He kicked it again, but she could tell there was no getting through it.
“You’re scaring me now,” she called out to him. That worked. Jeremy turned around and went back to her. He sat on the floor, and she put her arms around him.
“Of course it’s his father,” he said. “Of course that bastard would haunt him even after he died.”
He picked up the length of electrical cord and threw it across the room. Emilie rubbed his back, trying to comfort him. He turned to her and took her in his arms. Love was good in a dark place like this, Skya had told her. Love was their secret weapon.
“I know it’s bad,” she said, then lowered her voice even more, “but you have to focus, okay?” She pointed at her eyes to make him smile. “Skya needs us.”
His eyes widened.
“Skya? She did find you?”
She smiled because even in this dank, evil city, having her sister was like having a one-woman army behind her. “Yeah. She tried to make me sit this one out. I wouldn’t let her.”
“Good,” he said. “Brave girl.” He kissed her forehead.
“We have a plan. That’s why I’m here. I’m supposed to get a message to Rafe.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know what it means, but she told me to tell him, ‘Do it in one.’ Does that mean anything to you?”
“No idea.”
“Maybe he’ll know. I have to get up there.”
“Does Skya know what Bill’s doing here?”
“He has Rafe’s sketchbook full of memories. We peeked in the windows and saw it on the table. He’s trying to open it, but he can’t do it. My sister said only Rafe can do it.”
“Why would he want his memories? He’s dead.”
“Skya says there’s something in there he doesn’t want Rafe to remember. But she wouldn’t tell me, said she promised Rafe.”
“He knows about Shanandoah now. He knows about us,” he said. “So…”
“So what could his dad want Rafe never to remember?” she asked. “I mean…what’s left? You were with him the entire time, right? You remember everything he’d remember.”
Jeremy stopped and looked up, cocked his head to the side. “Not quite. He says he can’t remember anything from the night before we tried to run away, and I wasn’t with him then.”
She moved right in front of him and sat knees to knees. “So his last memory before going missing was from the night before. What happened that night?”
Jeremy exhaled hard. “Uh…fight with his dad.”
“Bad fight?”
“He destroyed Rafe’s sketchbook. Shredded the drawings. Too many of me in there.” He gave a bitter laugh.
“So that’s Rafe’s last memory.”
“No,” Jeremy said. “He says the very last thing he remembers is shutting his bedroom door after Bobbi sent him to his room.”
“And nothing after that?”
“Nothing.”
Emilie took Jeremy’s hands in hers and studied the rope marks on his wrists. She glanced at the chewed-through electrical cord across the room, then at his wrists again.
The cord. A memory. The marks on his wrists.
Too many sketches of Jeremy. Why did they do this to you? For touching the king’s son…
“Unfinished business,” she said softly.
“What?”
“Skya says lost souls come here if they have unfinished business. This place is where they can finish it. It’s their last chance to make things right.”
He met her eyes and waited. She wasn’t sure she was sure, but she was sure she had a very good idea.
“The scars on Rafe’s back. I saw them when I was cutting his hair. They reminded me…At the vet’s office, someone brought in this pit bull, Pumpkin. All three of us vet techs had to help because she was so reactive. Because she’d been abused when she was a puppy. Now I remember…I remember the scars on her. Long, thin pink scars. Her new owner said someone had tied her up and beaten her with—”
“What?”
Now she knew what Rafe’s dad wanted with the sketchbook. He wanted to make sure Rafe never remembered that night. The night he beat him with—
She whispered, “An electrical cord.”
