In for a Soul

The wall blew apart. Bricks fell to the ground all around me while I screamed, covering my head with my arms. I didn’t keep myself safe from everything. One brick slammed into the back of my shoulders, and even more peppered my legs. I waited for one to break a leg, or to do more damage than this fatal bruising, but nothing like that happened. The rest fell around me.

When the bricks stopped falling, I lifted my head to look around the space. Dust clogged the air, making it hard to breathe. I tried to keep my mouth closed but couldn’t quite manage it. The dust crowded the inside of my mouth, making it taste chalky.

I shifted, moving the bricks. They tumbled away from me, crumbling to the ground with a loud noise. I froze, waiting for the demons to show up. They could pluck me from my spot and do anything to me. I could hear my sister in the back of my head telling me that I shouldn’t have done this. That I should have listened to her. I silenced that voice and waited.

No one showed up.

I breathed out, which only got more dust in my mouth.

“Derrick?” I hissed under my breath, trying to be quiet. I pulled my legs out from under the pile of bricks, which proved to be harder than I would’ve thought. When I got to my feet, I stumbled over them, and fell down on my knees. One of the bricks dug into my skin, and I had to bite my lip to keep from screaming in pain.

“Derrick?” I hissed again.

This building had looked perfect for hiding in. Then again, I’d never had to hide before, and that might’ve had something to do with it. It had been condemned by the city almost two years ago, and the inside looked like it. The walls had crumbled, the ground looked rotted out in places that didn’t have concrete floors like where I stood. The old factory would’ve had plenty of places to hide, I thought. And it did.

I just didn’t count on our pursuers to be so dedicated.

“Tomorrow?” someone whispered from my right.

I whipped around, prepared for…something. I didn’t come prepared for this fight, and it was starting to get to me. It had been an impulse to run off with Derrick, Seamus, and Seanan. I thought that we would be able to get away. Maybe that had been foolhardy of me, but I couldn’t change anything now.

When Seamus peeked his head around the corner, my heart started to slow down. I put my hand to my chest. “You scared me,” I said, turning around. Because I didn’t have a better option, I grabbed one of the bricks that laid in a pile. It felt good in my hand, but also too small. What would a brick do against someone like those who waited outside? Nothing. But at least I’d face my fate with a weapon.

I turned back to Seamus. “What are you doing? Where’s Derrick?”

“I don’t know,” Seamus said. “Have you seen Seanan?”

“No,” I growled, tightening my grip on the brick. We had all agreed to split up in the hopes that we could confuse the demons if they came into the building. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but again, I could just hear my sister’s voice in my head telling me that I had been stupid. She wasn’t wrong, which only made me more upset.

“The demons aren’t coming in here,” I said. “They’re going to keep blasting at the building until the entire thing collapses.”

“It looks that way,” my friend said, brushing his hands through his hair. “What do you want to do?”

“We have to find the others,” I told him. “If we run, then maybe we can get out?”

Seamus didn’t look like he believed that. I couldn’t blame him because I couldn’t make it sound like I believed it either. The two of us walked from the room, ducking down a darkened hallway. When I stepped into the shadows, I put my back against the wall immediately.

I went from one of the back rooms to an office. It still had a desk with an old office chair. The latter looked rotted out and like the perfect home for bedbugs. I still touched it, pushing it aside to look for Seanan. She would’ve been just small enough to squeeze underneath the desk if she wanted. When I didn’t find her, I cursed, and stepped back. “She’s not in here.”

The two of us walked down the hallway looking into every room, around each corner, and turning over every bit of debris that we saw. The longer we looked and didn’t find anything, the more creative my mind got in throwing answers at me. Like, maybe she didn’t show up because she had died. When the demons blasted the building, a wall had collapsed onto my friends, and I’d never see them again. Or Seanan had panicked and run right out the door into the waiting arms of the demons outside.

I could’ve lived without my active imagination right then. Especially as I could see the strain of it starting to wear on Seamus.

We walked onto the factory floor where conveyor belts stretched to every corner of the room. The smell of rusted metal had become obvious until I couldn’t smell anything else. Old rotten boxes littered the floor, each of them adding to the ambiance of the room.

I saw a flash of gold from the corner of my eye and turned just in time for Seanan to plow into me. Her arms came around my middle so hard that I could barely breathe.

“Oh my god, I totally thought you were both dead, and that I’d have to tell my parents that I got their only son killed, and then I’d have to tell your sister that I got her twin killed, and then everything would’ve been terrible forever.”

