My Stepbrother Is a Demon novel · Chapter 28 of 32

Chapter 28: No Contract

I looked at his bare wrist, then at mine.

Nothing on either of us now but skin.

"Are you going to lie to me?" I asked.

"No."

I waited for the line to warm.

There was no line.

There was only his face, and the fog, and the noise.

"I can't check," I said.

"No. You can't."

"Okay," I said. "I believe you."

Something in his expression eased that I'd never seen before.

He looked like he'd finally set down a weight he'd carried for years.

Then my mother hit us both from the side and hugged us so hard my cap fell off.

The rest of the night came in pieces.

The fog thinning, and eighteen thousand people with nothing on their necks, blinking at each other like they'd woken up on a bus.

Strangers hugging in the aisles.

The first client climbing down out of Section 104 with her sister, both of them crying and laughing, their pink bottles empty.

The grandfather shaking Augustin's hand for a full minute.

The housekeeper, who'd never needed her skillet, telling a guard to get out of her way and walking straight through him.

The two men in black who'd carried me down six flights stood by the stage stairs, looking at their own hands.

The bigger one came up to me.

"I'm sorry about your fingers," he said. "I don't know why I did that."

"I know why," I said. "It's off you now."

He nodded and walked away.

We drove home in my truck, Ivo and me, behind Augustin's long gray car.

Mom had insisted on riding with her husband.

Nobody argued.

At midnight we were on the shore road with the windows down.

The dashboard clock said 11:59.

Ivo put his hand on my thigh.

Neither of us said anything.

12:00.

The Sound was black on our left, with the town lights strung along it.

12:01.

The truck kept driving.

The road kept going.

Nobody tapped on the window.

12:02.

Ivo let his breath out slowly, like he'd been holding it since July.

"Two past," he said. "Your mother's fine too."

I pulled the truck onto the gravel shoulder and put it in park, because I couldn't see the road anymore.

I cried with my forehead on the steering wheel.

He didn't say anything.

He just rubbed my back in slow circles until I stopped.

The house was dark when we came up the drive, except one lamp in the kitchen.

The gate bolt sat in its stone, rusty and quiet.

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