13 Elle To Search
Elle
To Search
I don’t notice when I enter the room. Not while I recite the lie I’ll weave to explain why the light stopped working. I notice when a shock of lightning illuminates everything and I don’t hear the gasp of fear she always makes.
Liney isn’t here.
The bed is empty save for rumpled sheets. No one sits on the sagging chesterfield or dining chairs. Quiet fills the room as if I were underwater.
“Liney?” My voice pitches up, catching on her name. What was the last thing I said to her? Everything under the spiral’s influence is distant now, hazy as a dream.
There’s an acrid, sickly sweet smell. Ozone. Likely from the lightning, though something more familiar tinges it.
I turn finally to the kitchen and let out a strained gasp. Cupboards are open, plates smashed against the counters and littering the floor. Salt has sprayed out of a box usually placed far from the edge of the counter. A bread pan has landed in the sink.
I scan for any other clue that could point me to her. The storm has begun to lift, and moonlight filters through half of one of the windows.
The shutter. It didn’t hold. Liney could see outside. She knew I didn’t light the flame.
Have I been found out? I turn back to the chesterfield. Beneath it is the trapdoor to the basement.
“Douglas!” My voice is high in my throat as I choke it out. Normally I wouldn’t yell at him, not when Liney might hear. But I’m desperate. “What did you mean? Who will she find ?”
Silence.
“What happened to her?” Each word is louder than the last. “Where is she?”
Nothing. Not a damnable thing. He swore he’d keep her safe. Instead he stalled me so she could—what? I can’t rely on this man. He delayed me, had me sitting on an orange crate and talking nonsense with full knowledge of whatever happened here.
If I could kill him twice, I would.
I shove the chesterfield out of my way into the far wall like doll’s furniture, but the lock’s intact. I have the only key, and it remains upstairs in the lightroom, hidden from both Liney and Douglas. She didn’t go downstairs. Good. Only one other option.
The lantern’s gone. What else have I missed?
Only the firelight behind me illuminates the scene, creating monsters out of my shifting shadow as I turn to the only way out of the lighthouse.
Water glints on the floor at the front door.
As does my knife. Why is my knife there?
Behind it the wood rattles on its hinges against the strength of the wind.
I’m frozen in place when I should be searching, investigating, running—doing something real.
Instead I press into the skin of my palms with my ragged fingernails, staring at a scene that promises something has happened to my sister.
Was Mr. Croxton hiding on the island, waiting for the storm’s cover to take her away?
He could’ve been paid by Thomas to investigate us.
Or was there a survivor of the wreck? No sailor could’ve made it between the pull of the spiral’s tendrils, the freezing cold.
Most don’t know how to swim. It makes them all the easier to target.
What am I not seeing? There’s no snow tracked into the kitchen. I peer around the counter. No puddles. The water at the door came from leaving, not arriving.
Liney’s out there. Exactly where I forbade her from going. She could be freezing or drowning out of sight as I stare at broken plates.
It doesn’t matter if this is a trick of Douglas, of Mr. Pratterman, or of Liney herself. She’s out there. Foolish girl. Foolish me.
The front door flies open at my touch. My cotton shirt sleeves flutter with the harsh wind as I step out.
A shiver runs through my body, partly from the cold but also from a horrid anticipation.
Heat lingers from the spiral’s power but not for long.
There hasn’t been another quake since I entered the living quarters. The Devil has had his due.
I call upon the power one more time—not to funnel into my own body, but to reconnect the spiral’s demonic fuel and the lightroom. Yet even this secondary connection sends a thrill through me, a flash of the depths it can give.
A flash of red sweeps across the snow-covered ground.
Outside, the winds whip at my face, but the ice melts so fast, I barely feel its prickling. I trudge barefoot across the rocks, sizzling snow into vapor underneath each step. The first rays of morning quiver on the horizon. The gales won’t hold together much longer.
I call her name with every other step. Did Mr. Pratterman take her? Has Liney been keeping secrets too? I hadn’t thought her capable. My eyes sting from the hail and my trespasses. I lied directly to her fearful eyes in my last moment with her.
There’s nothing that suggests Liney walked along the water and not into the forest or directly into the sea. I follow the coast anyway, mimicking her daily strolls. It’s one of the few pieces of Liney I know for certain.
Is this the end? No more running, hiding, killing. I won’t have to fulfill my contract if Liney is gone. It won’t matter what happens to me if the only good thing I ever had is dead.
A terrible, tired thing inside me recognizes the truth. I would finally stop worrying if there’s no longer someone important to worry about.
Of course the Devil will win. He always does. Every folk song says so. What arrogance drove me to believe I could be different? I’m a wretched thing. My stomach roils in hatred for my own imagined relief in succumbing.
Poor Liney, dead or alive, doesn’t deserve a self-serving, pathetic sister like me. What fate did I steal away her to? An island of haunted misery.
I reach the portion of coast that hides the maw of the spiral. It’s a small bay now, but tomorrow it’ll return to a flat stretch of sand. There’s no debris in the water.
But there, knee-deep in breakers near the beach—a figure, dragging another.
I could collapse. Liney? Did she actually manage to save someone? Every nerve down my spine floods with relief as I hurry closer. She’s intact, she’s alive, and she’s—
Raven-haired?
The sailor emerges from the surf, sturdily built and hoisting my sister onto the rocks.
Waterlogged black hair frames an unknown face—not Mr. Croxton and certainly not Mr. Pratterman.
Liney is sprawled out in the stranger’s arms. I can’t tell if she’s breathing.
I break into a sprint, damn the snow and ice.
Liney’s eyes are closed. Douglas’s coat weighs her down like a net. The rescuer hauls her feet out of the surf’s path and sets her down gently, only to collapse next to her.
I trip, skidding against the rock like an ice sheet, then scramble until I’m finally close enough for the pulse of the red light to illuminate a puff of breath coming out of Liney’s mouth. She’s breathing. She’s saved.
I turn to the dark-haired savior. Not a sailor. Not even a man. A young woman, dressed in a fine, now torn, traveling dress. Her eyes flutter closed, but her breath stays steady.
A survivor of my wreck. She’s the first nonkin I’ve seen since my second deal. Of course it wouldn’t be an anonymous sailor who became my mark.
This girl has saved my sister and doomed herself on my shore.