I hesitated, unsure if I wanted to look again, but when I did, I saw that the demon had grown still. The third and fourth layers in his eyes almost seemed loving. Peaceful. Suddenly it was too much for me.
The inside of that car was too overwhelming, and I couldn’t handle being there so I reached for the handle and shot out. I took a few steps away when I heard Kellan say quietly, “I should be, though.”
I paused for a second and then kept going. When I got inside, the car was already gone, and I breathed in relief.
“You shouldn’t keep company with demons.”
A surge of alarm shot through me, then out of me. Light exploded down the hallway, and it highlighted who stood in front of me. It was a guy who looked my age, a bit older. He had brown hair that was slightly long and tucked behind his ears. His cheekbones were set high, giving him a classic model-type of handsome. When he smirked, I saw that he didn’t care how powerful I might’ve been.
The light turned off then, and we were in the dark again.
“Who are you?” I asked.
He laughed. “You know who I am.”
I didn’t, and then I did. “You painted those other ones of Kellan.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why not?” He laughed again. “He’s a demon. They’re all demons. Why are you with them?”
I frowned. “They’re my family.”
“No, they aren’t. They’re demons. You’re not. Why are you with them?”
Wait—what? “I’m not a demon?”
His eyes pierced through me. “You’ve always known you weren’t one of them. You put a blanketing spell over yourself to stop from seeing it and dealing with it. What are you doing?”
“Who are you?” I wasn’t a demon? I’d known this whole time? I heard what he said, but I couldn’t think of that then. Who was this guy, and why didn’t I feel like he was dangerous? How did I know he’d painted those of Kellan?
“You’re not ready. You can’t handle this yet.”
He sounded as if he was saddened because of that. Then, when I felt like he was going to leave, I jerked forward. “Wait! Tell me who you are. I have to know.”
“You know who I am, but I can see you’re not ready to let yourself know. If you really want to know, ask Kellan.”
Kellan knew? Before I could ask anything more, he vanished, and I was left feeling cheated of something. And then I hadn’t turned the other way before Kellan spoke behind me, “I thought he might show tonight.”
“What?” My voice was wrangled. What the hell was going on?
Kellan stepped forward in the darkness, but I saw him clearly as if it were daylight. His eyes were overcast, and his shoulders slightly slumped. “Because of the spell you did tonight. You turned a human into a zombie. Do you know what kind of power that takes? He thought you were ready.”
“You turned him back.” And he’d done it so easily.
“I know who I am. I know what I can do. I know what I’m supposed to do. I know what I can’t do—not you. You don’t know any of that.”
“That guy told me that I’m not ready to know.”
“What does my opinion matter? I’m not your brother, remember?” Kellan stepped closer and asked softly, “Isn’t that what he said?”
I swallowed tightly. Painfully. “He said that I’m not a demon.”
“You’re not.”
“How can you—how can you be casual about this? He told me that I’m not one of you, and you’re acting like you don’t care. It’s like we’re talking about if we should walk the dog or something.” My chest was starting to hurt. My heart started to pound faster. And I knew something was coming, something I wasn’t ready for.
Kellan felt it, too. I saw how his nostrils flared and felt his excitement. He was the predator in that moment, ready to pounce on whatever burst through the gate. I felt him whisper against my skin, “I am anything but casual, Shay. You can feel it from me. I can feel you, too. I know that you’re holding back. You always hold back.”
“You get mad at me when I don’t.” I felt him behind me, beside me, in front of me. He hadn’t moved one step, but I sensed him circling me, measuring me. “What are you doing?”
“It’s the demon. He’s reacting to you.” His voice was curt.
My body started to tremble, shaking back and forth. My heart picked up its pace, and my chest hurt. Opening my mouth, I tried to let out a cry in pain, but nothing came out. My voice had been choked off.
Kellan watched a few inches away with cold eyes. His watched mine.
“What’s happening to me?” My throat felt like I’d swallowed thorns that slowly were going down, dragging from within, tearing into my skin.
He shook his head and moved back.
I felt his withdrawal and lurched forward. I needed him close. I needed him. When my feet remained in place, everything ricocheted inside of me. It was like I was slamming against an invisible cage, one that was inside of me and Kellan didn’t care at all. He almost seemed to enjoy my suffering.
He bent his head, and his voice glided toward me in the air. “You can’t hide from what’s demanding to come out. The more you’re with me, the angrier it will get.”
“Kellan?”
I felt him leaving.
“Kellan!” I could no longer see him. “Where’d you go? Come back.”