I patted her shoulder. “Well, none of that’s happened yet, Seanan, but could you loosen your hold? A girl’s gotta breathe.”

My friend released me immediately, and I sucked in a grateful breath…that tasted like rusted metal. Awesome.

Seamus received a hug next, and it looked like she tried to squeeze the life out of his body. I watched as he took it like a man. When his sister released him, I said, “Have you seen Derrick? He was right behind me when the last attack hit, and then he vanished.”

Seanan stared at me with wide eyes. “No,” she said. “I’ve been on my own since we decided to split up.”

“Derrick found me like four minutes before the attack,” I said. “He was saying that this wasn’t working, and that we had to get out of here. Where could he have gone?” This last question, I asked myself. I pushed my fingers through my hair and tried to breathe through the tightness in my chest.

I felt a rumble in the ground and knew that another onslaught was headed our way.

Seamus cursed as he grabbed me and Seanan. Before I could protest, he had shoved us back to the ground, and covered our bodies with his. The building shook with the attack. Tiles from the ceiling came falling down, striking me in the back. Each blow hurt worse than the bricks had, but Seamus took the brunt of the assault. I wanted to shove him away and tell him that I could take care of myself.

Instead, I didn’t make matters worse. I sat there, huddled up.

The ground stopped shaking, and I lifted my head to peer at the ceiling. Beams stretched across the space, allowing me to see how much damage the roof had taken. The night sky peeked through the holes, stars shining brightly. I hated each of those stars, because they did nothing but mock me. They looked like freedom.

“Are you guys okay?” I asked.

Seamus groaned but nodded. One of the ceiling tiles had sliced through his thin t-shirt, and into his back. Blood started to ooze from the wound. Seanan stared at it with wide eyes. “Oh my god, you’re gonna need stitches! Mom and Dad are going to kill me!”

“Not if we find Derrick and get out of here,” I said. “They’ll never know.”

Seanan nodded in an absent way. We had agreed to leave our parents behind for Derrick’s sake. Not that I had parents to go back to. Just my sister, and she had made her choice to stay behind with our guardian. Derrick would’ve ended up leaving his parents behind no matter what. But Seamus and Seanan had chosen to do this for the sake of keeping Derrick safe.

It looked like the ramifications just started to hit Seanan, who looked at her brother with wide, frightened eyes.

“Derrick?” I called again, hoping that he would answer.

I didn’t hear anything, and my heart started to drop.

“I’ll go look down that hallway,” Seanan said. “I’ll meet you back here in five minutes. Stay with Seamus.”

Before I could argue, she took off, disappearing around the corner. I wanted to curse, but Seamus hissed a pained breath through his teeth. I knelt down next to him, touching his shoulder. “How bad is it?” I asked.

He looked at me, panting. “I’ll be fine. Just a flesh wound.”

I looked at his back and knew that Seanan had been right. This would need stitches, and a lot of them. He’d carry a scar for the rest of his life, in all likelihood.

“Derrick Harris,” the demons called from outside, their voices magically amplified. “We are tired of waiting. Come out, or we go in, and you friends will suffer for that. They will suffer greatly.”

I stared at the ceiling and sighed. “Where is he?”

Then I heard his voice in the distance, and my heart plummeted down to my stomach. “All right, I’m coming out.”

“What?” Seamus asked, lifting his head. “What is he doing?”

“You stay here,” I barked, and took off in the direction of the voice. If I could get there fast enough, then Derrick wouldn’t make the mistake that I knew he was about to make. I turned the corner just in time to see him walking down the other end of the hallway, disappearing. I chased after his shadow, my heart pounding so hard that I could barely breathe.

I whipped around the corner just in time to see him walking out the door. “Derrick!” I shouted and took off after him.

He didn’t turn around.

I bolted after him, screaming in my own head about how stupid the move was. Instead of worrying about it, I pushed the door open before it could close and stumbled outside, right behind Derrick.

The demons had lined up in a row, ten of them. They all watched Derrick with empty eyes as he approached them. My heart pounded. “What are you doing?” I shouted.

Derrick stopped, looked at the ground, and then turned to me. His dark brown eyes had filled with resignation. With his black clothing, dark skin, curly black hair, and dark eyes, I shouldn’t have been able to see him, but the moonlight illuminated my friend. He looked…defeated.

Instead of answering me, he turned to the demons, and walked toward them. One of the demons lifted his hand and touched Derrick’s forehead. My friend fell to the ground immediately. His chest still rose and fell, but otherwise he looked lifeless.

