“What are you doing here? How did you get a key?”
He steps into the light and smiles. He hasn’t changed. His smile is little more than a sneer, his eyes disapproving as I take off my soaked coat and drape it over the back of a chair.
“It’s nice to see you, too, sis.” He walks past me into the kitchen and picks up the bottle of whiskey I keep for when Dad comes. He opens it, sniffs, then takes a clean glass out of the drying rack and pours himself some. “Should you be drinking?” he asks, turning to me and leaning against the counter as he sips.
“It’s not for me. It’s Dad’s. What are you doing here?”
“Can’t I come visit my sister?”
I don’t bother to answer that. Abel and I have a hate-hate relationship. He hates me, and I hate him. Have from day one. He’s a jerk.
“Why are you so late?” he asks, tone ugly. Walking over to my desk, I see he’s been through my calendar and my notes from various classes. I wonder what he thought he’d find.
“I had to work. Why are you here, Abel?” I close the calendar. There’s nothing he’d uncover anyway so I’m not worried about it. I know the rules, and I know myself. As much as I’d like to say I don’t care about them or the consequences, I do.
“The library closed an hour ago. You were still working?”
“It’s called clean up. How do you know the library hours anyway? Are you having me followed? I’m here with Dad’s blessing, and you know—”
“I hope you’re not lying, Ivy. I hope you weren’t on a date.”
He swallows the last of his drink, sets his glass in the sink, and walks into the living room.
“Is that why you were going through my calendar?”
He grins. “I have some bad news.” He shrugs his shoulders. “And some good news. Which do you want to hear first?”
That sinking feeling I’ve had all day is back. I put my hand on the back of the chair to steady myself.
Abel doesn’t miss it. “Don’t fucking pass out. Like I said, it’s not all bad.”
“What is it?”
“Dad’s taken ill.”
Abel’s never been close to anyone in the family, but that’s not exactly out of the ordinary. We’re not so close-knit. But the way he says it is almost like he’s gloating or happy.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean he’s had some sort of attack—”
“Attack? Like a heart—”
“Let me finish,” he says, taking a seat on the sofa and stretching one arm across the back of it. With the other hand, he touches the small hole in the cushion beside the one he’s sitting on. A cigarette burn, I guess. “Are you smoking, Ivy?” he asks, sounding genuinely shocked.
“The furniture came with the apartment. It was already like that. What happened to dad?” I get my bag and dig around for my cell phone.
“That’s not going to do any good,” he says when he sees the phone in my hand. “Dad can’t come to the phone right now,” he mimics the typical recording, but his tone is strange, eerie.
“What is wrong with you?” I push the button to call Dad, and it goes right to voicemail. I try Evangeline and get the same thing. I even try my mother, and hers just rings and rings.
Abel’s on his feet, taking my phone from me with his big hand. He ends the call and tucks the phone into his pocket.
I look up at my older half brother. Almost ten years my senior, he’s the product of Dad’s first marriage and ever hateful of my sisters and me, the products of his second, acknowledged marriage.
His face grows dark. “He’s in a coma. They’re running tests, but it’s not looking good.”
“What? How? When?”
“Two days ago.”
“And you’re just telling me now? Where is he?”
“At the hospital. Where do you think he’d be?”
“Which hospital?”
He looks at me like I’m stupid. I know which hospital. Members of The Society only go to one.
I turn and hurry into my bedroom to pack a few things. I’ll be heading home. I have to. God. I never thought I’d go back of my own free will.
“Don’t you want to hear the good news?” Abel asks me from the doorway.
I glance at him as he casually leans against the frame.
“No, I don’t. Dad’s in the hospital, and I need to go see him. Find out what’s going on. It’s not like you’re telling me anything, is it?”
He steps into the bedroom. “I’ll tell you what I think you need to know.”
“Do you even care?”
He looks at me like he’s confused by my question.
I shake my head. Stupid thing to ask. I rummage under my bed and pull out a duffel bag. Setting it on the bed, I unzip it. “I need to pack some things. Just get out, Abel.” I open a drawer and take out a few sweaters.
“You won’t be needing any of that,” he says, walking toward me and catching my wrist. “Someone will clear out the apartment, but there’s no time for that now.”
I look down at where he’s holding me. His grip isn’t hard, but he’s crossing a line. I shift my gaze up to his. His eyes are dark and empty. Ever since I was a little girl, the look of soullessness inside them has always scared me.
“Let go of me.”
He doesn’t. Instead, he checks the time on his other wrist. “We need to go.”
“I’m not going with you. I have my own car. I can—”
“I said we need to go.”
A feeling of dread comes over me. A familiar anxiety. And I process what he said a moment ago. That someone will come to clear out the apartment.
“Let go.”
“You didn’t hear the good news, Ivy,” he says, his tone serious. “The time has come for you to fulfill your duty to the family.”
I’m going to be sick.
“You’ve been chosen,” he adds almost formally.
My heartbeat accelerates, a wave of nausea making me clutch my stomach.
Chosen.
It was always a possibility, if not a probability. But our family, we’re not very high on The Society’s social scale. Not as desirable as either my mother or father would have liked. And after what happened with Hazel, the chances of any of the Sovereign Sons choosing either my sister or me narrowed even more.
“What do you mean?” I ask him, my throat dry.
With an exhale, he releases my wrist and grips my jaw instead, turning my head so I have to look up at him. He brushes my hair back from my face, my right eye.
I lower my lashes and shift my gaze away. A cold, clammy sweat creeps along my skin. Abel squeezes my jaw. I know what he wants, so I do it. I force myself to look at him.
He focuses on my right eye. The one with what my mother considers a deformity. It’s just pigment. It doesn’t impact my vision. It would probably go unnoticed if my eyes were darker. There was actually a period when I was younger that my mother made me wear dark contact lenses to hide what looks like an elongated pupil, almost like a cat’s eye. My great-grandmother on my father’s side had it too, and I took after my dad’s side of the family with olive skin and dark hair. Light green eyes are all I inherited from my mother, and they only amplify the flaw.