I was left with a whole host of “what the hells” going on in my head. The painter knew me. He knew Kellan. Kellan knew him. They both knew that I wasn’t a demon. They knew more than what they shared tonight, and somehow I also knew this other information, too, but wasn’t allowing myself to know it. Again—what the hell?
Then the man from my vision spoke to me. “You will learn. You are still a child.”
His voice haunted me, but I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t see a ghost, and I was thankful for that little bit, which was ironic, considering I’d grown up in a demonic family.
When Kellan left, the mounting anger stopped inside of me. I didn’t feel like I was inside of a cage, and instead, I was alone in a darkened hallway of my school. I could’ve convinced myself there’d been no painter, no Kellan, no haunting voice. Just me. I was merely a student. Human. But the overwhelming peace that entered me when I heard the old man’s voice was too strong for me to ignore.
My relief when I heard that I wasn’t a demon was too powerful. There was something inside of me, something I couldn’t control. Kellan was right. I felt like a ticking time bomb. It was a matter of time before I exploded. There’d be no more answers that night. Sighing, I did what I always did when an urge was blasting inside of me. I painted. Four hours later, the result wasn’t what I expected. My last painting had been of three angels descending. The painting before that had been a trail in a forest. This one was of me. I wore a cloak that was pulled over my head with my face peering out. There was a light behind me, and I was half-turned toward it. A shadow of something was coming out of the light, and my expression in the painting was that I was reluctant for some reason. I should’ve been scared. Kellan told me that I was scared of everything.
As I turned to leave, I took the canvas and lifted it to place on the floor. When I did this and stepped back, something in the bottom corner caught my eye. One of my hands in the painting was half-turned, as if I was about to reach out to the light. The other hung down on my other side, in the darkness. The end of it was dripping in blood. Something horrible was going to happen. I didn’t know what, or how it would happen, but I’d have a hand in it. Literally.
Shivers went down my spine. I couldn’t shake them even after I left the school and called Kellan to pick me up. When he arrived, the shivers only got worse. I was almost trembling as I got into the car and struggled to buckle my seatbelt.
Kellan spoke roughly, “You don’t really need that.”
Oh yeah. My now numb fingers let it fall back.
He added, “One of these days you’ll forget you’re not human.”
“I’m part human.” I was sure of that.
He didn’t respond, and the silence grew between us. I felt like I was being suffocated again. Kellan had this effect on me. As we drove, neither of us spoke. I was slightly fearful he’d ask what I had painted, but then again, I wasn’t sure if he really knew. All I knew was that I didn’t want to tell him. For some reason, I wanted it kept private to myself. But then again, until this evening, everything I had done had been kept private. I had been in fear of Kellan finding anything out about me, of this—I wasn’t sure either. Maybe it was because his demon was so powerful. Maybe I still didn’t completely trust Kellan. Had I ever trusted him? Was I sure that I could trust him now?
“I can feel your thoughts. They’re irritating me,” Kellan growled in the darkness.
Glancing over, his side profile seemed attentive to the road, but I knew it was a lie. Everything in his body was tuned toward me. The human eye could be deceived so easily. I commented lightly, “I’m surprised you can’t read thoughts.”
“I can’t read yours. I can read others.”
“Like Leah’s?” My heart skipped a beat when I asked. That situation had been bothering me since I first learned about her stepfather. And I couldn’t help to wonder if he’d still gone over there—or what had he done?
Kellan didn’t respond for a moment. When he did, his voice was rough. “Why don’t you ask what you really want to know?”
“Fine.” I took a breath. “Did you kill him?”
“I didn’t even go over there.”
His answer came so swift, too swift. “What do you mean?”
“I was going over there, but I felt something was wrong with you. I didn’t go because of that. I changed course.”
“You came for me?”
“You know I did. Why are you acting like this?”
“Like what?”
“Like…” Then he turned and watched me intently. “Like you’re trying to figure me out. What is it? What do you want to know?”
Never had Kellan been so upfront with me. It blew my breath away for a moment. “Just like that? Anything I ask you, you’re just going to answer?”
“I can see it’s bothering you, so yes. Within reason, I’ll answer whatever you ask of me.”
“Why?” The question blurted from me, so quickly. He’d always been closed off, gone his separate way. Even Vespar and Gus didn’t feel they really knew him.
“Because I can feel how important it is for you. That’s why. You need more reason?” Annoyance flashed in his voice. “You only get a few questions. Pick wisely.”
“You said I could ask you anything.”
“I lied. You get three, three questions and I will be completely honest. I changed my mind.”
