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"It's not too late to flee, you know."
The meaningless offer is not Daniel's to make, much like allowing his brother to escape the family was not his freedom to grant, but Mr. Le Bail dangles the carrot and he grabs for it all the same. Later, when Grace tries to convince him that he's a good man, it is because she doesn't realize that the only birthright Daniel has ever understood as a Le Domas is fealty to the devil.
*
Daniel dies once when he is eight years old.
In the months after Charles' death, both Daniel and his aunt become moody and withdrawn. Perhaps, in another family, they could have helped each other through the guilt, but that is not the Le Domas way. Helene's grief comes in the form of bouts of mania during which she invites strangers over in the middle of the night for flapper themed parties and then spends the next three days locked in her room with a bottle of absinthe to help her commune with the ghost of her dead husband.
His parents, tired of what they believe to be an overblown reaction to something that was destined to happen, decide that a change of scenery would suit them all just fine and take the family down to the Charleston house that summer.
In truth, his mother has grown weary of the northeast – of its white parties and steady rotation of bored housewives hissing to each other about the nouveau riche summering in the Hamptons when those women themselves had been on the other side of that venom the year prior. Becky craves lobster boils and benne wafers and the damp midday heat that makes her nostalgic for the life she left behind but thankful that she has the luxury of choosing only to be a visitor in it now. Tony, on the other hand, would be happy if he never set foot in South Carolina again. His father prioritizes comfort over most other things and hates that no matter how high they crank up the air conditioning, the oppressive humidity makes his shirts cling to his back like he has just come from doing menial labor. As his wife's accent gets thicker the closer they get to her hometown, the less endearing he finds her Southern charms. Tony spends most of the summer taking "business trips" down to Louisiana to sample all the debauchery that the French Quarter has to offer under the thin guise of finalizing the plans on a new Cajun murder mystery board game. Not to be outdone, Daniel's mother takes up with the captain of the Gamecock water polo team who is sun-kissed and beautiful and just smart enough to know that their relationship is as transient as his summer break in Charleston.
Whereas Alex and Emilie thrive on their newfound freedom to run around like maniacs in a town where no one knows them personally but everyone still recognizes them as being royalty – they are as rich in New York as they are in South Carolina, but somehow crossing the Mason-Dixon line turns them into deities – Daniel keeps to himself as much as possible, sneaking off to the wellhouse at the back of the property with dusty library volumes of Sartre and Camus that he is too young to comprehend in search of answers to questions that he has not yet formed in his mind. He spends hours reading by the granular sunlight that filters in between the wooden slats, his back pressed against the cool stone base and his brain no closer to understanding what deals his family has made or if the turmoil he feels is God and the Devil raging inside him. Daniel would've searched all summer but eventually his hiding spot is discovered by his long-suffering nanny and the next day his mother has it boarded up under the pretense of forcing Daniel to "get more sun, darlin'."
On one of those rare Vitamin D excursions where everyone is together, they drive out to Edisto Beach and sit in air conditioning for fifteen minutes while the help scampers across the coastline to put down blankets, umbrellas, lounge chairs, and a portable fan so Tony won't get overheated. When the family finally spills out of the limos, the once natural landscape looks like a commercial beach resort with waiters at the ready to serve them fizzy drinks and fresh fruit.
"Make sure there is sunscreen on them," Becky shouts to the nannies when Alex and Emilie shoot off like bottle rockets aimed towards the ocean. Turning to Daniel, she ruffles his hair in a rare moment of maternal affection and gives him a nudge towards the beach. "Go on, show them how to build a sandcastle."
It would have been heartwarming if anyone had ever shown him how to build a sandcastle, but Becky has clearly forgotten that her kids are largely left to the wild and can only blend into civilized society because of the harem of nannies and tutors paid handsomely to raise them not to be rabid. Le Domases don't build sandcastles; they pay people to construct them and then stand next to the finished product for a photo op.
