28 Elle To Discover #3
I can picture it. Mr. Pratterman, knocking on his door.
All smiles and pleasantness, offering a fool’s bargain like it’s a gift.
Acting as a comforting shoulder and admirer.
Douglas considering the deal, missing his mother despite the distance he’d traveled since her death.
He’d fled to the ocean to grieve, and the Devil brought her memory here to torture him.
Then I realize, heart stuttering, that Mr. Pratterman brought me to the island to finish the job. To collect what was owed, contract or no. Even denying the Devil gets you killed.
“You never told me…”
“By the time I understood what you were entrenched in, I assumed you were his, in contract and in heart. You sealed it with a kiss, right? It’s his way.
I didn’t want to push you farther away from me, closer to him.
Wouldn’t it have? To know you were in the company of someone who’d resisted his temptation? At least the sinful one.”
He’s right. I’d have seen it as superiority. I never regretted my choices. Knowing the consequences, would I change it if I could? Or did I ever have a chance of walking out of that wax room undoomed?
“I’m sure he laughed when you killed me,” Douglas adds, laughing himself. He leans back against the stone wall. “I suppose he did capture me in the end.”
“He didn’t.” I surprise us both with my ferocity. “I never sacrificed you. He has no claim.”
He chuckles. “Small mercies.”
I’m so close to him again. When did I move forward? We’re nearly nose to nose.
It strikes me clearer than it ever has before that I’d miss him.
No matter how horrid I am and how far from me he is despite our spectral tether to each other, we connect in a way no one else ever has.
While Mr. Pratterman uses my sins as weapons against me, Douglas has always tried to reason with me.
Mr. Pratterman feels he owns me. Douglas does much worse: He understands me.
“How can you care for me,” I say after a shaky breath, against every instinct to shrink in and protect myself, “knowing everything I’ve done?”
He leans forward, placing his forehead to mine. I can’t feel it, yet a cool breeze has frozen into place where we touch. I close my eyes.
“There’s so much worth loving in you.”
His hands hold the space around my arms, above the elbows.
This would be when we’d kiss. If we could.
This would be the moment we held each other, physical after a year of tension that I never realized was so much more than only contempt and betrayal.
If I hadn’t killed him, if he were breathing and I were innocent, we could have had that.
I turn away, barely able to hold the loss bursting in my chest, when I notice two sets of footprints in the dust. They’re both smaller than mine. Distinct from each other. One holds Liney’s high arch, while the other is unfamiliar.
The room has been disturbed. Recently. I force myself to look at the bone pile. A single leg bone lies out of place. And the skull of James Douglas no longer sits at the top of the pile.
Liney was down here. Bridget was down here. They disturbed the bones. They broke in. Both, together, found this room and…
“Douglas,” I say, slow as a snake before it strikes, “where is your skull?”
The warmth that was building between us evaporates in an instant.
“You don’t have to do this, Elle,” he says hurriedly, raising his hands in defense. “They’re happy together, your sister is happier than—”
He doesn’t understand. There’s no happiness with Liney’s victory. Perhaps a few happy days, weeks, even months. But the Devil gets his due, doesn’t he? How could I forfeit her eternity to become an infernal cog in the wheels of misery that makes this place burn?
Then there’s Thomas. If he catches us, I’ll wind up locked away in Mount Hope just as he wanted. Liney would once again be his bride. Bridget? He won’t be kinder than I’ve been.
“There’s no trick. No compromise. It’s her, or it’s Bridget. There’s no room for my sister’s happiness anymore.” The taste of rot fills my mouth with every word. “Nor ours.”
“How do you know?” Douglas prods. “Are you sure, Elle?”
The cost isn’t worth finding out. Mr. Pratterman has given me ample chances and time. Many have tried less and failed. I refocus on the wall behind Douglas, looking through him. I came down here for a reason. I must see it through before my sister ruins everything.
“You’ll destroy everyone on this island to do that man’s bidding?” His gaze bores into me, pleading with a girl who can’t exist.
I will. Destruction has made a home inside me, rotting through to my core. Sweet words, good intentions—none of it can survive. The only way to fix this, if only for Liney, is to burn everything down.
“If he sent me to kill you, and you never even signed a contract, then he may do the same to Liney. She signed nothing, but he wants her. He forced my hand with her as collateral.”
I close my eyes and call on the spiral. Below, but not under my feet. Below in a dimension past a compass’s simple boundaries. It hungers again and responds to the anger in my blood.
“How can you be sure that Mr. Pratterman is who he says he is?” Douglas asks, venom once again spiking his words.
Good. Let him hate me. Hate is easier to hold than the awful tenderness we were so close to.
“What else could he be?” I ask, because he struck at a damnable curiosity in me. “He lives in a pocket of hell that can’t be real. He controls tendrils of power and consumes whole ships. I’ve felt the power he can concentrate. It’s real. And it’s part of me. Rotting me.”
Silence. I don’t open my eyes. If I do and he’s gone, that’s as bad as him here.
I take out the knife from my pocket. It’s warm. The spiral reaches up for me, for it, for anything that can give it more.