Chapter One
Trinity
It’s amazing, the things you don’t notice the first—or the hundredth—time around.
She kept you, Trinity. She kept you because you were special.
When I first came to the bell tower with Apollo I never noticed the stale, chalky smell inside this small room.
Do you know why you were special, Trinity?
Gabriel is a handsome man, especially with his warm brown eyes. But I never noticed the spots of bronze in his eyes before.
Because you’re mine.
I never noticed his shaggy eyebrows. The shape of his nose. How similar his eyes are to mine. Suddenly, it’s impossible not to notice.
I wouldn’t let her.
Gabriel—my father—scans my face like he has so many times before. But this time, there’s hidden meaning in his gaze. He’s not checking to see if I’ve finally found God. He’s staring at his daughter’s face. Picking out his likeness, or perhaps my mother’s.
He brushes his thumb over my lower lip. The intimate gesture sends a surge of panic through me that freezes me solid.
But only for a moment.
Then self-preservation kicks in.
I shove Gabriel away and whirl around, bolting out of the tiny room. But I barely take two steps before he grabs my hair and yanks me back.
I fly into him, and we both crash backward into the wall. He slips an arm around my waist and drags me back. When I realize he’s taking me further into that tiny room, I put everything I have into my struggles.
I grab the door frame as I pass. Gabriel makes an angry sound in his throat, then he rips me free with a hard tug that leaves behind some of my fingernails.
I scream again, as loud as I can.
He throws me away from him, and I catch a glimpse of the enraged snarl twisting his face before I hit the wall.
Bright pain lances through my head.
Gabriel crouches at my side, face disturbingly blank even after our scuffle. I groan and try to sit up, try to move away, but that makes my head hurt even more.
He touches the side of my face. “I didn’t want it to be this way. I wanted to tell you. I wanted you to know the truth. But they fought me on it. Both of them. Said it would confuse you.”
Gabriel shakes his head, breaking eye contact for a second. “I should have fought harder, child. I should have insisted. But…”
When he looks at me again, there’s something terrifying in his eyes.
Despair.
“I loved them, Trinity. Both of them. I know it’s impossible to understand, but it’s the truth.” His voice goes hoarse, and he runs those same fingertips down my cheek. “I did it for them. And I’d do it again.”
He smiles, but it’s faint and more sad than happy. “They’re gone now. It’s just us. But we can start again. Me and you. We can be a family again.”
He wants me to be his daughter? If I could have, I would have laughed in his face. How the hell can he think I’d want a sick, perverted man like him for a father?
But I can’t even stand, let alone argue. “Please, just let me go,” I whisper. “I won’t tell anyone.”
He grabs my shoulder, squeezes it. “Shh.” He shakes his head. “It’ll be perfect, you’ll see. Now you wait here. I’ll be back with something to help you sleep. And when you wake up, it’ll be a new day. A new life.”
It’s amazing, the things you don’t notice.
I’d always thought that tiny spark, that delightful little gleam that Gabriel got in his eyes was a kind of righteous joy.
Now I see it for what it truly is.
Madness.
Gabriel leaves, locking the door with a finality that makes my skin crawl. I have to get out of here before he comes back. But there’s no way I can open that door and this room has no windows.
My heart starts knocking in my chest.
I’m trapped.
Chapter Two
Rube
I open my eyes to darkness and cigarette smoke, a combination that never fails to give me heart palpitations.
Triggers come like a thief in the night. Ambushing my mind, my body. I’ve stopped fighting them because I’ll never win. Same reason I stopped fighting my Ghost.
As if my sudden panic wakes him, Cass fumbles a hand down my arm. “Jus’ Zach,” he murmurs, still half asleep as he laces his fingers through mine. He squeezes my hand, and then he relaxes, already asleep again.
In the basement, sleep was our oblivion. I was always exhausted and Cass was fucked on heroin more often than not, so it was easy for him to slip away with me.
But I’m wide awake now.
Trinity is gone.
I shake loose Cass’s hand, tugging on my shirt as I step out from behind the curtain.
Zach is sitting in the armchair, smoking a cigarette.
Darkness and smoke.
“Where is she?” My voice is still raspy from sleep.
“Probably halfway to Sisters of Mercy by now,” he says, and then takes a long drag at his cigarette without looking up at me.
“She left without saying goodbye?” I inch closer as I wait for his response. Because I’m pretty sure it’s going to piss me off. And if that’s the case, I might go for his throat.
I consider myself calm. Reasonable. I think things through a hundred times before I act on them. But when I’m triggered it’s like a switch inside me flips. All that calm, all that reason…it’s decimated by rage. Like a town flattened by the shock wave of a nuclear bomb.
Zachary can trigger me at will. He’s had that power ever since I found out who he really was. I couldn’t reconcile the fact that he’d been living a normal life above us while we hunkered in the dark waiting for our next visit.
I spend a lot of time dredging up memories of the Utopia that had existed above us. Replaying them. Wondering if the sounds I’d so often heard were made by him. A patter of fast, light footsteps—was that Zach on his way to school? A faint thump—Zachary sitting down in front of the TV, eating a PB&J sandwich while he watched Sesame Street? Sometimes we’d hear voices, but only if the Keepers shouted. And then the words were usually unintelligible because they’d made sure to soundproof the basement as much as possible.
All except one. A name.
Mason.
“Didn’t want to wake you,” Zachary says.
I have no way of telling if he’s lying. He’s had years to perfect the art of twisting the truth.
Fuck. Why did I let myself sleep that deeply?
Because I was happy for the first time in a long time. And it felt good. And it felt safe. And I let my guard down.
This is what happens.
“And she said she’s going to Mercy?”
We can fetch her when we’re done with Gabriel. I know a few of the sisters who work there. Shouldn’t be too difficult to find her if she wants to be found.
Zach takes another drag before replying. “She’s an orphan. Where the fuck else would she go?”
So callous. But I knew him when he was still vulnerable. When he was still human. The first week he was down in the basement with us, he’d been crying for his mother. Begging his father to open the door and let him out. That he didn’t belong down there with the ‘other kids.’