But Daniel hasn't yet developed the spine to call his parents out on their hypocrisy so he dutifully shuffles off. Once he is sure his mother has stopped paying attention – a meager thirty seconds after she sends him on his way, satisfied that her parenting for the day is complete – Daniel wanders off to Jeremy Inlet with his siblings trailing after him like baby ducklings while their handlers trail after them with bottles of Coppertone and juice boxes. The prospect of finding treasure is fascinating until they realize that the treasure in question is less of the dinosaur fossil variety and more like seashells and shark teeth. Emilie, always the most impatient of them all, is the first to declare that this is boring and huffs off, her tiny hand clasped around Nanny Evangeline's fingers to drag her back in search of ice cream. Alex stays because even then he needs someone to tell him what to do and miserably sifts through sand for another ten minutes before Daniel sends him away under the pretense of wanting to be alone.
Nanny Brenda warns Daniel to rejoin the others before high tide as if he has any idea what that means. Once she is gone, Daniel walks closer to the water and flops onto his back on the sand to let the waves crash against his legs until the rhythm puts him to sleep. He dreams about faceless ghouls in capes and ghoulish faces in family portraits, an innocent man being chased through a maze with pitchforks for committing the crime of loving a Le Domas. Screams ring through Daniel's skull until his name has no meaning. What he wants is for it to stop, but the bearded man in front of him with hellfire eyes shakes his head and mouths, "Not yet."
He wakes up sputtering ocean water onto one of the waiter's lapels, the man sitting him up and thumping on his back while Daniel tries to push him away. The screaming, he realizes later, had come from his mother standing on the beach while the help rushed to pull a very blue Daniel out of the water. Years later, he will think back on how appropriate it is that the only time Becky debases herself to show any love for him is when he is not conscious to experience it.
When his savior Frederick drags him back to the family, his father uses the mishap to suggest that they call it a day, Tony's lobster arms already starting to peel from all the sun. While the rest of the family moves at once towards the cars, Daniel grabs Aunt Helene's elbow to hold her back.
"I saw him. I saw Mr. Le Bail." Daniel isn't sure why it feels important to tell his aunt that Le Bail isn't a boogeyman invented by the family – it doesn't make Charles' death more meaningful to confirm that he was sacrificed at the altar of Satan. Helene regards him closely for a moment before laughing so sharply that Daniel recoils at the sound.
"I make the blood sacrifice, but of course he comes to you, boy. Perhaps we've pinned our hopes on the wrong Le Domas."
With that, she leaves him standing on the beach alone until Brenda runs back to usher him into the car. At the hospital, they determine that Daniel had technically been dead for four minutes before Frederick started CPR. Daniel coming back at all, let alone coming back without any deficits, is remarkable. He should be a vegetable, a drooling mess to be wheeled away from polite company at dinner parties so the other guests will not feel uncomfortable. When the results of his scans are completely normal – blood flow intact and not a single brain cell lost – the doctors at the University Medical Center call it a miracle, but Daniel knows better. The Le Domases need the devil to remain in the lifestyle to which they are accustomed, and the devil needs the bond of a Le Domas' oath. As he gets older, Daniel uses his brush with death as an excuse to lick, snort, and inject any poison he can get his hands on. He knows he became untouchable when he gave up Charles and sold his soul to Le Bail.
*
"You can't fall victim to the Le Domas curse if you never become a Le Domas, Grace. What do you have to lose?"
When he appealed to his brother's humanity, Alex told Daniel that he loved Grace as if Charles got Hide and Seek because Aunt Helene didn't love him enough. Daniel has no choice but to appeal to Grace's sense of pragmatism instead.
"If I start running, I'll never be able to stop."
That doesn't sound like such a bad thing to him, but it is impossible to explain the deep gashes familial obligation leaves on a person to someone who has never had roots that twist and tighten to keep her anchored. He's a poor little rich boy whining that the weight of opportunities and connections kept him from rising to his true potential to the person that his family wants to sacrifice to hold on to said opportunities and connections.
Daniel does the only thing he can do and dangles the keys to his beamer. "Who said anything about running?"
*
Daniel dies again when he is nineteen years old.
Daniel doesn't care if everyone thinks he's a screw up – generally, he thrives on his family's low expectations – until his cousin Rachel takes him under her wing. Rachel is two years older and the only Le Domas with a soul so Daniel clings to her like a life raft, soaking in all her wisdom like it is gospel. She is the cool older sibling he never had, but always wished he could be. Rachel listens to punk records on vinyl and believes that anything worth doing is worth doing right.
