“She’s the reason I can’t kill anyone but if she’s dead, then so is my promise.”
I breathe through the pain and the fear and try to work with Angelica’s logic. “If you kill her, you’ll have broken your promise.”
She just shakes her head. She dips her finger in my blood and finger-paints a stick figure on the concrete. “No, I won’t. She made me promise never to kill another person. But Angelica isn’tanotherperson. She’s me.” She draws her finger across the neck of the stick figure and smiles at me like she’s solved a puzzle. “I never promised I wouldn’t kill myself.”
Doing the job I do, being taken like this has always been my worst nightmare. Being the victim, instead of the hunter. I didn’t think anything could scare me more.
I was wrong.
I don’t care what happens to me. I will do anything. I will take all the torture. I will die if it means Freya is safe.
So, I force myself to hold Angelica’s gaze, to keep her eyes on me and not on the stupid, reckless woman who just stepped into the warehouse.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Freya
I’M STANDING IN the shadows. I haven’t seen my sister in six years, but all I can look at is Oz. Blood runs down his chest from the all too familiar shape of a cross. It takes everything in me not to rush over to him.
Never let anyone get close, they’ll be your downfall.
Oz has got his eyes locked on Angelica, but I know he knows I’m here. His hands are clenched into fists behind the beam he’s tied to, and I can practically hear his thoughts screaming at me to leave before she notices but it’s already too late.
“Hello Angelica, or is it Freya now?” my sister asks. She turns round to face me. “What? Not even a hug hello for the twin you abandoned?” This is why I hate being called Angelica. It was never just my name, it was always ours. For some reason, out of all the horrible things my father has done, that one always unsettles me the most. He didn’t raise us as two children, he raised us as one. But no matter how we were brought up, she’s still my sister.
“I couldn’t find you,” I say, the words lurching from my chest. I’d looked so hard for her. For him. I was never doing it to catch my father. I was doing it to get my sister out.
She spins the base of the knife on the tip of her finger. It’s a trick we learnt in the endless hours we spent locked away in the basement. I’d leave for school in the morning and when I gotback, she’d show me how good she’d got. There wasn’t much in the basement, but we were always allowed knives. It was like he thought letting us play with them would make us just like him. I guess, for my sister, it did.
“I’m here now,” I say. “Let Oz go.”
She shakes her head. “I’m supposed to kill him.”
We are truly identical, and there’s something indescribably unsettling about seeing yourself talk about murder so casually. It’s like when you have a nightmare only to realize you are the monster.
I shrug off the crawling sensation on my skin and take a few steps towards her. “I don’t think you will,” I say. “I don’t think you can.”
We were only ten when I made her promise to me she would never kill anyone. Maybe I’m just clinging to some foolish hope, but I don’t think she’s broken that promise. Not yet.
She crouches down and presses the point of the knife into Oz’s chest. “You left me. You broke your promise, what’s to say I haven’t broken mine?”
Oz catches my eye and shakes his head.
“Let him go and I’ll stay here with you. I’ll let you do whatever you want to me-”
“Freya,” Oz growls.
“But you have to let him go,” I finish. My eyes are on Angelica, but Oz’s glare burns into my skin. If we both get out of this alive, I’m in so much trouble.
Angelica throws the knife up in the air and catches it. She cocks her head to the side and purses her lips like she always does when she’s thinking. I see the second she makes her decision but I’m too far away to stop it. The hilt of the knife slams into Oz’s temple, and he sags forward.
“No!” I run towards him, skidding onto my knees. I cradle his face in my hands. I don’t realize how stupid it is to exposemy back to Angelica until pain explodes through my head and everything goes dark.
***
My eyes are sandy. A heavy throb beats behind my forehead and I want to bury myself in my comforter and go back to sleep.
I try to curl up onto my side, but I can’t. I can’t move at all. Panic slithers through me and I force my eyes open.