“Please,” I said, turning my eyes from him to all the demons. “You don’t have to do this. Just let him go. Please?”

One of the demons stepped forward. He had bright hair and eyes, but his smile had a cruel twist to it. “Go home, Tomorrow Hyatt. Go home before this gets worse.”

I blinked, and they all vanished.

The final bell tolled, and I sent a thank you up to the heavens. My first week back from winter break, and I just couldn’t handle having to figure out chemistry. It all sounded like gibberish to me. I walked out the door with the flood of students and got about halfway down the hall before Seanan plowed into my back with all the enthusiasm she could muster up.

I stumbled forward a step, and then smiled at her. “Hey, where’s your brother?” I asked.

Seanan shrugged one shoulder. “He skipped today. When we were on the way to the bus, he told me that he had something important to do and walked off. I think he’s just got a case of senioritis.”

“I’m here every freakin’ day,” I said, glaring at nothing. “The least he could do is suffer through chemistry and government with me. Do you have any idea how boring it gets when he’s not there to make fun of the teacher?” I tucked my hands under my backpack straps, holding on tight.

It had been six months since we lost Derrick, but I still got paranoid when one of my friends didn’t show up for class. Wherever Seamus went, it better have been good. At least he could enjoy life without me.

Seanan grinned at me. “I’m sure that he won’t say a word to us about it until he’s good and ready.”

Probably.

“At least you get to graduate together. I’m gonna be stuck here for an entire year by myself. It’s not fair.” She frowned hard enough that it had to have hurt.

I bumped my hip with hers. “Blame your mother. She’s the one that had you guys a year and a half apart. If she had waited a couple of more years, then you would’ve made friends with better people.”

Seanan rolled her eyes. “I think my mother’s greater sin was naming me Seanan after having a Seamus.”

I’d been at their house before when one of their parents got angry. They got all tongue tied trying to say their kids’ names. It undermined their anger and made me laugh a whole bunch. I had gotten kicked out of their house once for making their grounding so much worse than it needed to be.

“You’re right. That is the greater sin.”

Seanan flipped her golden blond hair over her shoulder and smiled at me. She had the deepest blue eyes that I had ever seen on anyone, except her brother. Freckles dotted her face, covering her nose especially. She was also the only person I knew who was shorter than me. She stood at five feet even, whereas I had a grand one inch over that. She had on jeans and a sweater to combat the cold outside, but I knew that if she put on shorts or a dress, her legs would make me go snow blind.

We stepped outside, and just like I thought, the cold plowed into us. We didn’t have snow because Nevada winters didn’t often give us that.

Someone honked their horn, and I looked over to see Seanan’s mother. She sat behind the wheel with her eyes narrowed, watching her daughter.

Seanan sighed. “I guess I’m lying for my brother and saying that he has a makeup test to do. Oh, the jobs of the sister are never finished. I’ll see you later.” She waved to me while walking away. As Seanan disappeared, I tucked my own hands into my sweater, and looked around the parking lot waiting.

It didn’t take long for my sister to show up. Yesterday looked like a black cloud wherever she went. A smudge on the otherwise colorful cast of students that went to our high school. She emerged from the crowd and came straight to me.

I could criticize Seanan’s mother for her name choices, but our parents hadn’t done any better. They had twin girls and decided to name us Tomorrow and Yesterday. We hadn’t heard the end of it for our entire lives. We had the same kindergarten class together, and I could remember the teacher commenting on it as he read his roster. The idiot.

Yesterday and I looked almost exactly alike. We both stood one inch over five feet. We had slender faces and bodies, though our thighs had a little meat to them. Something that could really be grabbed onto, according to our guardian. She only said it in a joking manner, though. Our father had been Chinese, and we clearly took after him. Our mother had taken off before we could form memories of her, so we didn’t know anything about her, or what she looked like. I liked to think that we got our warm brown eyes from her. My sister had kept her black hair, but I’d dyed mine hot pink a few months ago, and had kept to it. A little bit of demon magic in the dye kept it from fading.

Yesterday reached me and offered a smile. “You ready?”

I nodded, and we headed down the steps together. The line of cars waiting to get their children stretched around the corner, but it didn’t take us long to find our guardian, Linda. No one else had a Lincoln SUV. Linda waved when she saw us approaching, her eyes lighting up.

Yesterday climbed into the back seat while I got into the front. “Hi, girls,” she said with the widest smile. “How was your day?”

