“Your mother wasn’t you when she had you. But you still had a father, your father. Michael had neither.”
I shook my head slowly, unable to understand. My thoughts felt like they were trying to form through molasses. “How is that possible?”
“Anything is possible, Declan,” he said smoothly, adjusting his tie. “Your mother was taken over for her first pregnancy. Nearly all the way. She still had a shred of humanity in her, but it wasn’t enough. Not then. She was able to…consort…with something she ought to have not. It wasn’t your father.”
I blinked. Now we were going from The Changeling to some Rosemary’s Baby shit. I couldn’t even begin to wrap my head around it. I was open-minded but what I was hearing was too fucking much. My brother was the product of my possessed mother and a demon? My family had just turned into every seventies horror movie cliché. Why didn’t I just start running around with a chainsaw and call myself Leatherface?
And yet for how fucking ridiculous and unbelievable it all sounded, I knew deep down that this was the truth. That made it worse, somehow, to have your guts tell you that all this crazy shit was as real as the as the balls between your legs.
All this damn time I had been living with a brother who wasn’t really mine. All this time I thought my parents had been afraid of me, when it was Michael they had feared. No wonder my father took off when he did. No wonder my mother drank herself into the abyss. No wonder I had turned out so utterly fucked up.
But in the end I was still human. I was still me, no matter “residue” he said had stayed behind. I was no demon child. Not like him.
“It’s a lot to take,” he said, eying me carefully. The air around us snapped, growing colder, screams starting again, wailing from along the tunnel.
“I’m an old pro,” I said cautiously. All the chit chat and the revelations, they weren’t for nothing. All of this was going somewhere and as the seconds ticked by in this cave, in this house, in this world I wasn’t even sure existed, I was getting closer to some reveal I wasn’t going to like. Something worse than, “your brother is a demon.”
So I bit the bullet. “Why did you come for me now? Why am I here, wherever this is?” I took in a deep, icy breath. “What do you want from me?”
He put his hand out in front of him and lifted one finger. “Why did I come for you now? Because things in your life are starting to align. The company you keep is becoming more and more like you.” I opened my mouth to question that but he lifted another finger. “Why are you here? Because this was where hell began for you, for Michael…” he looked down the tunnel, to the fire. “Where the walls are weakest.” He studied me carefully. “You’ve been close to it, you know.”
“To what?”
He grinned. “To Hell. You nearly went there once to bring back your dear beloved Perry. Your nanny called it the Thin Veil and it is thin. It’s growing thinner. And you’re able to punch holes into it. You can step into the Veil and from there you can step into Hell. And those like me, we will be able to do the same.” His eyes flitted over to the flames. “We’ve been waiting a long time to come over. Not everyone is as lucky as I am.”
Clarity came over me with a kick of nausea. I knew where this was going. Every stretched nerve in my body was telling to run far away from the truth. But of course, I was a dumb fuck who wasn’t going anywhere.
He lifted up the third finger. “And finally, what do I want from you? Declan, you’re special, so fucking special, as you would say. But I, we,” he gestured down the tunnel, “We don’t want just you. Alone, you’re not as good as you think you are. Together, though, that is a different story.”
I swallowed hard, unable to feel my feet. “Perry,” I whispered.
He nodded with ease. “Yes. Perry. She makes everything you do…better. But it’s not just her. It’s what she’s brought with her.” He took another step and lay his hand on my shoulder. It felt like the weight of the world. “All of them, in this place, will cause a rift you’ll never be able to piece back together.”
He leaned in, so he was whispering in my ear. His voice was no longer human. It conjured up images of beasts and death. “And, with my help, you’re going to lead them straight back here, to the house that life and love forgot. Aren’t you, Declan?”
I found myself nodding as he pulled back.
Flames danced in his dirty eyes until the orange glow was all I could see.
CHAPTER FOUR
Perry
Heat wavered above the pavement and the air stunk like garbage. Though it was the end of May, New York City was going through an early heat wave and we were feeling the brunt of it.
Me, Ada and Maximus had been walking up and down the city streets, searching for answers in a city that wasn’t providing anything but stink and hot air. Maximus was insistent on us taking the Subway but for whatever reason, Ada wasn’t too keen on the idea. In fact, every time he brought it up, her face paled a little. I’d never known her to have a fear of the underground but she seemed to believe that being in the unrelenting sunshine, walking on tired feet, was much better.
As we walked, Maximus went over the ways we could possibly track him down. We did internet searches for Regine Foray but they were coming up blank, as if his mother had never existed. The same went for Declan and Michael. Still, Maximus thought New York’s City Clerk could help us with records.
I felt a bit like an investigative reporter. I knew we could have probably holed up at a coffee shop and done most of this over the web, but there was something more proactive and productive about treading pavement and searching for answers face-to-face. It didn’t seem right to just whittle the day away on the internet while Dex was out there somewhere.
I tried really hard not to think about him, about what might be happening, whether he was in any pain, about why he was taken. But I wasn’t made of stone. I slipped up, often, and my body nearly crumbled each time. The thought of losing Dex was far too much to bear.
Luckily, Maximus, with his determination, kept me moving, and Ada, with her sweet, subtle displays of affection, let me know I wasn’t alone. And with them, we kept walking, block after Manhattan block, searching for something, anything.
After a visit to the city clerk turned up nothing, we ended up checking out the New York Public Library. When I remembered the lions coming to life in Ghostbusters, I laughed to myself and then was immediately met with sorrow when I realized how badly I wanted to make a joke to Dex about it. We had been the ghostbusters. Now there was no Experiment in Terror and no Dex.
We grabbed a quick sandwich at a kiosk and found a bench to sit on in Bryant Park. I stared up at the buildings towering over us, trying to find respite in their strange familiarity. It was weird being in a place you’d never been to but had seen so many times that you could trick yourself into thinking you had. Ada was having a ball people watching and muttering about how all the fashionistas are spotted in Bryant Park during fashion week.
It was then that a trick of the eye, the light hitting the door of a taxi cab as it swung open that caused the air to warp and shimmer, that I was struck with a terrible idea.
I had been getting no more visits from Pippa, but it was she who held all the answers. Even though she had been weak, ill and brutally vague during our last correspondence, she could go anywhere, see anything from inside the Veil. She would know where Dex was. And if she wasn’t going to come to me, I was going to have to go to her.