Page 113 of Deliver us from Evil

“Yeah.” Apollo might have been trying to sound cheery, but his words just come out all wobbly. “Want to know what it was?”

Rube and I look at him. He drops his eyes. “Forgive us our sins,” he says, sounding much less happy than before.

I push past them, unlocking the phone again. I turn down the volume and head into the living room, then hurriedly detour and go into the kitchen instead.

I don’t need to be sitting next to a pool of my own blood trying to work this shit out, that’s for sure.

Cass follows. He makes me a cup of black coffee and sits opposite me as I watch the whole video.

It makes me sick to my stomach to the point where I want to go puke up everything I ever ate…but near the end, Monica picks up the phone again and takes it over to the bed. As she’s arranging it on the nightstand—bright blue like the dresser, with a night light shaped like Mickey Mouse—there’s a clear shot of the window.

So clear, you can make out the horizon.

I freeze that frame, take a screenshot. It’s got Monica’s left eye in it, near the bottom. Her face is tilted down, but she’s looking at the phone.

Probably imagining her husband’s delight when she shows him the clip.

That eye sure is beautiful.

If you don’t look too hard.

Because if you do, then you can see pure evil coiling in the darkness of her pupil.

Forgive us our sins?

Bitch, not now…not fuckingever.

Chapter Forty

Trinity

Exodus, Matthew, and Ephesians say you must honor your father and your mother. They don’t mention whether that still applies if your parents sold their souls to the devil.

“Who were they? Those boys you were with?” my father asks.

I guess I don’t have to call him that anymore. I’m not his daughter. I should feel relieved, but instead I feel violated.

It wasn’t my father who lived upstairs in that house with me and my mother.

It was an impostor.

A stranger.

But they made me call him Dad. And they made me obey him.

The impostor walks closer. Calm, collected.

My head snaps to the side when he backhands me. Pain blossoms on my cheek, and I see stars when my eyes squeeze shut involuntarily.

“Who were they?” he asks again, so quiet I can barely make out the words over the sound of blood roaring in my ears.

“No one,” I manage, blinking back tears of pain and terror.

They tied me to a chair, Hoody and Polo, while the impostor and the woman watched. I’m in a den or a study. Plushly carpeted, thick drapes—drawn. It was gloomy inside until Hoody turned on a desk lamp.

There are lots of books on the wall here. A big desk. It looks a lot like the study Dad had at home.

No, not Dad.

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