Linda had been taking care of us since we turned nine, and the demons came for our father. In all that time, I could never shake the feeling that she put on a show for us every day. I wanted to see past the fake veneer of the woman that acted as our mother. But I would never get that.

“It was fine,” I said.

“What about you, Day?”

My sister didn’t scowl even though she hated being called that. Just like I hated being called Tom. “It was good,” she said, basically echoing what I had already told the woman.

“Well, I am glad to hear it.” I’d known this woman for eight years, and whenever she smiled, I thought about how white her teeth looked. It couldn’t have been real. They basically blinded people whenever she flashed them. I thought her red hair came from a box, too, not that I could judge considering my pink head. Only, Linda would never admit to that. She insisted that she was all natural. No one had a waist that tight, hair that red, teeth that white, and skin that clear for eight years without something being fake. I just couldn’t believe it.

“I had a great day, too,” Linda said. “I reported to Blackwell Holdings this morning, letting them know that you two are doing amazing, and they are so happy to hear it. Then I cleaned the apartment and went to the grocery store. I was thinking that I’d make something yummy for dinner, like burgers. Something that you guys don’t get to have all that often. What do you think?”

The rest of the ride went like that. Linda could occupy herself for the entirety of a drive.

I stared out the window while she did that.

Our school was nowhere near the apartment, but jurisdiction didn’t matter for us. Not when our guardian had demon employers. We went to a special school, actually, for kids like us. Our father made a deal with a demon a long time ago, and when they came to collect, they gave us to a guardian. Linda. She took care good care of Yesterday and me, I supposed. I still didn’t like the woman.

All the kids in our school benefitted from having demons around in some way. Seanan and Seamus’ father worked at one of the demon casinos, so they got to attend the best school in the state of Nevada. Derrick’s mother had been employed with demons too, before he did what he did. She had taken off after he disappeared six months ago, and I hadn’t heard from her since.

While Linda talked and drove us home, I watched the buildings flying by. Anyone could tell which ones had demon owners. They had insignias on the doors, allowing people to know they could make a deal inside. Some of the buildings looked better than the others, and that acted as another indication of ownership.

Nothing looked like the casinos, though. They had lights and flash and pomp. Driving by one of those, and you just knew that sin waited inside. You could get anything that you wanted as long as you didn’t mind losing at least part of your soul. You could trade it all away if you wanted. Then, if you got lucky, the demons didn’t take a shine to you. They could make you anything they wanted, even change you from being human to being something else. Something that hunts at night, or bays at the moon, or can pull magic from inside yourself.

I hated demons. They did nothing but destroy things.

Linda turned into the parking garage of our apartment building. We got out of the car, allowing the valet to take the SUV to the designated spot. We walked to the elevators, and Linda used her keycard to open them.

“I hope you girls don’t have too much homework left,” Linda said. “Because I was thinking that later we could watch a movie and make sundaes!”

From behind her back, Yesterday looked at me, and rolled her eyes.

I tried not to laugh.

We rode the elevator up to the top floor where our suite waited. The elevators opened right up to the apartment, but you had to have a special keycard to get inside. Otherwise, we’d have no privacy and a lot of headaches. We could also buzz someone up if we had company.

Linda scurried into the kitchen to…do something. We had a couple of hours before dinner, so I couldn’t imagine what she needed in there.

Yesterday and I escaped to our rooms. The apartment had three of them, conveniently. Linda took the master bedroom, which left my sister and I to share a hallway. The bathroom separated our rooms, but if we wanted, we could open our doors, and watch each other through them. We hadn’t done that since we were kids, though. Back when that kind of thing felt like fun.

After dumping my stuff, I went into Yesterday’s room without knocking. She didn’t mind, I knew. I flopped back onto her bed and stared up at the ceiling. “Sundaes, sis. She wants us to make sundaes with her, like we did when we were little.”

“She probably got that special caramel you like,” Yesterday said, smiling at me. “The question is, is the caramel worth having to spend two hours watching a movie with her?”

I closed my eyes. “It’s so good…”

“Two hours.”

“So good, though.”

Yesterday smiled, turning around in her seat to get started on her homework. We had the whole weekend, but she never procrastinated. I watched her scribbling on her paper for a few minutes before I asked, “Do you ever wonder what our birth names are?”

“We know our birth names,” my sister said.

“Our first names, yeah, but what about our last names. Dad never told us. Did he tell you?”

