“Wait, you go crazy without the guys?” I ask, jumping in.

It reminds me of something Lake said back before she stabbed me. I was clearly more distracted by the fact she was a girl they had slept with before, and that little morsel of information slipped through the cracks after I died and all.

“We hurt after we’ve been separated for too long. It strains our bond. It’s why our rooms are all lined up. We wanted our own spaces within the home, but we wanted close when we slept.”

“So then our bond has already started, and regardless of why you’re stuck with me, the point is you are stuck with me. Right?” I ask, causing his eyes to narrow as I feel relief filling me.

Sheesh, this moral dilemma stuff shouldn’t burden a girl with no conscience and no guilt. Apparently that purity register of compassion is higher than the journals suggested, because it’s the only reason I can logically assume was the catalyst behind said moral dilemma.

Good thing that’s now over. It’s totally a load off my mind.

“It used to be you who needed us,” he bites out as if he’s accusing me of something.

“I need your bond to be strong in order for me to be strong, so I don’t go kaboom. And I certainly still need you, in case you’ve forgotten the whole burning the earth around me thing that happened after the four of you rudely buried me in a graveyard so far from the house, instead of just letting me keep my room.”

From brooding anger to baffled incredulity, he says, “You were dead.”

“Not this again,” I sigh while pinching the bridge of my nose and shaking my head.

He makes a sound of the same exasperation I’m experiencing, as if I’m the exasperating one.

“What are the chances that the woman meant for us, no matter what damn lifetime we’re in, is the most infuriating person I’ve ever met?” he asks, leaving me to idly wonder if it’s a rhetorical question or if he’s genuinely expecting me to do the math.

“What are the chances I have four guys who can only have free-play sex with me, and I’m constantly dealing with taco blocko?” I counter, leaving him with the same debacle of deciding to do the math or presuming the question to be rhetorical.

“Taco blocko?” he groans.

“Beaver dammed?” I amend.

He blinks at me.

“Twat swatted?” I suggest when the other two seem to puzzle him.

He just glares at me when he realizes I could do this all day.

“Clam jammed…” I let the words trail off and decide to stop when he starts looking slightly murderous.

He closes his eyes and exhales as if mediating, his muscles visibly tensing like he wants to be violent. I’m the stupid girl who sits down on his bed, completely unafraid.

“Jude’s right, and I rarely ever say that. It’s impossible to have an actual conversation with you,” he growls as he stalks out of…his room.

“My social skills are terrible because I only had myself to argue with for over five years,” I call to his back, reminding him that I’m Casper the sad little lonely ghost—or at least I was for the vast majority of my remembered existence.

He pauses as he turns and looks over his shoulder, and I exhale my own annoyed breath as I move closer and prepare to sound pathetic for the sake of an explanation.

“There’s an adjustment period, Ezekiel. I spent all those years watching, listening, and talking. None of you knew I existed, so you’d never repaid the courtesy and listened to my input,” I start, propping up beside him and staring out over the foyer that sits in the center of two large staircases.

“Like you said, we didn’t know you existed,” he agrees, calming just a little.

“You don’t seem to understand that our relationship, a term I’m using loosely, started for you the day you first saw me,” I go on. “But for me, it started that first day I spotted Gage. On my end, I’m still talking, and the four of you practically pretend not to hear me unless you’re yelling at me for having a thought you disagree with.”

He clears his throat, looking away. I only notice from my peripheral, since I’m not looking directly at him.

“Most of your ideas are half baked and possibly suicidal,” he grinds out.

“Most of my ideas have worked in our favor so far,” I decide to remind him.

That trademark glare they’ve all perfected isn’t quite as intimidating when there’s just one of them exercising it on me.

“I’ve had no guide book or another person to explain this process of my existence to me,” I continue. “My survival has been solely based on trusting my instincts since I came about. Such as, how to keep from sinking into the ground and fading out. How to stop fading out based on watching you… I’ve learned, grown stronger, and clawed my way into a world from which I’d already been evicted, and only my intuition got me here.”

Turning around, I lean against the banister and let my head swivel toward him. It’s his eyes not meeting mine this time.

“My ideas and half-cocked plans admittedly come off as crazy, and there have been few times I really wished someone had stopped me. Intuition isn’t an exact science, and the stakes rise considerably with each new level-up.”

He angles his head, his eyes finally meeting mine again with that glimmer of gold in their depths.

“But when I’m still being dismissed completely, it doesn’t feel any different than the days when you didn’t know I existed. In those days, I was forced to be overlooked and ignored. Here and now, I still have my instincts, and no one but me trusts them.”

He starts to say something, but I continue before he can.

“I get why. The four of you have spent a lot of time cultivating trust and closeness. I just can’t let the four of you make all the decisions, when my intuition has also been a major part of keeping you alive as well.”

Pushing off from the bannister, I start walking away.

As I hear him walking back toward his room, I add, “Goodnight.”

Predictably, he doesn’t return the sentiment. Which is good, since I just showed my pathetic side again. I don’t want pity goodnights.

I don’t poke my head through the doors tonight, since I’m whole and that won’t work, and I don’t feel like straining my tired phantom in this moment.

However, I rap on the doors one by one to tell them goodnight. Silence is what answers me, because they do love a good sulking.

I’m tempted to tell them about our deaths, but they’d likely sneak off to kill Manella if I told them he recycled them as a mercy for losing me.

Now I’m not so sure they’d consider that such a mercy.

Isn’t that ironic?

I’m not a fan of irony.

Chapter 6

The screams rip free from my throat as I remain suspended, held in place by power I can feel but can’t see. My insides feel shredded as the next scream bubbles from my lips, and I cry out, begging for someone to free me from the madness.

How the fucking hell did I get here?

Where am I?

What’re those sounds?

Who’s screaming?

Dark shadows race through my mind, searing me with the urge to kill, taste, destroy. But I can’t do anything, because I’m held in place.

“Ssssoooo pretty,” comes a hiss through the tunnel just as another scream is pulled out of me when it feels like acid-dipped claws are raking over my face.

The harder I fight to move, the worse pain is.

The first slash across my back feels like fire being inserted into my veins, burning me from the inside out. The second slash makes me want to die just because I already crave the relief.

By the fifteenth, my head lulls forward, the pain too intense to focus on the shadows of my mind that provoke so much fury, so much hate, so much anger. All the worst of the impurities flow through me like a relentless disease, renewing their efforts.

Tears start leaking from my eyes, because I know the whip master has just felt their stirrings. He’ll punish me more to drive them back down. How do I know that? Why is this happening?

Shrouded by his hood, I only see hints of his mangled face as he steps in front of me, and my eyes land on the flaming whip in his hand just as it crashes down against my bare chest.

The flames shoot inside me with the contact, and my head falls back as my throat tears from the powerful scream forced out of me this time. I find myself ironically praying for someone to save me.

“Paca, wake up!” someone shouts as the black tower I’m in starts to shake.

No one will save me.

“Paca!” comes another shout as the walls start to crumble from the pits of hell they thought they could lock me in.

Me.

The fucking Devil’s daughter.

My eyes open on the whip master, and a dark, bloody smile forms on my lips as he drops the whip and stumbles back.

The room around me rattles and clatters, as though there’s glass to break, but I don’t see any glass. I only see stones that are struggling not to crumble under the bone-crushing fury running out of me.

The whip master is blown back against the wall, getting held there as he cries out and struggles. Then I see a flash of Kai’s face under the hood, no longer the mangled one that the whip master had, and fear spikes in my blood, worried the face is an illusion. But the panic inside me has me also worried I’m killing—