6 Under The Final Moon (21 page)

I suppose I wasn’t expecting an actual mortuary when I walked through the door. The room was heavily wood paneled and cool, with just the faintest scent of dampness intermingled with the sickly sweet stench of wilting flowers. It was deathly silent and the air felt heavy, punctuated by a thousand souls or a thousand tears or perhaps just a thousand sentiments never said as families looked over the lifeless bodies of their loved ones.

I expected more.

I expected fire and brimstone, and possibly something with neck chains and giant boulders. I didn’t expect the older woman who sat at a huge mahogany L-shaped desk moving her mouse, her wrinkled lips held tight as she studied her screen, the computer giving off the familiar “blip!” of a game of
Solitaire
. I cleared my throat and the woman looked up at me with a welcoming smile, her eyes milky with practiced compassion.

“Hello, dear. May I help you?”

I cleared my throat again, my voice choked off by the dead flowers, by the overwhelming, silent announcement of death all around.

“Yes,” I finally forced out. And then, “I think.” I wrung my hands and crossed the room to the woman—whose name was Gertrude Viet, I learned from her nameplate—and pasted on a small smile.

“I’m looking for someone.”

Gertrude looked up at me, lips still pursed, head bent slightly forward, listening.

Lucas Szabo. My father. My dad. Lucas. Mr. Szabo. The man who married my mother. The man who abandoned his child. The words and monikers tumbled head over heels in my brain and each one sounded wrong—too formal, too personal, too strange.

“Szabo.” It came out like a shot and died on the air. “Lucas Szabo.”

Gertrude’s smile didn’t falter. “And you are?”

“My name is Sophie,” I said. “I’m Sophie Lawson.”

Gertrude’s smile was still staunch, and I realized then that it wasn’t welcoming or empathetic or businesslike. She held it hard, teeth clenched behind those pursed lips. I swallowed.

“And what business do you have with Mr. Szabo?”

My bones melted away with the hot wax that tore through me. “He’s here?”

An eyebrow raise. Eyes challenging mine. “What business do you have with Mr. Szabo?”

“I need to talk to him about . . .” The word
daughter
stuck behind my teeth, and I couldn’t hold Gertrude’s eye any longer. “A coffin.” I coughed out the word as my eyes set on the open catalog to Gertrude’s left. “I’d like to buy a coffin.”

“For yourself or for a family member, perhaps? Your mother, maybe?”

Icy fingers of fear clawed their way down my spine. “My mother?” She was behind my eyes in a flash—my mother laughing, my mother with her head thrown back as the sunlight caught the blond streaks in her hair. The day my mother died, her naked big toe drawing tiny circles a half-inch above the hardwood floor.

“Do you know?” I whispered.

But Gertrude was hefting the catalog in front of her, flopping the glossy pages backward. She held up a single finger and cocked her head. “You just wait right here one moment, won’t you? I’ve got something I think you might like better. Stay put, okay?”

I watched Gertrude back away, that smile held taut on her lips. And then she was gone. The air in the room seemed to get heavier, if that were possible—seemed to press harder against my lungs. I sucked in a tiny gulp of air and started when I heard the shuffle of feet. I whirled toward the sound and almost feel over, stunned.

“Oliver?”

He was half-hidden behind a heavy velvet curtain in the showroom. A little child with wide eyes and an impish smile clutching a length of olive-green cloth while he stood between two coffins, staring at me.

“Oliver! The police have been—” I headed for him, but he pressed a finger up against his lips. I paused, crouching down to his level.

“You want me to be quiet? Are you scared, honey? You don’t have to be—I’m going to get you out of here. You’ll be safe with me, I promise.”

Oliver shook his head, and I could see the crook of a smile behind his index finger. “I’m hiding,” he whispered. “So shush.” He shrank back into the curtain.

“Who are you hiding from?” I whispered back. “You don’t have to hide. You don’t have to be afraid.”

I reached for the curtain, trying to push it aside, but Oliver’s grip on it was surprisingly strong.

“Oliver, it’s okay.”

