The Devil's Bargain by Miranda Joyce Page B

I always will but you’ll never accept my relationship. I can’t talk to you for a while. Charlie and I need time to work on us. Just know that I’m happy.”
    “He’s making you say this. He’s there right now, isn’t he?”
    “Goodbye, Meg.”
    The phone was still pressed to my ear when the blare of the dial tone started up. Beth stood in the doorway with her mouth hanging open. Wordlessly I dropped the phone and reached out to her. She held me while I cried hot bitter tears. My sister, my best friend, was gone. She wanted nothing to do with me anymore.
    Finally, the storm of emotion passed and I laid curled up on the couch feeling hollow and numb.
    “This has gone too far.” Beth’s voice was soft more as if she was speaking to herself than to me. “We have to do something.”
    “What can we do? I can’t make her want to see me.”
    “She does want to see you. Don’t let self-pity blind you. He’s isolating her so he can get total control over her life. Things are going to get very bad for her very fast.”
    Back when we were in middle school Beth’s mother had remarried an abusive lout. For the next three years, Beth had watched their interactions from a front row seat she never wanted. If she said things were going to get bad I believed her.
    Half-baked plans raced through my mind. We had to get Kit out and fast but she wasn’t ready to come yet. Could we force her? Lure Charlie away and snatch her up? Hold some sort of intervention.
    When I looked over at Beth she was shaking her head from side to side. “I know exactly what you’re thinking and it’s not going to work. If we take Kit she’s going to hate us and that’s the last thing she needs. She needs to know she can always come to us. I do have another idea but…” She trailed off and gave me a searching look. “How far are you willing to go?”
    Normally such a melodramatic phrase would be a joke between us but there was no denying the seriousness of Beth’s tone. I took a moment and searched my heart but the only thing I could see was Kit’s face. The laughing, smiling face of her when she was a young girl and her face the last time she had come to my house: red and raw from crying, blue bruises rising on her cheeks.
    “I’ll go as far as it takes.”
    Beth nodded as if that was decided. “I have to make some phone calls. Are you going to be ok tonight?”
    “Yes, but what’s going on? What are you thinking?”
    “It’s just an idea right now. I don’t want to get your hopes up. I’ll call you tomorrow. Promise.”
    That night I tossed and turned seeing Kit every time I closed my eyes. I heard Beth’s question over and over. “How far are you willing to go?” My heart was heavy with dread both for Kit and myself.
    I awoke the next morning feeling sore and muddled. I moved through my morning as if I was sleepwalking, getting halfway through a report before realizing I had no memory of what I had just read.
    The phone finally rang while I was picking through my lunch.
    “Hello?”
    “Hey, it’s me.” Beth’s voice was excited.
    “What’s up?”
    “I need you to come out with me tonight.”
    “Where?”
    “Do you remember my good for nothing brother, Bobby? He has some friends that might be able to help us. We’re going to meet them at a bar outside of town. Wear something sexy. Like really sexy, kind of trampy.”
    “Beth, what are you talking about?”
    “I can’t go into it right now. I’ll pick you up at nine.”
     

****
     
    “Kind of trampy? What does that even mean?” It was eight forty five and Beth would be here any minute. I was sitting hopelessly in front of my closet still wearing the beige pantsuit I had worn to work.
    I didn’t exactly have a wide variety of clothes to choose from. Five days a week I worked in a conservative office. Even when I went bar hopping with Beth I was more of a t-shirt and jeans girl. Miniskirts weren’t even a part of my vocabulary. I finally settled on a pair of