"You're a facsimile of a person right now, Danny," she tells him with hazy eyes at his graduation party as the weed kicks in. "However, you can change that. Leave everything behind. Become someone at college."
It's mostly nonsensical gibberish, but at the time it feels like direction so he follows her words like they have been etched into the Rosetta Stone. The summer before college starts, she makes him watch Reality Bites and Daniel comes home and tells his parents that he is going to make a go of being a real boy: live in a thin-walled dorm room with a communal shower, read Tolstoy while chain-smoking on the quad, and listen to artsy assholes recite slam poetry from their Moleskine on open mic night at the only decent coffee shop within a four-block radius. It is easy to threaten to leave his privilege behind when his parents have already given a generous endowment to one of the East Coast Ivies to take their drunk, aimless son off their hands for four years with the additional promise lingering that they'll donate a wing to secure a bachelor's degree in art history at the end of the experiment. He has never shown ambition to pursue anything other than a few more swigs and another bump at the end of the night so his parents rightfully assume that it's a passing phase, but Daniel wants to be better.
He has been at school for a week when Rachel calls to tell him that she has fallen in love with a bass guitarist from Brooklyn and they are going to elope in Atlantic City later that night. She insists that she can't live with bringing him into their family tragedy, but she can't live without him either.
"Isn't marriage a bit pedestrian?" asks Daniel with the bored affectation he has perfected in Sociology 101. His palms are sweating.
"It'll be our little secret, Danny," she whispers into the phone like they are still dumb kids sneaking around in hidden passageways and making plans not to become their parents when they grow up. "I want to be a part of something that doesn't require a pound of flesh."
Daniel has never known Rachel to be wrong about anything so he ignores history and believes her when she tells him that everything will be alright. If this is the ever-elusive happiness they've always talked about but never had a name for, then who is he to stand in the way of it? Daniel takes the Amtrak to NJ Transit and makes it to the courthouse just in time to bear witness. Afterwards, her new husband's band passes around clear plastic containers from The Cheesecake Factor containing single serving slices of mango key lime cheesecake to celebrate. Daniel swallows down the bile that threatens to rise when he thinks about what happened before and dutifully snaps polaroid pictures of the happy couple's clasped hands sporting the gaudiest plastic rings that the quarter dispenser outside the courthouse had to offer.
"You're not worried?" he whispers later when everyone is saying their goodbyes.
"He can't lose the game if he never plays it, right?"
Daniel is still a dumb kid and Rachel is his Yoda so he takes her words as prophecy. She promises to call him once she gets back from her honeymoon as Daniel piles into the back of the van with the rest of the band to bum a ride back to Columbia. They drop acid while stuck in traffic on the Garden State Parkway so Daniel spends the next hour tripping while the radio vacillates between Paula Abdul and Paula Cole.
When they finally drop him off in front of his dorm, he misses the part where the rhythm guitarist shouts that he needs to stay hydrated tonight. In the morning, his mouth feels like chalk and his head is pounding even before the incessant ringing of his phone fully wakes him up. He barely has a chance to say hello before Emilie hysterically tells him that Rachel is dead. The details cut in and out through her sobs but she says there was a truck driver who had been pulling an all-nighter and veered head on into the path of Rachel's tiny green Volvo.
Rachel had insisted last night that curses only have as much power as you give them and they'd both put their blinders on, conveniently ignoring the times that Aunt Helene had made them meet up at the goat pit to strengthen the family's bond with Mephisto. Rachel wanted an escape and she needed so much for Daniel to believe that it was possible that he let her convince him of what he knew wasn't true.
To his parents' relief, his flirtation with being Joe Normal ends and he accepts the keys to a fully furnished loft in SoHo with a stocked bar cart. By then, everyone in the family knows about his complicity in the wedding but no one says anything. It is just one more thing to sweep under the rug, another body to add to the pile.
For all her idealism, what Rachel did not realize is that the rot is in their DNA and no amount of buffing can fix the damaged sequences that have been passed down from generation to generation. Once a Le Domas, always a Le Domas. At her funeral, Rachel's blood drips from his hands and something snuffs out inside him when Daniel buries all the possibilities he believed in along with her.
*
"Are you here to keep an eye on me?"