His nostrils flared and the smile was gone. His eyes were dark storms and his lips were tight. “Stop it,” he said, voice a low growl. “I’m hiding. It’s a game. I’m winning.” His eyes locked mine and my stomach went to liquid. There was nothing pure in those eyes, nothing but darkness and hate, nothing human. “And you’re going to lose.”

My blood ran cold, and when Gertrude sang out, “Here it is,” I stumbled backward, terrified of Oliver, more frightened than the night he’d killed his parents. He was evil now; it was apparent—evil through and through.

“We have all sorts of models. Do you have a price range in mind?”

Gertrude said other things too—something about cedar and polished brass that I could barely hear above the rushing of blood as it coursed through my skull. I felt each toe touch the carpet through my shoe; I felt each step, each breath of ice-tinged air, and then I was running, my lungs screaming against the sear as I held my breath and pushed through the double doors. The sunlight on my shoulders, on my face, burned me and I hurled myself into the street, my eyes focused on Nina’s black car, which looked a thousand miles—a hundred blocks, a lifetime—away. I vaguely heard her calling me, heard the screech of tires and the blaring of horns. Someone yelled, someone screamed, and I was clawing at the door handle, my palm burning from the sunbaked steel, my fingernails clawing at the slick black paint. Finally, the door popped open and I huddled inside, legs curled to my chest so my heart thundered against my thigh, arms curled around my legs, head buried.

“Sophie, Sophie, what happened? Are you okay?”

“Go. Just go.” I was shaking, and then I was screaming. “Go-go-go-go-go!” There was more screeching, more honking, more yelling, and when I dared to look again the mortuary was inching away behind us, the curtains twitching as Oliver stepped into the window, arm raised, hand waving jovially.

Nina and I had been sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic for over an hour. We were dead silent the whole time, she tapping her fingers against the steering wheel, me staring out, seeing but not seeing the city outside the passenger window. Every time I blinked, the image of the mortuary flashed in my mind. The cloying smell of the lilies choked me and I started to hyperventilate. Nina reached out and took my hand, her cool one bringing down my temperature at least two degrees.

“It’s going to be okay, Sophie,” she said softly.

“Oliver was in there.”

“Oliver? The kid?”

“He was evil. He was horrible. I just don’t understand any of this. Why—? If he has Oliver, what does he want with me? And he sends me flowers, but he’s not there. What the hell does he want with me? Is he just playing?”

Nina shook her head. “I was initially thinking he was trying to flush you out with the fires and the destruction. You know—you’d see them all, know that you were somehow responsible, and come out and solve them or bumble them or whatever, and then bam, he’d swoop in and get you.” She bit her thumb. “At least that’s what Will and I think.”

A niggling jealously caught the back of my neck. “You talked to Will about this?”

“We were just shooting the shit. Will kind of thinks that Lucas wants you on his own terms. Like, the flowers were an introduction.”

“And then bam.” I settled back in the seat, my saliva going sour.

The sun was setting and the sky was an electric pink. It looked unnatural, and I laughed at the observation since there seemed to be nothing anymore that was natural. I was born of the devil. I was born of evil.

“Screw this.” Nina yanked the wheel hard and drove half on the shoulder, the other half of her car a quarter-inch from the screaming drivers on the other side. “Sorry, sorry,” she said with a dazzling smile. She guided us off the off-ramp in record time while a symphony of honks and obscenities rang out in our wake.

“Feel like going shopping?” she asked. “My treat.”

I shook my head, the veins in my neck like steel rods from all the tension I’d been carrying. I was mildly certain that I would have to unhinge my jaw from the outside if I ever wanted to open my mouth again.

“No thanks, Neens. Would you mind just swinging by the house and shoving me out?”

“Not at all.”

She maneuvered the city streets like a pro and when I say, “like a pro,” I mean a pro in any field other than driving or maneuvering. We chased down an old lady in a crosswalk, nearly took out two parking meters, and for some reason when we arrived in front of the house, there was a wilted head of lettuce stuck to one of the headlights. I peeled it off and waved. Nina rolled down the window and craned her neck out before pulling away from the curb from which she had “parked” perpendicularly.

“Promise me you won’t sulk tonight, ’kay?”

“I don’t sulk,” I sulked.

Nina pursed her lips. “You have real family, you know? Vlad and I wouldn’t know what to do without you. And King of Darkness or not, your bio dad is really a dick.”

