Page 73 of Grave Expectations
"Youmiss her!" He clutched the gun in both hands and aimed it at my forehead. "She is not yours to miss!"
"I…I only meant—"
"Quiet!" He began to circle me slowly, not lowering the gun. I followed his progress, my fingers twitching around the pendant. "I thank the lord every day that he took her so she can't see what you became, you disgusting creature. You filthy, grotesque abomination! If she had learned what lived inside you she would have been appalled. She would have cast out the devil immediately. She was strong, where I have been weak. I should have destroyed it—destroyed you—the moment I saw what you truly are. But I—I couldn't. Sending you away was all I could manage."
"I was thirteen!"
"I was too sentimental." He bared his teeth, now yellow and rotting in his gums from lack of care in jail. "I should have cut your throat."
"You almost did. You're mad."
"You're wrong. They're all wrong. Only one understands."
"Who?" I blurted out.
His eyes burned with the fever, not quite focusing on me anymore. "He can see the devil too. He knows you for what you truly are, and he wants you gone from this Earth, back to Hell, where you belong."
He.So it wasn't Lady Harcourt. "How did you get out of jail? They thought you were dead."
"He gave me a foul concoction that slows the heart to almost nothing. Once the effects wore off, I woke up in another room, alone. It was easy for him to get me out of there. No one was watching."
"He wants you to kill me?"
"He showed me that I have been weak, that I should have killed you years ago. He gave me this chance to make amends, to conquer the evil you've brought here. I won't waste it." His fingers flexed around the pistol handle. Squeezed the trigger.
"Imp!"
I rolled to the side as the gunshot rang out. My shoulder and hip smacked into the floor despite putting out both hands to save myself.
"Imp, I release you!"
Nothing happened.
I felt at my chest for the pendant, but it was gone. No, no, no! I couldn't summon the imp without touching it. It must have come off when I fell. Where had it gone?
He aimed the gun again. I scurried across the floor, kicking the barrel toward him as I did so. He dodged it, stumbling to one knee, and the barrel rolled past and into the fire. I got to my feet and ran behind the kiln.
"Come back, Devil," he snarled. "You cannot escape."
He was right. I had to pass him to get to the door, or expose myself to reach one of the windows. Where was my pendant? Why had I waited so long to summon the imp?
Because I wanted answers. I wanted to convince him that I was still his daughter. My foolish delay had almost got me killed; it might yet. Without the imp, I had to get free on my own. If Holloway didn't have a gun, it might have been possible to overpower him, but even in his fevered state, he could still shoot.
"Come back here." His snarl came from closer than I expected. He was rounding the kiln to my left, so I moved to my right.
I continued around the large oven, back to where he'd been standing when he fired. A beam of late afternoon sun glinted off the pendant lying on the floor a few feet away. Too far. He would see me if I tried to retrieve it.
I needed a distraction.
A piece of wood from a broken barrel cracked as the fire caught it. The end stuck out, unburned, just near my feet. I picked it up and threw it as hard as I could into the pile of barrels and crates. It didn't quite reach, but skidded across the floor, spitting off sparks and sweeping up pages of newspaper in its path.
Holloway gasped. "Are you trying to frighten me, Devil?"
I pounced on the pendant. It flared to life in my gloved hand. "I release you, Imp. Come out now."
Yellow light burst from the pendant. I shut my eyes against the brightness but didn't let go of the necklace.
"What are you doing?" Holloway shouted. "Cease your devil's magic!"
