CHAPTER#118

"It won't work. If I don't go with him willingly, he'll give information to his masters that will put everyone's lives in danger. Everyone is already in danger as long as Mike can't twist the dial." She felt sick to her stomach, that trapped feeling from the waterfall paralyzing her in place. She needed to fight, to take back the ground they had lost.

The ice creaked around her, the fracture growing larger. "Oliver, wait!" she cried, spreading her arms wide to prevent the ice from breaking.

"I've waited long enough." The grin on his face stretched comically up his cheeks. "Unless you are planning to run? That could be fun, too."

"No, it's not that. You said a soul freely given is worth far more than one that you took. What if... what if we came to an agreement?" Her mind spun with the realization that this was it. He had come to collect, and she needed to make the most of a bad situation. This wasn't a situation where she could go down swinging, not anymore.

"Beth, what are you doing?" She could hear Yuki walking on the ice, and turned her head just enough to see in Yuki's reflection that she had covered her eye with her hand.

"Wait there, please. This isn't a fight you can help me with, not unless you can defeat a demon from Hell." Her voice shook, her mind spinning. It wasn't supposed to happen this way. If Yuki hadn't come, she would have had time to speak with the others, to come up with a plan and get herself out of this mess. She wanted to blame the kitsune, to be angry that her vendetta against Emily couldn't have waited another week, but Oliver was the true enemy here.

"Um, not that I'm aware of. Demons are extremely difficult to defeat, and that's usually only by banishing them. This one is already banished, from the looks of it." Yuki hung her head. "I'm sorry I didn't believe you."

"Yeah, well this one has his hooks in my soul. Even if you help me off the ice, in a day or so, he will help those same people break in here." Beth's voice trembled, her heart pounding. "You told me once that you saw the best that humanity had to offer and had been disappointed."

"I'm waiting to hear my deal." Oliver now stood upside down below her, tapping his foot impatiently while holding the collar in his hand. "And no tricks this time."

"You're right, I did trick you last time, but I don't have one up my sleeve, not today." Carefully standing up, she watched the gap in the ice darken briefly and then settle. "Let me say my piece first and we can go from there."

"Fine." Oliver pulled a comically large stopwatch from his coat. "You've got a minute."

"Yuki. I don't know you and probably never will. You make terrible decisions, but I think you make them because you think they are right. This house has never been about who is powerful enough to defend it, but about love and community. By taking those things away from us, you have made us weaker than ever. Emily was your wife, and because of that, you put her on a pedestal. I don't know what happened between the two of you, but you need to see others for who they actually are, not for what she did. When she fell from grace, the fall must have been too far for you to bear, but you still have the chance for a clean start."

"That's not—"

"Shut the fuck up! I'm on a timer here. I'm about to give myself to an eternity of torment just to protect everyone who lives here, including you, so keep your damn mouth shut." She pulled the bag off of her neck and slid it across the ice. "Jenny is in there, so please keep her safe. When Mike moved in, she raised all sorts of hell, but he forgave her. Everybody did. No matter how far down the path you think you might be, I know in my heart that he would grant you the same forgiveness. Consider pursuing it and letting him do his job as the true Caretaker."

"Ten seconds," Oliver said, swinging his clock back and forth.

"Fuck you, here's my deal. I will come to you willingly in just a few moments if you promise to never share any knowledge you have of this place."

"I cannot agree to that. I have a previous deal with my masters that conflicts with this one."

"Fine, then I will come to you willingly if you promise to never freely offer knowledge of this home or its contents, living or otherwise. You are permitted to stick with your yes or no answers only from now on as long as you give no guiding advice to encourage said questions."

"Hmm." Oliver put away his clock and thought about it. "Spoken like a lawyer who knows she's about to get hung to dry. Your deal intrigues me, but I wonder where you've hidden the trick."

Beth looked at Yuki. Her face was frozen in shock, her hand still over her eye.

"Beth, I—"

"This isn't a problem you can fix for me. Not alone. I hope you think long and hard about what's about to happen here, because I'm about to disprove your theory on humans." Beth fixed her face into an angry glare, willing Yuki to listen carefully. "He's going to do terrible things to me in there. You know that, right? It's not like I'm made of stone. If I was, maybe it wouldn't be so bad, you know? But sometimes, when you've lost the fight, you've got to know when to put your hands down."

Yuki's jaw dropped, but she quickly closed it, a tight line forming on her face. She nodded. "Okay. I can respect that."

"Oliver, do you want some reassurance? How about this." Beth put her hands on her hips and stared down at him through the ice. "Am I planning to do anything to get out of coming to you?"