Yesterday shook her head. She glanced at the picture that she had on her depressingly full bookshelf. We both had the same picture of our father. He looked so unassuming with his clean, crisp suit and his kind smile. I often wondered what life would’ve been like if he hadn’t sold himself to demons. He claimed he did it to save us, but I couldn’t be sure anymore. I’d seen people sell themselves for silly reasons, and then I’d seen people do it for good ones.

Like Derrick.

I sighed and turned my eyes back to the ceiling. “I wonder sometimes,” I told my sister, since she hadn’t answered.

“You spend a lot of time daydreaming about things that you can’t change,” Yesterday said.

“Hmm.” I didn’t have anything else to say to that. Yesterday didn’t try to change anything. She seemed content to live the rest of her life in this world run by demons. The two of us could’ve been walking down the street, and I would wonder who was a demon and who had sold their souls, but she would just keep walking. I often thought that something had broken in my sister’s head, and I didn’t know how to fix it.

I propped myself up on my elbows, and looked at the picture of my father again, then at my sister.

Six months back, when I told her that I wanted to save Derrick from his fate, she told me it would be impossible. The two of us had gotten into a huge fight over it. I could remember screaming in her face, telling Yesterday that she didn’t care about anything. I accused her of being half a person with only half a heart to give away. I told her that no one would want to be around someone that couldn’t give all of themselves to the relationship.

I’d walked away before she could say anything else.

Before that, the two of us had been closer than I could even begin to describe. We had been best friends. I’d told her everything, and she had patiently listened. Yesterday didn’t have anyone like I did, so she never had stories to tell. Ever since then, though, everything had quieted down. She never came into my room anymore, and we never really talked like we used to. A wall had popped up between us and I didn’t know how to climb it.

Sometimes, I missed having her around. Other times, I got angry with her all over again for not helping me with Derrick even if she had been right. Most of the time, though, when I thought about that night, I thought about when I came home.

I was bleeding, covered in dust, bruises, and tears. I’d come home to find Linda sitting on the couch, watching the door with disappointment on her face. She grounded me for a month and said that she had never been more unhappy with me than she felt right then.

I had stumbled into my room, tears staining my dirty face…to find Yesterday on my bed. She had a book in her lap, but I didn’t think she had been reading it. When I came in, my sister looked up at my crumpled face and dirty body, and she held me. She didn’t say a word, but just let me cry into her shoulder until I couldn’t force another tear out of my body.

That had been the last time that we had really been there with each other. Now, everything felt like small talk and games we did to keep from getting deeper.

I missed my sister.

“I should probably head to my room,” I said, pushing off the bed. “I’ve got homework of my own to do.”

“Let me know if you need help,” Yesterday said as I walked away.

“Will do!” I called over my shoulder.

When I got into my room, I thumped down on my own bed. I tried to remember what the two of us used to talk about and failed. It felt like I did a lot of that lately. I would try my hardest to get something done, and to get it done right. I would fight for the people that I cared about, and then everything would go to hell anyway.

Maybe Yesterday had the right idea. I should just stop trying.

***

With the mood I had gotten myself into, I ended up sitting on the couch that night watching a bad movie with Linda and my sister. I wanted the caramel, but the price had been steep. I ate an entire pint of ice cream by myself, after adding chocolate sauce and caramel to it, just to make it hurt.

By the time the credits rolled, I felt like I had lifted out of my body and watched it from above.

Linda yawned, stretching out. “Well, girls, I think I’m going to head to bed. Don’t stay up too late, though.”

I watched as she left, and then groaned. “Yesterday, be a dear, and roll me to my room.”

My sister laughed, standing up. “You’re on your own. Feel free to pass out right there. I’ll wake you up in the morning.” She walked away, and I wanted to call her back, if just to accuse her of abandoning me in my time of need. It felt like too much effort, though. I just wanted to lay there.

I changed the channel to bad cartoons, and laid there, watching as the characters ran around, laughing at stupid things. I figured that would motivate me to get off my ass and head to bed. Instead, I watched with a weird fascination at something that looked so, so stupid. How did these shows last this long when every joke sounded the same, and half of them fell flat?

My phone pinged, and I pulled it out of my pocket to stare at the screen. Seamus had texted. “I’m downstairs,” it read. “Let me up. I have something to talk to you about.”

“Sounds ominous,” I texted back, while rolling off the couch. “Give me two seconds.”

I hit the code that would open the elevator downstairs and bring it directly up to our floor. I listened to the whirring sound as it went down, and then again when it came back up. The door slid open, and Seamus stepped out, looking like he had just walked through hell. His black hair stood up all around his head, and his deeply blue eyes had this haunted quality to them. He stood way over my five feet and one inch at six feet even. He had been getting strong lately, too. His shoulders looked almost as wide as I was tall. He wore a blue sweater and jeans.

