Page 120 of Demise

I jump at his voice, scrambling to hide the journal, but it’s too late. He crosses the room in a flash, gripping my hands with one of his as he grabs the journal from me. His eyes skate over it, going wide as realization hits him.

“What the FUCK! SKYLA! Are you fucking insane?” he roars.

I cower beneath him. He’s never raised his voice with me, never yelled. The look in his eyes is a new one as well. It’s unfiltered rage, it’s a crazed look that chills me to my bones. Several pairs of footsteps run up the stairs, and as one, Vincent, Asher, and Wesley peel Ronan away from me.

Asher comes to my side, examining my arm like he’s expecting to find bruises or something before he faces his uncle.

“What the fuck is your problem?” he snarls.

“THIS IS MY FUCKING PROBLEM!” Ronan rages as he shakes the journal in his hand.

Asher stares at it for a second before his eyes go wide. His gaze snaps to mine in disbelief, as does Wesley’s, when Vincent speaks.

“What is that?” he snaps.

“This,” Ronan says as he addresses the room. “Is Thomas Putnam’s journal. My family’s most prized possession, my brother’s most prized possession. How the fuck did you get it?”

All eyes come to me as I lower my head.

“I found it,” I mutter.

Ronan lets out a humorless laugh that is so unlike him as he shakes his head.

“You found it? Where? On his person? Because that’s where it stays, always.”

“It was in his desk…under a hidden compartment.”

Asher shakes his head and Wesley winces as Ronan tips his head to the sky.

“How long?” he asks.

“How long what?” I ask.

His crazed eyes come back to me once more, clearly no patience in them.

“How long have you had it? When did you take it? How long has my brother already been, no doubt, searching for it?”

I guess I hadn’t thought about when he would notice it missing, though I probably should have.

“Last night. At the party. I told Asher I was going to the bathroom but I…snuck into his office through the kitchen entrance.”

A hurt look passes across Asher’s face as he shakes his head.

“What were you thinking, princess?”

I run my hand through my hair and sigh. “I wanted answers about…everything. Things in the history books don’t add up to the Brethren’s practices.”

“No, shit. Because they don’t go off history, siren. It’s a goddamn cult,” Vincent says.

“It is not,” Wesley, Ronan, and Asher defend.

He laughs bitterly and nods. “Sure, whatever. Delude yourselves.”

“What kind of answers were you hoping to find, little one?” Wesley intervenes.

I shake my head. “I don’t know. Something about my mom and her family, maybe?”

“This again?” Ronan huffs. “Horris Hutchinson mentioned the rumor of Skyla’s mom being a witch, that’s why she was killed.”

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