What Grace doesn't realize is that if his family wanted to keep an eye on her, the last person they'd ask is their high functioning alcoholic black sheep of a son whose only reliable quality is just how unreliable he is when it comes to completing any task asked of him. If they wanted a spy, they could get – and, in the past, have gotten – actual ex-CIA agents to do it.
"Paranoid much?"
"It's not paranoia if they're actually out to get you."
"Maybe I'm aiding and abetting out of the kindness of my heart."
They both laugh at that. He'd have to have a heart for it to be true.
*
Daniel dies when he is thirty-six years old.
The pop of the gun is impossibly loud, but maybe it feels that way because it is so unexpected. They have a crap marriage, but Daniel never expects Charity to shoot him so he doesn't know to try to move out of the way when the bullet zooms towards him. In some ways, the pain he feels when it scrapes past his spread fingers to lodge into his neck is so intense that the severed vein that follows feels like an afterthought, the blood gushing out like a fire hydrant illegally wrenched open in the middle of summer. Grace tries tamping down the red stream pouring out of him, but it's too much too fast. His vision swims but Daniel hangs on long enough to see Alex with a knife at her back.
His brother's betrayal stings more acutely than dying even though this one is a self-inflicted injury. Skipping a handful of Thanksgiving get-togethers doesn't undo generational trauma. Who was he to expect that Alex could supersede the traits that have been hardwired into them all just because Daniel wanted him to be a better person? As many times as he watched his mother whisper her thanks to Grace for bringing Alex back into the fold before the wedding photos, Daniel knew in his bones that the favored son was always going to follow the invisible tether back to his golden throne eventually. He burned himself from the inside for a lost cause.
"You have never known the right sacrifices to make," Mr. Le Bail says with a laugh as Daniel feels himself drifting off. "But it's not your time yet."
The devil nods at him and tears the fabric of space and time with one snap of his fingers. For one moment, Daniel is Schrödinger's cat as the past, present, and future converge into something he can hold in his mind. The pain in his neck blooms out like electricity spreading to nearby cells before Daniel is back in her bedroom, leaning against the dresser as he says, "It's not too late to flee, you know."
*
"Can you people even have a church wedding?" Grace asks with all the seriousness of a NASA scientist.
"We're not vampires."
Her index finger traces the tattoo across Daniel's ribs with all the familiarity of someone who has seen it before. Alex has the same Latin words – familia supra omnia – branded over his right shoulder and Emilie across her ankle. It's a reminder of the only Le Domas sibling vacation they'd ever taken, drunken debauchery in Amsterdam capped off with tabs of ecstasy that led to the brilliant idea to brand themselves with the unofficial family credo: family above all. It's a curse and a promise and a permanent reminder of everything they can never leave behind.
Dante has already created a new circle of hell for him for going on his brother's honeymoon with his brother's almost-wife, but there's something about Grace being able to catalog identifying marks on their bodies like she is some sort of Le Domas Brothers connoisseur that makes Daniel really feel like the Claudius to his brother's Hamlet. It should hurt like brass knuckles pounding into his chest, but Daniel has lived with so much guilt for so long that he doesn't remember what it feels like to breathe freely.
"Why did you help me?" Grace asks like she does every time, her lips brushing over a phantom wound that existed in another time.
We're both already dead drifts on his tongue unspoken as Grace sinks down to kiss him.
"I'm trying the California sober thing and need a sponsor," he replies nonchalantly even though they both know that the thought of any type of sobriety has never once crossed Daniel's mind as a viable or desirable option.
"Are you looking for absolution?"
I didn't want to be the only ghost.
"My shrink says remorse is good for me. Something about accountability, whatever that means."
Her fingers brushing over his collarbone cause an electric current to buzz through him, akin to when Daniel's arm starts to wake up after it has fallen asleep clutching a bottle of Jameson. He feels alive as nerve endings that he didn't know existed start firing away. When he tries to sit up to get to her mouth again, Grace places a hand over Daniel's hammering chest and taps her index finger to his heartbeat.
"If you think I can save you—"
"Oh, it's far too late for that already."
"You know this is not going to end well, right?"
It never does, but Daniel kisses her like a man with no intention of heeding the warning. They are on borrowed time anyway.