I smiled and gave Nina a peck on the cheek, scraping a few more bits of lettuce from her driver’s side door.

I was upstairs and stretched out on the couch with ChaCha on my lap and a sleeve of mini powdered donuts under my arm when someone knocked on the door.

“Jusa-minoot,” I said, mouth full of mini donuts. I snatched the spare house key from our unlimited stash since Nina was famous for losing hers on a weekly basis, usually during her Indy 500–style driving endeavors.

I yanked open the door. “Did you lose—”

The donut that I had eaten sat like an enormous black mass in my gut. The tension that I was holding exploded and pinpricks shot out, tagging every inch of my bare skin. My hackles went up. Sweat beaded on my upper lip. If the entire world hadn’t dropped into animated suspension, I’m sure my heart would have been thudding out of my chest.

Lucas Szabo was standing there, staring at me.

I don’t know what I’d expected, exactly. On the one hand, this was the being charged with the contamination of all mankind, the epitome, the example, the
symbol
of evil. I guess I’d thought he would look more badass or have hellfire flying up behind him like some kind of Broadway show or AC/DC concert. There were no minions, the waft of brimstone didn’t float up from his cheap-looking suit, and his hair—though thinner and far wispier than mine—was the same pale red I usually sported. He had kind, interested-looking eyes and a comb-over. No horns.

On the other hand, I was staring at my father. Once I had dreamed that he would be a lithe, sinewy six-foot-three with a body like a cyclist or a James Bond iteration. He would wear the suits fashionable in the
Father Knows Best
fifties and smoke a pipe while tousling my hair and calling me a little scamp. My mother would fix him a martini. Norman Rockwell would immortalize us in the
Saturday Evening Post
. I’d never dreamed of this man who was stocky and a little short. He stood with his shoulders back and his chin hitched; he was a rather commanding presence if a very short one. He was barely an eyebrow taller than me.

We stared at each other for a good long minute. In my mind’s eye, we circled each other like curious dogs ready to strike. He sized me up, I sized him up. All the anger and hate and betrayal that had simmered in my gut for my entire life bubbled to the surface, and I was hurling questions, insults, accusations while this man—my
dad
—cringed and begged and tried to answer, tried to apologize. In actuality, he raised his anemic eyebrows and gestured with the hat he carried in his left hand.

“Oh,” I started. He wanted me to let him in.

There were so many emotions associated with this man walking into my home. Once he crossed that physical threshold, he was crossing a mental one, too, and so was I. This was my life, my every hope in tangible, physical form in front of me. The decision that I made in this split second, in this moment in time would stand for all eternity—

“Sorry to be a bother when we’re just meeting like this. But may I use your restroom?”

I felt my mouth drop open. I felt my heart plummet and then swell, warming to the kind voice of this man—of
my father.

“Y—yes, of course,” I stuttered, stepping aside. “It’s right there.” I pointed like a ninny, still standing with the door wide open as Lucas crossed the living room and disappeared into the bathroom. Eventually, I shut the door. Eventually, I made it to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee.

My father was in my house.
My father
was in my house!

Joy flittered around my chest like I was a little girl and my daddy had just bought me a pony. I pulled on my hair and tried to straighten my bangs, did a quick stain scan of my T-shirt and skirt and pinched my cheeks so they would be rosy.

The devil is in my house.

That second voice was darker than the first, and it shot a nauseating wave through my stomach.

Trickster god,
Alex’s voice pinged around my head.
He cannot be honest, Lawson. He cannot be good.

He doesn’t care about who you are, love.
Will’s voice joined Alex’s.
All he cares about is what you are.

I was blinking hard and trying to swallow down the raw feeling in my throat when Lucas opened the bathroom door, offering me a broad, if unnerving, smile.

He’ll kill you just as soon as kiss you. He’s the devil, Lawson. He’s evil incarnate. There is no redemption for him. He was cast out and he liked it that way. He’ll pull you onto his side, he’ll pull you into his world and then there will be no redemption for you either. Regardless of the Vessel of the Souls, that can’t happen. I won’t let it happen. You’re too good, Lawson.

“Can I get you a cup of coffee?”