11 Elle To Exasperate #2
“You don’t see, girl?” Douglas’s tone softens.
I peek over at his upturned brows. Sympathy is worse than hate.
Worse than superiority. It marks him as fundamentally good.
Good is dangerous. Good hurts. “What would it have served him to make good on that threat? Liney was in danger, yes—you were right to save her. But he has far too much to gain by keeping her hooked on the line for you to chase than by reeling her in.”
Humiliation courses through my nerves and sparks like tinder. Why does Douglas know Pratterman’s ways better than I?
“As if my sister were a worm instead of his perfect human victim?”
Douglas breathes out a long, hard hiss. “Listen to my meaning. You need to think before you act. Impulse works in his favor.”
More sparks. Exhaustion and fear mix into something fiery in my belly. Not of the island anymore. Of me.
“I didn’t have time to think, Douglas!”
He freezes when I say his name. The first time, between us.
I sit up on the crate. “If I’d had time to go over every possibility, I would’ve. And he wouldn’t have bothered to offer me the deal if that’d been the case. I know he’s not fair. That he deals in fear. But I had no other choice, and I’m willing to sacrifice anything. I’ve done it before.”
“I know,” he says, so softly I shiver.
“It doesn’t matter that it’s a bad deal,” I continue, words pouring out fast. “I’ve never had a good deal in my godforsaken life. Am I supposed to give in? Accept doom?”
His hand raises, hovering above his knee, then falls again. Reaching out to comfort me? No.
This truth I’ve never allowed myself to utter before keeps pouring out. “Maybe you had choices in your life. Ones you could be proud of. But not me. My choice was live in hell on earth or bring hell to earth. I chose the latter. At least it was my decision.”
His gaze simmers my blood. Not through demonic power but the simple alchemy of pity in the eyes of a man I can’t accept such compassion from.
“Stop looking at me like that!” I’m loud—always louder than I should be.
How can everyone contain their furies while mine burst out?
I stand. He’s no longer in my way, yet I’ve come to need him—his irritation, his fear, his interest. And he has come to need me—my connection to the world, my protection of my sister, my role as keeper.
“How am I looking at you?” The calm in his voice coats me in raw frustration, thick like honey and twice as sickly sweet. Yet the fire has gone, as quickly as it came. His gentleness smothers my flame. My wrath has nothing to feed on.
“As though…” I search for the words. How many times have I looked at him and seen only my own sins? Like a mask, they peel away to show the real him. “As though you feel for me. Like I’m worth worrying about.” My heart beats quick, and a bubble forms in my throat.
Douglas smiles. It’s not an expression I see often. It changes his face.
“How old do you think I am?” he asks, as though reading my mind.
“Why?” The oddest smile creeps onto my face, mirroring his.
“You lied to the society man that you were my daughter. I never considered it before, but do you think I’m some old man?”
I hesitate to answer. This is personal, almost pleasant, in a way we’ve never been with each other. Conversational. “What makes you…? How old are you, then?”
“Was I,” he corrects, still smiling.
“Were you.” I mirror his accentuation.
He laughs. Laughing with his murderer. “I was twenty-eight.”
“Oh.” I expected at least a decade older. Is it his condescending nature or how the ghostly translucency casts a gray sheen to his once-auburn hair? Or how much even a year living on this island could age a relatively young man?
When I think back to our only meeting with both of us alive…I’ve misremembered. I placed this ghost in that memory instead of the living vessel I stole from him.
“It creates a problem, yes?” he continues. “You told him you were twenty, so if he checks against my records, that won’t align. Wife may have been better.”
Wife. The word is surreal coming out of his mouth. Confusion outweighs my fear.
“I don’t like misunderstandings.” Douglas doesn’t react to my slack-jawed expression. “I wondered if we’d have more common ground if you knew.”
Four years older is much closer to my age than I’d imagined him to be. I can’t make sense of this version of Douglas, of me with him, and what we are together if we aren’t enemies.
Another piece slides into place in my mind. We are enemies. Douglas isn’t chatting with me to make me feel better. He despises me and, knowing I doomed another ship of sailors, would never give me comfort.
Liney. He has been distracting me from going downstairs to find her. And I’ve fallen for it.
“You said Liney is all right? Downstairs?” I ask.
His smile drops. I’ve ruined another small, good thing, but I was right. He’s been lying.
I get up, but the floor shakes beneath me, and I nearly lose my balance.
The shelves shake. Boxes and jars clink against one another, threatening to fall.
The ship has entered the spiral. Even with a weak lingering connection to the power, I’m stilled by an immense surge of feral emotion at the demise of the sailors and their panic turned to despair.
Soon it will settle into torment. The hunt is over. The feast has begun.
“I’ll find out one way or another,” I tell the ghost of the former lighthouse keeper.
“You will,” he agrees. “But who will she find?”
The tremors stop. I cross the room and grab onto the hole where the doorknob used to be, another reminder of my capacity to both save and harm.
I glance back. He’s already gone.