favor. Sure, I want to be there for her, but…I have a feeling I know what she’s going to ask. And I can’t do that. Then again, I feel like I owe her. Like this is my chance to make it right, after not being there for her all of those years. As if what my father—our father—did is somehow my fault, and this is how I can atone for my own sins.
After how I let Malachi down. Someone Sid will never know. May never even learn existed.
And I let Brooklin down, too.
Sid blows out a breath. “I want an abortion,” she says again. The favor.