28 Elle To Discover #2
I avoid looking at the bones once below; I always do while pretending to check the oil. I must find the way deeper, into the spiral itself. There must be a way Mr. Pratterman gets access. I search the walls for a weak point.
Douglas appears, roused by my presence. Down here he’s often at his most irritable, either because the pile of bones is a reminder of my betrayal or because of my false use of the basement to trick Liney.
“I heard,” he says, turned away from me. “Half-truths are a step above all lies.”
I’m surprised he’s still talking to me. Does he believe what I told Liney about the knife?
He can’t. Then again, he doesn’t have all the pieces.
The puzzle of who knows which parts of the truth is breaking apart.
What were once easy facts to lay out, like the border pieces of a continuous story, have been shaken and turned over into something unrecognizable.
“I can see it, Elle.” His voice is so quiet that I strain to hear even in this small, echoing space. “How hard you’ve been fighting. It’s admirable. But this pain will devour you. What if you can’t come back from it? Some betrayals cannot be undone.”
He has no idea.
“Liney didn’t run when you told her about your parents,” he continues. “And she knows about me. Yet, she’s still here.”
I examine the stonework. He turns to me with a horrible hope in his eyes.
“Perhaps it’s time.” Douglas sighs, stepping closer. Insufferable man. “Admit to it all. Let there be no secrets hanging over your head. Let your fight stop.”
The spiral is deep within a space outside the world, but I’ve felt its pulses and whispers whenever I’ve connected to its power. As Mr. Pratterman said, it’s a store of that power, not the source. If he can add and take from that store, so can I.
“Liney deserves a normal life.” Douglas cuts through my concentration. Irritation crawls through my skin. Advice is easy to dole out while removed from the world.
“Yes,” I answer with coals in my throat. “An orphaned girl with a monster after her will enjoy the best Halifax society has to offer her. A charmed life, untouched by cruelty or danger. Why did I bother bringing her here?”
I bow my head and begin my communion with the spiral. It doesn’t take immediately. Like the spluttering flame of a candle at the end of its wick, my connection misses its mark.
Conviction. It won’t answer to mere chaos.
That’s too weak a calling. I must return to the core.
The rage that helped me tear my family apart.
The singular purpose of saving Liney from the demons at our door, whether men or a raven-haired girl.
I wasn’t ready before. I concentrate on the memory of Thomas’s glare in the hallway, his hand on my arm.
How he flinched when I managed to pull away.
Every one of them must be destroyed. I can’t search for freedom anymore—what a childish wish.
Control, given and taken, must win out. Total control.
“Is that what you think your sister wants? To go back to parties and men?”
“Go!” My volume surprises us both. The way he talks, needling at the fears rooted deep—it’s too much. Not an inch of me can waver.
Douglas floats between me and the stone wall. I hate the look he gives me, a mixture of pity and longing. He’s no concerned onlooker anymore. He’s chosen to tangle himself into my life, more than a ghost ought.
“I’m lost, James.” My voice turns as delicate as Chantilly lace. One wrong move and I’ll unravel when Liney needs me most. “Stop expecting better. I’m ending it.”
I grit my teeth as he blinks at me, lost for words. Good. Let me go on with it. Whatever curse this man placed on me that forces my attention on him must lift.
“You stand there breathing, don’t you?” He’s quiet, but his voice quivers in so deep a register that it makes me clench my fists. “Alive. Still making choices. Do you know how extraordinary that is? I wish I could—”
“Yes!” I yell, the energy of everything I’ve held back since landing on the mainland exploding. “Of course I do! I know! I’m hurting everyone! Ruining everything! I’m not clever enough! I’m not good enough! Yet I’ve not been cruel enough to get this all over with! I know.”
Acid climbs up the back of my throat. I force my focus into a pinprick of red-coated rage.
No room for doubts or sympathy. Caustic curses flood from my mind down into the stonework, digging deep beneath the basement.
Damn Blakeney Pratterman’s riddles. Damn Thomas Seymour’s obsession with us, and damn every man who’s toasted to his honor.
Damn Mr. Croxton’s meddling. Even Bridget Coleman must be damned, for the sake of the only one worth saving.
“Not cruel enough?” Douglas’s voice breaks. If I looked up, I’d see either tears or blood dripping down his neck. Both could break my concentration. “It’s a miracle you’ve not gotten crueler, Elle.”
