Bullshit. She likes plants and silence and murder. I escort her into the ballroom and she grins, smiling so wide, as if she can stand this kind of place. If my father invited her, then I have no idea why. He hates the thought of her within view of other people. Get her out, get her out. I ignore the small voice and Demeter turns and disappears into the crowd. She’s been here just long enough for people to see her.
I rejoin the table I was at, where nothing has changed. Another drink is waiting. I don’t touch it. My heart beats too fast to keep up with my racing thoughts. I didn’t see her in the hall, so she couldn’t have been close enough to hear what we said.
Forty-five minutes. That’s all. Forty-five minutes and I’ll be gone.
I make it twenty-five before I excuse myself, pretending to be just this side of too drunk, too loud, too happy. My father’s men pat me on the back as I go. “Come back so we can sing to you,” one says.
“Sing to me?” I laugh in his face. “No singing.”
He looks around the table as I leave. I don’t fucking like that. There’s some plan here that I’m unaware of. I stop several times on the way out to see if someone will reveal it. Too many covert smiles. Too many winks and nudges. What the fuck? My father is watching—I can feel him from here, where he sits at the side of the room in an enormous chair with two thick arms. It’s meant to look like a throne. He doesn’t need a throne to be a wicked king. On the last stop I turn and catch his eye. He raises a glass to me, his expression watchful. I raise a random glass from the table back to him.
I abandon it on the way out.
She’s not in the hall. No cause for concern. The booking was for forty-five minutes. Katie only thought she’d get done early. I wander into the lounge for another ten. This time, another one of the whores approaches, and I kill seven minutes pretending to scold her so her potential client has time to crawl into a corner and pass out from his drug of choice. “He’s out,” I hiss. “Find somewhere else to be.” She scampers away and I go back to the end of the hall.
No Katie.
Every heartbeat hurts. There is a car waiting three blocks from here. Everything is set. I didn’t tell her about it, because I didn’t want anyone to know. There’s no chance that anyone knows. All we have to do is walk away. Fuck. Where is she?
It’s not unusual for me to go up to the second floor, where the whores entertain. Every noise from behind those doors is an assault. None of them are coming from her. No hushed laugh, no profuse thank yous, no door opening to let her out. They can stay in these rooms, if they want, but there is a separate wing around the back where they sleep. I’m almost to the turn when a door opens. A redhead scuttles out, tugging her dress down from where it’s hitched around her waist. Not her.
There’s only one set of rooms left between me and the hall.
One of the doors is open.
Horror creeps up my back. If a door is open here, the lights are on. This one is slightly ajar, and all I can see inside is darkness. Don’t, something warns. Don’t, don’t. I put my hand flat on the door. It swings in with no effort, no squeak on the hinges. An empty room. I’m just walking into an empty room.
At first it is empty. There’s nothing but moonlight and shadow in here. The knot in my stomach dissolves. An empty room. Katie’s going to laugh when I tell her this.
My eyes adjust to the light.
Hades would have seen this earlier, the figure on the bed. The dark curls on the pillow. The red dress leached of all its color.
The glassy eyes. Staring, staring, staring.
It’s a steady walk to the side of the bed. I have lived a lifetime of looking tall and strong while I’m in hell and this is no different. No different except for the crush in my chest, a sharp pain. My lungs have collapsed. They can’t get any air. I kneel down to get closer and it’s a mistake because from this close up I can see that she’s dead. She’s dead. Not a whisper of breath. No rise and fall to her chest. Dead.
My own breath comes back, too fast and hard, and I swallow the urge to be sick. “Katie,” I whisper. Just blink and say it’s a joke. “Oh, fuck. You’re—you’re all right. It’s okay. You’re all right.” Wake up, wake up. I risk putting my fingertips to her wrist. There’s no pulse there.
She’s already going cold.
I know what happened, can sense it, before I put my lips to hers.
I can taste the poison there.
It’s as easy as walking out the door. Part of me will never walk out this door. Part of me will always be here, dying too. My ribs collapse one by one, crumpling under the weight of what must be grief. I’ve seen it before on my brother’s face. I never knew. I never fucking knew. All I know now is who did this, who did this.
He’s sitting downstairs now, looking over his kingdom. He’s the only one who would do this. That’s all he does. He takes the things people love and he crushes the life out of them.
Katie’s throat is untouched. No markings. She’s just lying here, like she went to sleep. Except for that stare.
I can’t stay here. My knees don’t want to support my weight but I get up anyway and kiss her forehead. “I love you,” I whisper into her ear. “Please.”
No reply.
They’ll be coming for me soon, if they’re not already. I won’t give them the pleasure of witnessing this.
In the hall, life continues as usual. Men fuck whores in the bedrooms. They cry and scream and pretend. I’m nothing, passing by in a new suit, nothing but rage and fire. It burns. It chars my bones and my skin and licks at my eyes. I’m on a pyre, thinking of her face, all the way to the ballroom where I will kill my father. In front of all these people. I don’t care. There is nothing to care about here.
I’m in the middle of the music and the crowd and the hushed laughter when the scene finally registers.
My father, sitting in his chair, leaning to the side.
Demeter, perched on the arm, whispering in his ear.
The sound in the room cuts out, then floods back in. My father stands. I can tell, I can fucking tell, that he knows what he did. Or what Demeter did. He must be able to see it on my face.
So I don’t let it show. I blink, slow, and grin at him, cocking my head to the side. Like I’m not going to crumple to the floor. Like I don’t want to scream. Like my muscles are not working overtime to keep me in this spot instead of killing him. And all around us, his whores in their dresses, watching. I am surrounded by his men. If I try to kill him now, then what is the logical next step? He’ll kill them all. One by one. Katie was a promise. My father keeps his promises.
He raises a glass, and people hush. “To my son.” The howling in my head won’t stop. “Let’s congratulate him on his new position.”
They do. It’s a dull roar that makes it impossible to think of anything else. A cruel echo. How many of them know? How many of them can see?
It can’t get any worse.
Then Demeter slinks forward to the front of my father’s chair and clears her throat. She presses both hands to her chest, smiling, and then gives a harrowingly innocent giggle. “I came to lead us in song,” she says. “Happy birthday, big brother.”
They’ve planned this. It’s obvious by the way they all start singing, even before Demeter does. I’m required by circumstance to stay on my feet and refrain from murdering all of them while every cell screams for her. While I laugh to cover it up. While Katie gets colder upstairs. Happy fucking birthday to me.