“What’s up?” I asked, touching his arm. “Is everything okay?”

He glanced around the room. “Let’s head to your room,” he said. “I don’t want Linda or Yesterday to overhear this.”

I frowned but followed him. We had to dash inside my room to keep Yesterday from noticing anything strange. She kept her door open all the time, so it wouldn’t have taken much for her to glance over and see Seamus. It had been luck that she didn’t notice the elevator running.

After I closed the door, I turned back to Seamus. “What’s going on?”

He pulled something from his pocket and ran his hands along the sides of the object. “So, you know I skipped school today.”

“Yeah. Your sister said you had senioritis.”

He rolled his eyes. “I just didn’t want to tell her what I was actually doing. She would’ve flipped out after everything that’s happened…” He shrugged. “I saw no reason to bother her if I didn’t have to, understand?”

“Sure,” I said, still watching him. “But you’re starting to freak me out a little, so why don’t you tell me what’s going on before I flip out?” For me, bad news never seemed to be something small like the washer broke or my favorite glass shattered. It always seemed to be that someone had died or would disappear. With the look on his face, I couldn’t help thinking that Seamus had bad news.

Instead of answering me, he passed me something he had pulled from his pocket. It was thick paper, the kind that one would use for an invitation or…tickets, in this case. Three of them, to be exact. I turned the tickets over and over, looking at them like I had never seen something like them before. They were a deep blue color with silver writing on them. The name on the front said Blackwell Industries.

I looked up from the tickets to Seamus. “What are these for and how did you get them?”

“You know what they’re for,” Seamus said. “The beginning of the year party. They throw one every year, and this year, it’s in the Blackwell Casino.”

The demons needed something to call themselves since they had split into four factions in the US. Worldwide, they had split into fifteen. To make it easy for humans to understand, they had given their factions corporate names. The demons that had made a deal with my father came from Blackwell Industries, and they excelled at all things unsavory like gambling, prostitution, the drug trade. Things like that.

They threw a party at the beginning of the year as a good luck thing. A celebration of all the good they had done the year before, and all the good they would do in the future. Apparently, this year, it would be held in Nevada at the casino. I looked up at Seamus. “Okay, but why?”

“Because I’m not ready to give up,” Seamus said. “We don’t know what demons do with humans who have sold their souls. Derrick could still be alive, and if he is, then shouldn’t we do something?”

I ran my fingers along the edge of the tickets again. “You want us to investigate the casino?” I asked.

“Where else would we start?” Seamus asked. “I got these from a friend that didn’t want them. It cost me a small fortune, but I see no reason we shouldn’t try to find Derrick.”

“We don’t know which demons he sold his soul to,” I said. “He could be with any of the factions.”

“I know, but this is a start,” he said.

I looked down at the tickets again. Derrick’s face rose up in my mind, the same as it had every day since we lost him. I could still picture him standing in that halo of moonlight, his dark eyes looking so…done. With everything. With life. He had resigned himself to his fate, and he didn’t want us to be dragged down with him.

But I couldn’t stand the thought of Derrick being tormented or dying. I had tried to put those things out of my mind, so that I didn’t have to dwell on them. Instead, I stared down at the tickets, and pictured my friend in pain. Dying. Screaming. In agony. I could picture it so easily.

“We’d have to tell Seanan,” I said.

“That’s why I got the three tickets,” Seamus said.

“We’d have to sneak out so Yesterday and Linda don’t know. Neither of them would approve of something like this.”

“No,” Seamus agreed. “Your sister just wants you to be safe.”

I didn’t think that. Oh, she wanted me to be safe, yes, but it felt like more than that. It felt like she didn’t mind the status quo, and she didn’t want me to interrupt it. And I wouldn’t, as long as she didn’t know what my friends and I had gotten up to. I could keep secrets from her, it turned out, which hurt to think about.

“When is the party?”

“This weekend,” Seamus said, breathing out. “We would need to get fancy clothes, and we’d have to figure out a way to get there and back, but maybe we can find him. Maybe we can save Derrick.”

The smart part of me tried to rear her ugly head. Even if we found Derrick, how would we get him back, she asked. How would we get out of there with a prisoner? I silenced her as harshly as I could and looked up at Seamus. “It sounds like we’ve got only a few days to get ready, then.”