Page 57 of Redline Communion

Alistair steps forward when the final chant dies.

“The vessel has received both altars. Communion has been witnessed. The claim stands recorded.”

Helena approaches with the cream-stock folder, and I recognize Lorelei’s page before she reaches us. Her name sits at the top, her lineage beneath it, then the physical assessment and the active claimants. Ash’s name remains struck through in red. Below it is a section that was blank when I reviewed the document earlier, and it is no longer blank.

Communion witness: Marcus Deering. Sponsor: Cassian Vale.

Lorelei’s name appears beneath mine, and Helena’s thumb covers the remainder.

My father extends the pen toward Rafe first. Rafe reads the page longer than necessary before signing, never releasing Lorelei, and then he passes the pen to me. There is dried blood beneath one of my fingernails, and the pen rests perfectly between my fingers anyway. Ink does not acknowledge what a signature costs, which has always been part of its usefulness. I sign beneath Rafe.

Alistair watches the final stroke settle before taking the folder from Helena.

“The rite is sealed. Let no one present speak of tonight’s specifics beyond these walls. What the house requires, the house keeps.”

The room answers him. Lorelei does not. She is staring at her hands, and I cannot tell whether she remembers why they are red.

Alistair extinguishes the central candle himself, smoke replacing the flame, and only then do the witnesses begin leaving. Rafe shifts Lorelei more securely against him as her fingers slip free of my robe. Helena carries the folder toward the same doorway Marcus disappeared through, and Lorelei watches it go for several seconds while I watch her watching.

Tomorrow, she may remember Marcus. She may remember the knife, Rafe’s hand at the back of her neck, or my hand closed over hers. She may remember none of it in the correct order.

The record will.

That is what the house is counting on.

Chapter thirteen

What’s Left of Marcus

Lorelei

The flashes started the night of the Offering and haven’t fully stopped.

I don’t trust them. That’s the first thing I need to be honest about, even if I’m only admitting it to myself three days later, sitting in my room with the curtains drawn against a sun that feels aggressively unearned.

I know what was in my system that night. Coke first, then the flower, then more flower at some point, though I remember the bitterness better than I remember actually drinking it. Knowing the ingredients doesn’t make anything my brain kept reliable.

The problem is what it kept. Rafe’s mouth. Cassian’s bare face under candlelight. Oil warming beneath somebody’s hands, my fingers twisted into black fabric.

Rafe laughing when I threatened to choose somebody else just to make him stop asking whether I was sure.

I choose you.

That one comes back perfectly.

Of course it does. My brain looked at an entire night of chanting relatives, drugs, ritual sex, and whatever else happened in that room, and decided the footage worth preserving in high definition was me interrupting Satan’s book club to announce which man I wanted first.

Useful.

Rafe’s hand at the back of my neck. Cassian saying my name close enough that I felt it more than heard it. The edge of something hard beneath my back, candlelight doubling above me, a mouth at my throat, my own laugh, though I can’t remember what was funny. Then the moment pleasure hit hard enough to empty everything else out of my head.

Then there’s nothing for a while. Not blackness exactly, because I don’t remember losing consciousness. It’s simply missing, one memory sitting beside another with no bridge between them — Cassian’s hands, then Rafe, then someone chanting, then heat, then Cassian looking at me like he was angry about something neither of us had said. Then I’m somewhere else in the night entirely.

I can remember the wanting better than I can remember how the Offering ended.

That feels obscene. Not because I didn’t want them — I did, but whatever else was in my bloodstream was the problem. I remember choosing Rafe specifically because Alistair said I couldn’t. I remember wanting Cassian even while being furious with him. I remember reaching. What I don’t remember is everything around it.

Apparently my body has no problem keeping the fun parts while deleting the minutes that might explain why I’ve woken up every morning since with the feeling that I forgot something important.