I didn’t think twice about one. “Am I actually a Braden?”
“As far as I’m concerned you are.”
I nearly growled. “You didn’t answer my question.”
He shrugged, still driving. “I’ll answer as best I can. I won’t keep anything from you that I think you’d want to know.”
“How can I not be a demon and still be your sister?”
A grin flirted at the corner of his mouth. “Is that your second question?”
I balled my hand into a fist and snapped, “I want to hit you. It’s the same question. Answer it. You told me you would.”
Kellan sighed, fighting back a grin. “Fine. Are you a Braden? Yes. Are we all Bradens? Yes. We all grew up together.”
He still didn’t answer my question. Somehow, his answer was a riddle, and I couldn’t decipher it in that moment.
“What’s your second question?”
Oh no. I’d just caught on to his game. “I’m not going to ask right now.”
“What?” He threw me a look from the corner of his eyes, surprised.
“I get three. I asked one. I need time to think of the last two. There was no time restriction on the questions.”
“Wha…” His mouth hung open for a split second. Then it snapped shut. “Fine. You can ask the other two anytime.”
I could tell he was annoyed, but impressed. Good. That was what he got for keeping who knows what else from me. I wanted to ask about the painter. I wanted to ask if he knew what I was since I wasn’t a demon and how long had he known. I wanted to ask if anyone else knew. There were so many questions, but I also wanted to know if Gus and Vespar were still my siblings. If Kellan was actually my brother. Since I didn’t want to waste the last two questions, I was determined to answer as much as I could by myself. I needed to pick those last two questions carefully. Kellan wasn’t normally a sharing being. I knew this honest side of him wouldn’t last.
A mile from home, Kellan brought up another topic I hadn’t considered. “What are you going to say to Vespar and Gus?”
“What do you mean?”
He sighed. “They can’t know about you. They won’t understand.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Again. What are you talking about?”
“You don’t look the same. Your new revelations tonight changed you. They’ll notice. They’ll want to know why.”
And therein lays the problem. Gus and Vespar couldn’t know, but know what? “They can’t know I’m not a demon? Because they wouldn’t be able to handle that, would they?”
Kellan chose his words carefully. “They’re already on edge. You saw that this morning. They’re scared that you might alert people about us.”
“Like messengers?”
“Or others.”
He was being evasive again. It was starting to piss me off. “Why can’t you just tell me what the problem is? What are you hiding from me?”
“Are those your last two questions?” He grinned and then saw he shouldn’t have joked. “Relax. Sorry. They’re not as powerful as you or me. They have good reason for being scared. There are beings more powerful than them around. They could come here, and Gus and Vespar might not hold up against them very well.”
“They’re scared of being killed?”
“Or tortured. Witches, anyone who knows demon lore, knows our laws and how to get around them could hurt us. Some people enjoy hurting a demon. They think they can because we’re essentially dark and evil.”
“You guys are evil.”
Kellan’s jaw clenched, and his knuckles tightened on the steering wheel. “Regardless, our brother and sister don’t deserve to be tortured for fun. No one deserves that.”
“Isn’t that what you do?”
He didn’t respond, and the tension was suddenly thick in the air. His anger boiled. I felt it snap at me. And I knew the demon wanted to harm me, but Kellan fought it back. We kept driving, and he still hadn’t replied until we got to our driveway. When he did comment, it wasn’t about that. “You can’t say anything to them about tonight. Matt. Your visitor tonight. Your paintings. None of it. Nothing.”
“They can’t know about Matt?”
“No, you’re right. We dealt with Matt tonight. They’ll know that he’s been altered. They’ll want to know why. We’ll tell them the truth about that.”
As we drove around the house and parked in front of the garage, I asked, “What about Leah tonight?”
“What about her?” Kellan turned off the car and glanced toward the house. All the windows were dark, but we both knew our siblings were up. In fact, I knew they were watching. Gus stood in front of the living room window, and Vespar was framed by his bedroom window on the second floor. Both watched with somber expressions.
“What happened to her?” I asked him the question, but I saw the answer was with our other siblings. Blood. I felt it dripping from their hands. Of course, I couldn’t see it, but I sensed it. It was there, and it had changed them. Somehow.
“Leah will be fine,” Kellan said shortly and got out of the car.
“They killed her father, didn’t they?” Who else knew? How could this be covered up?
“Stepfather,” he corrected me, walking in front of me to the door.
My
feet stopped in their place. Kellan knew they had killed him. He probably knew their intent in the first place, where they were headed once they left that afternoon. I saw that he didn’t