23 Elle To Solve
Elle
To Solve
I walk the opposite way than my usual route, clockwise. The snow melts into my hair, mixing with the sweat of dance and panic.
The rowboat was still upturned on the beach beside the dock. Liney would never swim to the mainland. She must be on the island. Why is she avoiding me? Aren’t I accommodating everything she wants? Overaccommodating, given our circumstances.
Did she and Bridget watch for me to leave and duck in behind me? Perhaps when I return, she’ll be in bed already and laughing at me. I can forgive a jape so long as she’s safe.
I’m dodging around an outcropping of trees when I see her.
She’s coming out of the earth. No, she’s emerging from a well-camouflaged cave. Where did that come from? Relief floods through me as strong as anger, no longer bridled by fear. She’s been playing in a hole in the ground while I’ve feared her dead or worse.
I make to hail her when a round face, surrounded by a shock of black hair, also pops out. A face smiling wide and easy. Straining up, kissing my sister.
I crouch, stuck between not wanting to interrupt and fearing what this means. I approach slowly, keeping out of their sight lines.
Bridget’s mouth is moving as I come into hearing distance, but the waves keep her words just out of reach.
“I bet Ireland has a lot of seaweed I’ve never seen,” Liney says. She holds her hand out to Bridget, who grasps it and squeezes.
They’re turned away from me, heading back to the lighthouse. This is what they’ve been talking about?
“I’m sure it does. We could get you a book to press them—like leaves, right?”
Liney nods enthusiastically. Have I ever seen her shoulders so relaxed or her smile so beaming? “And something to protect it from the water too. Boats and paper don’t go together.”
I turn toward the dock, but it’s hidden behind trees.
Seaweed, Ireland, water, boat—they’re abandoning me.
Bridget wants to steal my sister. And Liney’s happy to leave me behind.
So casual. How long have they been planning this?
When did the scale tip from Liney’s gratefulness and understanding of our circumstances to Bridget’s siren call?
“Oh, the blanket!” Liney laughs. “We can’t forget it here.”
Here as in the cave, or the island? She submerges back into the cave. It’s just the dying sun, the unknowingly doomed stranger, and an island desperate to help me kill her.
Something clips at my ankle. I grunt and grab at a small, hard creature.
It’s a crab, red-shelled and snapping its claw with a threat.
I try to shuffle back. A couple of drops of blood have splattered on the sand.
The red absorbs into the grit. Blood shouldn’t do that.
The island’s drunk from me, certainly famished after weeks of waiting.
“Elle?”
I look up, cursing my involuntary noise.
Bridget Coleman, her head tilted in curiosity at my crouched figure.
Bridget Coleman, sole survivor of the shipwreck I caused.
Bridget Coleman, the woman I must destroy.
I react too slowly. Liney comes back out of the cave with a blanket folded under one arm. Her face morphs from an easygoing smile to concern.
“Sorry! We were just coming back!” She calls. “Are you all right?”
I should’ve known. Bridget’s smiles, Liney’s distracted glances outside.
They spelled lovestruck, sure, but I couldn’t see the betrayal beneath the surface.
I’d nearly begged the Devil for this stranger’s life.
To pick another over her, some innocent who hasn’t tried to take the only precious thing in my life away.
And now they act like nothing’s afoot? It’s too late.
I meet eyes with the survivor, ignoring my sister. A haphazard plan forms as I stalk forward and grab Liney’s arm.
“Ow! Elle!”
Separate. Kill. Cover.
“Don’t move,” I command Bridget.
I drag Liney through the forest. She cries. But this must be done. The last sin on my soul.
“Elle, why are you doing this?” she whines as I pull her across the clearing. “I know what it looks like, but we weren’t—”
“You’re leaving me.” They’re my first words to her. What’s burning at my throat.
“Listen, Elle—”
I can’t. She’ll hate me for a time. But this solves two problems. I no longer need to worry about never seeing another living stranger again nor will Bridget influence Liney anymore.
And after she’s dead, the contract fulfilled, I can end this deal with Pratterman.
Perhaps a visit to Thomas might even be in order, no matter what the Devil said about plans for him. He can’t find us if he’s dead too.
“She’s only been nice to you!” Liney’s voice breaks.
I don’t have time to get the knife or come up with a better plan. Bridget could be halfway to pushing the boat off the dock.
“Go inside,” I order, pushing her toward the lighthouse.
Liney doesn’t move. My tunnel vision doesn’t allow for delay tactics.