The soles of my feet heat up. Soon the heat will grow to a sear, then a blaze that will shoot through my veins to infuse me with what power the spiral is willing to part with.
I squeeze my eyes shut and play through three moments in my mind.
Thomas’s grin as he curled his hand around Liney’s waist at their engagement party.
Mr. Pratterman’s hot breath as he leaned down to seal our contract. Bridget—
I open my eyes. There’s no moment of Bridget’s that fuels this fire.
My sister returned from the roiling waters because of her.
The most dangerous thing she’s done is fill Liney’s mind with dreams. I gasp as the heat in my feet turns truly painful and the spiral’s reach ebbs back down into the stones. Damn it.
“Miracle. You dare use that word. As if you were thankful for me. Let me ask you, James Douglas. If we could go back to that night, would you have—”
“I would’ve offered refuge,” he interrupts, matching my fury. But he hasn’t changed his stance, not even as I shout in his face. Rigid as the wall behind him while I breathe ragged and my nerves shout against the flames of hell. “I wouldn’t have been so shy.”
“Shy?” That catches me off guard. How could that be his problem?
His mouth hangs open, then he rolls his eyes. “God above, Elle, you’ll make me say it?”
“Say what?” Where has this conversation turned? The acid returns in the back of my throat, making me swallow down a painful cough. My body prepares to jump or run or hide. Whatever gets me out of this.
“When you came to my door”—Douglas looks up, away from me. Is he blushing?—“I was… I thought you looked… Well, you know.”
“I know?” My voice betrays my utter bewilderment. That night was before I ever communed with the spiral’s power. What kind of look could I have had then? He’s more tortured than when we were arguing. That was well-trodden territory. This is new.
“You were beautiful.” The words rip out of him like teeth. “You were soaked through with rain, your hair was gleaming, your face was flushed. Your eyes were so bright in the firelight, like warm honey. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was with you on my doorstep.”
That makes no sense. I focus on what I know.
“Then I…” Stalked up behind him. Stole his knife. Slit his throat. Murdered him.
“Yes. It was confusing.”
That was his first impression of me? Impossible. I was a drowned rat with malice in my eyes. While my fury has puttered down to the wick, I know the words I owe him. “I’m sorry.”
“That might be the first apology you’ve ever come to on your own,” he says.
That smile spreads across his face, a crashing wave against my burning shore. Breaking me into smaller and smaller pieces, crumbling the resolve I built up, bit by bit. He can’t be smiling now. He can’t have found me beautiful. None of that fits into our story.
“You’re not lost, Elle,” he says so softly I can nearly forget I’m standing beside his bones. “You’re scared.”
He’s right. No matter how hard the island, the spiral, has choked me into submission, it has never won my heart. Even now, as I try to commune directly, there’s resistance in me. That selfish part that needs my own control.
My next words are strangled in my throat as though casting a net into the sea. “It’s you I see when I try to be better. Not Liney. Not Pratterman. You.”
Douglas takes one tentative step forward. We’re worlds apart, yet he looms over me so close I can almost feel his breath.
“You see monstrosity in yourself; I see determination. You see rage; I see protection. You see cruelty; I see fear. And there’s wrong there too. I’m not blind to it. I see it all. And I’m still here, Elle. I still have hope for you.”
“Stop.” I step back, turn away from him, look to another blank wall, see the bones instead. “You can’t…”
“Why?” he presses. He’s so close to me. The last time we were this close, we were dancing. The time before, I was killing. “Because if you can be loved as you are now, there’s still something good in you?”
“I’m not…” I begin, a reflex.
“Because it’s easier, yes?” He throws his hands up, no patience left. “To throw the world away. To cast your eyes down and pretend you can’t stop the cruelties. Can’t stop yourself.”
“You don’t understand.” I make to move around him, to end this torture for us both.
“Yes, Eleanor, I do!”
I turn back. The break in his voice is too raw to ignore anymore.
“You’re not the only lighthouse keeper on this island who’s had these temptations,” he whispers: a confession.
I swallow, my mouth suddenly too dry. “What are you talking about?”
Douglas smiles mirthlessly, shaking his head. “He came to me once. Pratterman. Offered me a chance to see my mother again. To bring her back. He and I… I thought he was a gentleman. He spent weeks here. He tried to woo me. He did. I thought he cared for me, truly. I certainly cared for him.”