Page 58 of Sacrifice

“We’ll just have to agree to disagree on this, little Rosie. I think he’ll do as I ask. After all, I know you people aren’t exactly averse to a bit of human sacrifice.”

I gritted my teeth. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course I do. I read my wife’s notes, remember? I know all about your weird throat-cutting ceremonies.”

“They aren’t performed to cover up crimes!”

“Doesn’t matter. What I’m saying is: you people aren’t averse to violence. So it won’t take much to convince your father—or someone else from Alderwood—to take care of the Sebastian problem.”

The Sebastian problem.That was how Adam was already referring to his own son. Already detaching himself from their relationship like it never meant anything at all. He was truly the worst kind of monster.

“What’s the other reason?” I asked in a hollow voice.

“Hm?”

“You said you’re taking us to Pinecrest Falls for two reasons.”

“Ah, right. Well, as I said before, I figured out that you’re from Alderwood, so I decided to return you to your home. That’s all right with you, isn’t it?”

Another chill shot through my veins. “No. I… I can’t go back there.”

“Why?”

“I just can’t.”

“Rose, dear, you’re going to have to do better than that if you want to convince me not to take you back to Alderwood,” Adam said in a saccharine tone. “After all, I can’t exactly have you running around out here in the real world, telling anyone who listens about all the things I’ve done, can I? So I think it’s best you go home.”

“Please…. I just… I really can’t be there. We can work something out. Sebastian and I will go away, and we won’t say a word about anything. You don’t have to kill himortake me home.”

Adam slowed the car to a stop, more delicately this time. Then he smiled, drumming his fingertips on the steering wheel. “Now I’m interested,” he said. “Very, very interested.”

“In what?”

He looked back at me, forehead wrinkling. “I’d like to know why you’re so hellbent on never returning to Alderwood.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

Adam’s expression darkened. “Tell me, or I’ll shoot you up with another dose of those sedatives, and you’ll be back in your little village before you know it.”

I gulped. “Tonight is the final night of the Tetrad.”

“Thewhat?”

“It’s the fourth blood moon, four months in a row.”

“And?”

“I’ll be sacrificed at midnight if I go back to Alderwood. I left because I didn’t want to do it anymore, and my father allowed it. But if I return… they’ll all think I changed my mind, and it will happen,” I said in a tremulous voice. “Even if I keep saying no… itwillhappen. I just know it.”

Adam stared at me for a moment, seemingly stupefied. Then he started laughing, deep and low, the sound filling the car in a way that made my skin crawl. It wasn’t the kind of laugh that came from genuine amusement. It was something darker, something unfathomably cruel.

“This is too good,” he said, shaking his head. “Really…toogood. I think you’ve just made my life a hundred times easier.”

“How?”

He ignored me and pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. Then he leaned back and showed it to me. “Is this still your father’s number?”

I stared at the digits on the screen. “I don’t know.”

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