The practical importance of fulfilling a contract was one of the business aspects of my family’s work that I was actually familiar with. Growing up I had witnessed my parents pulling all-nighters to get their work turned in. The house would fill with the scent of coffee, Mom and Dad would wear the same baggy sweatpants for days on end, tensions would rise and then, finally, the work would be completed and we would all go out to a fancy dinner to celebrate.
I missed those dinners.
“No pressure,” Trisha said. “But please think about it, okay?”
And I did think about it. I thought about how Shane had been a constant presence in my life, how he would do anything for me. Now I had a chance to do something for him—and for the rest of my family.
Mom had always been in charge of the finances. I didn’t know how much money we earned from DVDs, but I knew it was the most vital source of our livelihood. And while I was sure my parents had a savings account and we weren’t drowning in debt—they were frugal people whose only indulgence was state-of-the-art equipment—I also knew that Mom’s medical bills would be staggering, even with decent insurance. Meeting a deadline meant earning a paycheck, one I was sure we would need.
But I wasn’t entirely comfortable with walking into an abandoned prison, and I suspected that Trisha had no clue that her youngest son would be an integral part of the investigation. I called Beth, my mom’s friend and owner of a shop called Potion, to get her advice. I trusted her and her knowledge about the Watcher.
“Do you think we’ll be in danger if we do this?” I asked her. Part of me hoped she would say yes, that the Watcher was asleep for the moment but if I did this he’d wake up. I didn’t really believe that, though, and if I was truly concerned about rousing a demon, I wouldn’t be conducting my secret late-night experiments on the floor of my bedroom. I realized that I needed Beth to tell me that everything was okay. Because if it wasn’t, I had been putting myself in danger for weeks.
“I honestly believe that you subdued him for a good long while,” she’d assured me. Her voice had a soothing, confident quality that acted like a bandage wrapped around my nervous mind, despite the fact that she had said subdued. Not destroyed or vanquished or incinerated. “This work is a part of your life,” Beth continued. “The longer you stay away from it, the more scared of it you may become. Don’t let the fear chase you, Charlotte. This could be a good thing for you.”
A good thing for me would be to have my mom home, safe and recovering. I could almost hear her voice reciting words she’d spoken ever since I could remember:
Don’t let fear guide you, Charlotte. Don’t let it make your decisions for you.
In the end, I agreed, which was how I had ended up listening to the tired tales of Mr. Wilbur Pate, whose father and grandfather had worked as prison guards at the penitentiary.
I watched the monitor closely for any signs that Noah was in distress. He was alone in the execution chamber, with only a tripod camera stationed in front of him, but it was creepy to think that he sat in a chair in which hundreds of lives had come to their violent ends. I twisted my bracelet, feeling the cool black stones that circled my wrist, and turned to Shane. “We have enough footage,” I said. “Please. Let him out of there.”
“One more minute.”
I narrowed my eyes. “In one more minute, I’m calling your fiancée.”
The threat worked. Shane hurried out of the room, appearing a second later on the screen. I knew he was trying to recreate the execution of a young man, and that with his brown hair and medium build, Noah fit the description, but I wished we had spent a little money and hired an actor. Noah didn’t mind, though. “It’s initiation,” he told me. “I’ll feel like I’m a real member of the team.”
I didn’t have it in me to tell him that there was no more team. Once Mom had been hurt, it was over. But finishing the final DVD was important, and it only required Noah’s presence for a few hours on a Sunday afternoon.
Shane released Noah from the chair and returned to the viewing area with him.
“Noah!” I flung my arms around him, careful to avoid touching his neck, and planted a kiss on his cheek. He cleared his throat and stepped back.
“That was intense,” he said, keeping one arm around me.
Mr. Pate snorted, and I cringed when he loudly swallowed. “You was only in there for ten minutes. Anyone can sit in an ol’ chair for ten minutes.”
“Really?” I challenged. “Could you do it for ten minutes?”
Pate moved his mouth like a cow chewing his cud. “I do believe I could, little lady.”
While Shane strapped Pate in the chair, I turned to Noah. “Was it terrible?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “I can think of better ways to spend an afternoon.”
I tried not to look at the little bruise on Noah’s neck. It was the size of a thumbprint, and midnight-black in color, almost like the stones on my bracelet. I knew how he’d gotten it, but I didn’t understand why, after more than four months, it still remained. The other bruises had faded after a couple weeks, but this one refused to disappear.
“He’s strapped in as tight as I could get it,” Shane announced when he returned from the execution chamber.
“Good,” I muttered. Maybe a few minutes in the chair would strip away some of the tough-guy veneer Mr. Pate had been shoving in our faces. When we’d arrived, he had slapped Shane on the shoulder so hard that he’d stumbled a little.
“We could just leave,” Noah suggested. “Let him spend the night here.”
“Be nice.” Shane adjusted the color on the monitor. “He’s doing me a favor by letting us in here.”
“I think he’s getting more out of it than we are,” I said. “I mean, how often does he get to lead people through his empty building and bore them with stories about his grandfather shooting a rowdy inmate to death?”
Noah shook his head. “That was bad. Did he really have to imitate a death rattle?”
“Look.” Shane pointed to the monitor. Pate was squirming and flexing his fingers.
I scoffed. “It’s only been three minutes.”
Noah peered over my shoulder at the screen, which sent a warm, tingly wave over me. “Ten bucks says he won’t make it a full five minutes.”
“I’ll give him six,” Shane said, his eyes on the monitor.
“You’re both wrong,” I announced. “He’ll be screaming like a baby in thirty seconds.”
Exactly twenty-nine seconds later, Pate was thrashing his head from side to side and straining his arms against the straps. I actually felt a pang of pity for him.
So did Shane. He rushed into the execution chamber and quickly released Pate from the chair.
“Looks like you win the bet,” Noah said. “I owe you ten dollars.”
I smiled at him. “Take me out for pizza and we’ll call it even.”
The door opened. Shane was holding up Pate, who panted as if he’d just participated in a marathon. “I heard voices,” he gasped. Shane helped him to a folding chair, and I handed him a bottle of lukewarm water. He gulped it down noisily.
“There were voices. I heard them.”
“Try to breathe normally,” Shane instructed.
“They were real! You have to believe me!”
“Of course we believe you,” I said. “Tell us what the voices said.”