“Stay here then,” I say. “Do not follow me. I mean it, Caroline. You both will regret it.”
I turn. If I can do this quick, she may not reach me by the time it’s over. She doesn’t deserve to see this. I don’t hear footsteps following me.
I call on the heat from the island’s spiral for the first time in a month. It’s eager to be of use, near instantly crawling into my veins from the roots I walk over.
I’ll raze the shaky shreds of happiness we’ve all been clinging to because it must be done. This was always temporary. My senses are mingling with the spiral’s. Blood spilled is not just a need: it’s a craving.
Did Douglas see me? Has he put together the pieces?
The last of the Concord wine on my tongue has been replaced with copper.
Eventually he must learn that any goodness in me comes only in the spaces between the necessary sins.
Liney’s soul, and my own, balances on the precipice of this final task.
My life is hers; hers is mine. Neither Devil nor girl will get between that.
I’m merely closing the circle I was destined for.
It’s all connected. My lips to Pratterman’s, the gas leak to my parents’ gasping faces, Douglas’s knife to his throat, the spiral’s tendrils to the ship’s keel, and now me to Bridget.
There’s one thread of sin that trails through every decision.
Cutting that thread now, before its conclusion, would unravel everything.
I must complete the dark work, or it was all for nothing.
I have no weapon but my hands and a prayer. This is a sacrifice.
I call on Pratterman’s power, stored beneath the island for my use. Relief floods my nerves the moment I reopen the connection. I can tell myself the dark gift is only for our freedom’s sake, but there’s no denying my ego’s euphoria in its union with what sings to me.
Warmth seeps up through the soles of my feet, crawling up my legs and between my ribs, spreading into my arms until the edges of my fingers glow in the dim dusk light. Like a second nervous system, the power winds its way up my neck and into my mind. My vision turns the world red.
The sooner this is done, the sooner I can repair the tatters of my life. One last time.
She hasn’t hidden. When she spots me coming down the shoreline, her body tenses, but she comes closer, doesn’t turn tail. My connection to the sand beneath her feet senses her heartbeat. Another pulse behind me, faint.
I can’t allow space for the words she’ll want exchanged. No hesitation. She’s no longer a woman to me. That moment flashes. Liney kissing her. The expression Liney had before spotting me. The ease in her eyes. An ease I’ve longed for her to have.
Liney can have all the companions she wishes after this is done. But not this one.
“She didn’t do anything!” Bridget blurts out once I’m in earshot. “It’s not what it looked like. I’m her friend. Only a friend.”
She thinks that’s why I’m angry? It stops me in my tracks. The spiral’s power within me wants to strike. It doesn’t matter what a soon-to-be-dead woman believes are my motivations.
Yet, it does.
“This isn’t personal.” My voice is deeper, thicker than normal. Warped.
Bridget frowns but doesn’t move. I approach slowly. The soles of my boots smolder under the heat of my feet. I take them off one at a time. No use burning through good boots. The ocean tide brushes my left foot as I place it on the dense-packed sand. It hisses softly.
“Then what is it?” she asks, her brow knitted in confusion and her heartbeat thumping. “We were just talking about—”
No more. “I give of this sacrifice to the Lord of Darkness,” I begin.
“You—what did you say?”
“To him I offer this soul,” I continue, closing the gap and angling so her back will be to the ocean.
The whites of her eyes appear, yet she stays still. Good. Running after her would only delay the inevitable.
“Whoa there, Elle. You told me to watch after Liney. I did. I don’t want any—”
I don’t slow my steps. It’s time for an end.
“With this offering, the contract will be complete.”
I direct the flow of the spiral’s power into my arms. This won’t be like Douglas. No spray of blood. I don’t hear Bridget’s words anymore, even as they come fast and watery. Her doe eyes can’t understand my violence.
The power pulses in my arm, searing with delight in an act of carnage.
I push her into the surf. She topples, shorter than me and now prone.
The heat in my blood spreads up my arm, into my shoulder.
The muscles constrict. Am I imagining the smell of burning flesh? I have no time. The power must escape.
Hands as claws, I grab at her shoulders and push her under the water. Waves surge into her hair and cover one arm, as though claiming her back into its depths. She should’ve drowned that night. Let her now.
She’s so young. Liney’s age or a little older. I imagine a flash of Liney beneath me. Her choppy gold hair instead and her big brown eyes. It slows me just enough for Bridget’s head to surface, gasping.