Page 63 of The Devil's Torment

“Oh, good,” I say. “Gives me time to burn them.”

Our car pulls up curbside, but before I get in, a flash of somebody across the street catches my eye. As I focus, the sight of a woman walking away is enough to make my heart plummet to the ground. The hair, the gait, the slight angle to her head as she makes her way through the crowds.

“Beth?” I whisper.

I take off, racing across the road, ignoring the blaring horns and screeching brakes. “Beth!” I scream, losing sight of her in the hordes of people. Multiple voices behind me call my name in unison, but I’m too fixated on the bobbing dark head a few feet in front of me. A man barges my shoulder, and I stumble but somehow keep my footing. Stretching, I splay my fingers wide and touch the woman’s shoulder.

“Beth.” My voice cracks. “Beth, it’s me.”

The woman turns… and it isn’t Beth. Of course it isn’t. How could it be her? My sister is dead. It’s just another false sighting. It’s happened a few times since she died, almost as though my subconscious is constantly looking for her, hoping for a miracle. My shoulders slump.

“Are you all right?” Concern etches across the stranger’s features, and she puts out a hand to steady me as I waver.

“I’m sorry.” I bite my lip as a single tear spills down my cheek. “I thought you were someone else.”

Andrew skids to a halt next to me, and my friends aren’t far behind. I probably gave him a near heart attack running off like that. But I was so sure. From the back, she could be Beth, but face on, she looks nothing like my sister. Wrong nose, wrong color eyes, round instead of heart-shaped face.

“Come on.” Imogen puts her arm around me, and everyone else gathers around. “Let’s get you home.”

I lock eyes with Eloise, then Briony. “It was Beth, except it wasn’t.”

“She did look like Beth from the back,” Eloise says. “It’s an easy mistake to make. You’re still grieving. It’s not surprising your mind and eyes played a trick on you.”

I start to shiver. It must be the shock. For a split second, I’d believed in miracles, but the moment of soaring hope does not make up for the agonizing crash back to earth.

“Let’s get you home,” she says again, and Imogen beckons to our driver, who does a U-turn and stops right in front of us.

I hug my friends, reassuring them that I’m fine even though I’m not. I’m shaken to my core, and all I want is to get home, curl up in bed, and process the last few seconds when I thought my sister was alive.

Imogen leaves me to my thoughts on the journey back to Oakleigh, but as we pull up outside the front door, the sight of Nicholas standing there waiting for me is enough to bring on more tears.

“I texted Alexander. I hope you don’t mind.”

I squeeze her hand. “Thank you.”

Nicholas strides over to the car and wrenches the door open. As soon as I step out, he wraps his arms around me, stroking my hair, and I melt into his solid, warm embrace.

I don’t have Beth, but I do have Nicholas, and oddly enough, the ever-present guilt I feel knowing I’m living her life is a little less agonizing today.

Maybe seeing that woman was Beth’s way of sending a message, of telling me it’s okay, and that I deserve to be happy.

And maybe, just maybe, I do.

ChapterTwenty-Three

VICKY

Today is my twenty-fourth birthday, and guess what I got as a gift?

My period.

Lucky me.

I guess on the one hand I should be relieved I’m not pregnant, especially with the amount of sex Nicholas and I have had in the last few weeks, but did it have to be today? Mother Nature could have waited twenty-four hours to drop this on me, surely?

To make matters worse, I woke up alone, same as I have every morning for the past week. Nicholas left on a business trip with Alexander a couple of days after the not-Beth incident, and he hasn’t messaged or called me once. Not once.

I don’t get it. One minute he’s all in, treating me as if I’m the only person in his world, that I’m thecenterof his world. The next he’s aloof and distant, almost as though he’s forgotten I exist.

---