Page 65 of Devil May Lie

His fingers were sticky now around her throat, and he felt something sharp prick at the pad of his thumb but couldn’t identify it. Had she knocked herself out from the fall? It was possible.

“Kids?” his mother’s voice came from upstairs and he froze.

“Quick,” he whispered, leaning closer to his sister. “Tell me who I shouldn’t tell before they find us!”

“Where are they?” his father’s voice came next. “Beryl texted that she’d gotten home from practice safely, didn’t she?”

“Yes,” his mom said.

Beryl had been allowed to leave the house, but Berga had been grounded because of dinner last night. It wasn’t surprising they weren’t worried about where he was, and he didn’t really understand why that bothered him. Beryl was the talented and pretty one. Of course their first concern would be for her.

He should let them know where they were so they could help wake her up since it was clear she’d definitely fallen asleep now.

“Down here!” he called, waiting until he heard them coming down the hall. “We’re down here!”

His father appeared in the open doorway first, a dark outline with the source of light behind him. As a fully grown Vital, he could see perfectly in the darkness, and he must have seen something because almost immediately after he appeared, he started to curse and race down the stairs.

He barreled towards them and Berga actually clutched his sister closer. “She—”

Beryl was ripped away from him and shoved hard enough that he slammed into one of the metal cabinets. A box of stuff was shaken loose and fell over him, hitting his shoulder. He cried out, but his father didn’t seem to notice, too busy scooping up his sister.

“What’s wrong?” his mother arrived then. She didn’t seem to notice the same thing as their father, because she came down with more ease, reaching for the string to turn on the light at the landing. “Are the kids—” The light flickered to life and instead of finishing her sentence, she let out a shrill scream.

Why didn’t anyone want to keep talking to him?

Berga frowned and then followed her gaze, rubbing at his eyes first as the sting of the sudden light hurt them. When he blinked them back open, he thought maybe he was seeing things.

There’d only been a little blood before so how…

There was a trail of it leading across the gray floor where his father had pushed him. It was pooling at his heels still, and when he glanced down, he discovered crimson had stained through his light blue shorts and white t-shirt, practically dying them both red.

It was on the tip of his tongue to promise he wouldn’t touch anything and get it dirty, but then he took a better look at Beryl, now clutched tightly in his father’s hold.

She looked…off.

And there was blood all over her as well.

Sticking to her cheeks and her arms and…

“Why does she have a horn in her neck?” he wondered. The same sparkling material as the two tiny horns on his forehead protruded from the side of her throat, but it hadn’t been there before. His horns and hair color were the only pretty thing he’d gotten that she hadn’t, and he felt another wave of that odd feeling.

Their parents already liked her so much more than him…

His mother dropped to her knees and wailed, and though he’d never experienced sadness before, Berga recognized it from that time at grandfather’s funeral. She’d cried then, too, though not as fiercely. The look was the same though, he was positive of it.

What had Beryl called it?

…Grief.

One felt grief when a person died. So why—

His sister was always the best out of the two of them. This was no great revelation. If their roles had been reversed there was little doubt in Berga’s mind that she would have understood exactly what had transpired long before needing to witness their mother grieving.

That wasn’t a horn coming out of her neck.

It was bone.

His sister wasn’t sleeping. She was dead.