Page 91 of Saving Sparrow
God’s work?I’d been about to ask him what he meant by that, but he’d already moved on to my second question.
“I was spread out on a gurney in the makeshift hospital room. Bleeding out from a back injury.”
“My father gave it to us for Elliott’s twelfth birthday.”
“It was his birthday…” I reached for my napkin, wringing it in my hands, wishing it were Elijah’s neck.
“Yes.” Sparrow seemed confused by my obvious anger. Did he think what happened to them wouldn’t affect me? Maybe he assumed I only cared about Elliott’s pain.
“Why? Why would he do that to you?”
“Tome?” he asked in bewilderment.
“Yes, to you, Sparrow.” My words were harsh, but I hoped he knew they weren’t directed at him. Elijah had hurt both of them, but at the moment the wound was inflicted, it was Sparrow who’d endured the pain of it. And I had no doubt he’d also been the one to suffer through the worst of the healing process.
For once, he seemed taken aback, like he didn’t know how to handle being the center of my concern. “It was an extraction ritual.”
“He’d done God’s work for the day.”
Bile rose, and I concentrated on ensuring my expression didn’t mistakenly convey pity. “Sparrow,” I breathed, devastation in my tone. I reached out, and Sparrow immediately pressed back in his seat, his hands leaving the table.
“We can stop.” I swallowed down the pain I felt on his behalf. “We don’t have to talk about this anymore.”
“The sooner we get this over with, the sooner you’ll give me what I want, and then I can decide what to do with you.” He’d shifted back to cruelty, my punishment for daring to care about him.
“Okay.” I tried to reel in my emotions. The way his blue gaze narrowed on me said I hadn’t managed to pull it off. “Amelia said she met you once but didn’t realize it at the time.”
“Through the open room door, I heard the phone ring in my father’s study. I’m guessing my mother ran for it, and my aunt took that as her opportunity to roam around. She found me. Likely heard my moans of pain. I begged her to help Elliott and Joshua, to get them out of the house.”
“That must have confused her,” I said.
“Yes.”
“And you told her who you were. You told her you were their brother.”
“I didn’t know how else to explain it. I was in so much pain. Later, I realized I should’ve just pretended to be Elliott, but the…”
Pain, he didn’t say. The pain had been too much.
“Or you could’ve just asked her to save you, Sparrow.”
He frowned as though the thought hadn’t even crossed his mind. Like saving himself had never been the goal, had never been his purpose. “She asked who’d carved up my back, and when I told her, she said I’d probablydeserved it. She said we could all burn in hell.” He laughed humorlessly, the sound still lovely from the rarity of it. “The irony of that statement. That was exactly what lying there felt like. Burning in hell.”
“That bitch.” I brought a fist down onto the table. Sparrow didn’t flinch, as though violence and rage were neither surprising nor new to him.
“Yes, a bitch indeed.”
She’d been close to me on more than one occasion. So close I could’ve reached out and wrapped my hands around her throat. I would have if I’d known she had something this catastrophic to pay for.
“My mother caught her sneering over me, and when she asked her what she was doing in there, Amelia enlightened her on our conversation before leaving. I lost all sense of composure, verbally attacking her as she strode away, spewing threats and promising to save Elliott myself. Things only got worse after that.”
“But didn’t that clue your mother in to the fact that Elliott needed help? Didn’t she understand he was sick? That they’d made him sick?!” I slammed my other fist onto the table too, nearly frothing at the mouth. As a mother, how did she not see the signs? How could she not notice when Elliott wasn’t himself? When he was Sparrow or Joshua or whoever else.
“No,” Sparrow whispered, shaking his head. “It only proved that the extraction hadn’t worked.”
Of course.Of coursethey saw Sparrow’s words as the ramblings of the devil—or his legion of demons.
“There were two more rituals after that.”
