Page 62 of These Monstrous Ties
Together, looking around, guns drawn, Nicolas and I walk silently up the steps. He pulls on the screen door. It’s unlocked. I see a smile flicker on his lips. Less mess.
The back door itself, of course, is locked tight.
Nicolas hands me his gun, pulls out a lockpick from his pocket and goes to work. I don’t know shit about breaking into houses. I don’t know shit about murder, except the bodies my brother leaves behind. I am wholly unprepared for this. But it’s a little too late to back out now.
The lock clicks, and Nicolas pushes the door open, pocketing the tools. He takes his gun back, and we wait, there on the threshold of the door. Wait for an alarm, a dog, a cat. Anything. We wait thirty seconds. Then we go inside, and I guide the door gently closed.
We stand inside the kitchen, shrouded in darkness.
It smells like someone has baked something recently, cookies or something like it. It smells good, and my stomach growls. Nicolas shoots me a look, but there isn’t much I can do about it. I shrug in the darkness.
As my eyes adjust, I see bottles in the sink, a highchair around a gleaming wooden table off of the kitchen, in the dining room. And just past the kitchen are stairs leading upward. Nicolas had told me bedrooms are almost always upstairs.
I jerk my head in that direction, nearly holding my breath. There’s some noise upstairs, like a sound machine or a fan, but otherwise, it’s silent. I can hear my heart thudding in my ears.
Nicolas takes small steps through the kitchen, testing the floor out. It’s creaky, so he distributes his weight almost comically, creeping like a cartoon burglar across the dark wooden floors.
This place is a home. There’s no marble here. No shine like at the hotel. It actually feels…cozy. But I shove that thought aside.
I follow in Nicolas’s wake, glancing behind me as I do, looking around the hallway once we get to the bottom of the stairs. I can see the front door, and a living room just before it. Darkness. Silence.
Yet that feeling hasn’t left. The weird one. I thought it was because there’s a baby in this house. But I get a prick on the back of my neck, like I’m being watched. As Nicolas tests out the stairs, thankfullynotvery creaky, I look behind me, at the door we had come in from.
Nothing.
I’m paranoid.
I am, truth be told, always paranoid. But that’s not going to help me now.
I take a breath in through my nose, out through my mouth, trying to calm my racing heart. We’re in. That’s half the battle. Now we just have to do the other half, and then we can get out.
Nicolas is halfway up the stairs when I realize he’s glaring at me. I haven’t moved. I clench my teeth together to keep the apology on my tongue from bubbling out through my lips. I follow him up, glancing at the walls ahead of him, on the landing. No photographs that I can see. I’m hopeful I won’t have to see any pictures of Lucifer’s smiling face with Julie and this child.
We reach the landing, the both of us, and wait again. Listening. The sound is a fan, coming from a closed door at the end of the hall. Probably the baby’s room. Right off the top of the stairs, there’s another door that’s wide open. At my back, there’s a small bathroom.
Nicolas nods toward the open door, and he walks quickly over to it, standing flush against the wall before he pokes his head in, twisting around like they do in cop movies when they’re clearing the rooms.
He twists back around, and I see on his face.
Something is wrong. He’s frowning, his eyes wide.
I come closer to him, standing just in front of him, and do as he had, looking inside the room. It’s a bedroom, and underneath the blue comforter is Julie—blonde tendrils splayed on the pillow, her face away from us—and the baby, snuggled up against her chest, wisps of hair sticking up at all angles, facing against his mother.
I try to breathe as I duck out the room and slide past Nicolas, flattening myself against the wall, too.
We don’t look at each other. Not for a long moment.
“I’ll do it,” Nicolas finally says, words against my ear so I can hear him.
I swallow the lump in my throat. This is not right. But I’ve never been right. Nothing about me is right.
I squeeze my eyes closed. Jeremiah might be pissed it isn’t me that does it. He wants to teach me a lesson in all of this. But I can’t. I know I can’t. I’ll only fuck it up.
I nod, and Nicolas nods toward the stairs. He wants me to go down before he pulls the trigger.
I want to argue, but now is really not the time. We can’t speak any more than we already have, and I’m not about to fuck this up more than it’s already fucked. So much for bringing Julie’s head back to taunt Lucifer.
My gun still drawn, still in both hands, I make my way down the stairs on tiptoes, looking at my feet, careful not to trip. When I get to the bottom, I glance up at Nicolas, and he’s staring at me. I pull my brows together, confused. He needs to move. We need to get the fuck out of here. The longer we stay, the worse the bad feeling gets.
