1.
Ash crept to the door, opening it slowly, silently. He peered out into the dark hall. The ocean in the windows was dark as tar. The large room downstairs was silent, Lucille and Greg gone.
He closed it again while still in the room, knob twisted so it wouldn’t click. “We can take the back staircase. Everyone will be preparing below; we shouldn’t run into anyone.”
“Preparing?” Claire still spoke like she was in a dream. Easier that way, and didn’t she always want what was easy?
But Ash didn’t acknowledge the question, and she wasn’t sure if it was because he hadn’t heard her, or if he physically couldn’t answer.
She thought of slimy green and whiskey, choking him when he tried to speak, in her dream that wasn’t a dream.
His raspy voice, both here and on the phone.
Had Ash been trying to say something then, too?
He looked at her then, sharply. “How are you feeling?”
“How do you think?”
“Physically. Do you feel loopy at all? Lightheaded? Like you’re high?”
Her brow creased. “No.”
“Good.” He nodded. “I didn’t think they’d drug you again, but I wasn’t sure.”
“Again?”
“In the cake.” He sat down, took off his boots.
He wore the same thing as yesterday, as if he hadn’t had time to change, as if he’d been too sick to do something as simple as shuffle out of his shoes.
“Benzos. Just in your piece. Technically it’s cheating, but things have spiraled enough that they didn’t care.
” He snorted. “The fact that Audrey was willing to part with a hefty dose of Xanax speaks for itself.”
She thought of the strange taste of the cake, sweet and somehow sour.
She’d attributed it to the ingredients once she knew the flavors, herbs and Greek yogurt.
Not that. Drugs. Must be why she hadn’t gone into a full-blown panic at the sight of her tiny room that first night, the reason she’d been able to keep it together.
Even in these supremely fuckered circumstances, Claire was a little bit disappointed in herself.
It hadn’t been her own strength of will at all.
“Guess I’ll have to tell my psych,” she said. “I need a prescription.”
He peered at her through the candlelight. “You seem more lucid. That’s good, but you have to stay that way until we’re out, OK? You can’t fall apart until we’re out.”
Claire had gotten very, very good at not falling apart. She could panic when she was gone, out of Harrow Point, off this island. Then she could come absolutely unglued.
It was almost comforting, thinking about the way she’d let the sobs rack her body when this was finally over.
The scream she’d let rip from her throat.
Maybe she’d tear at her hair like a madwoman, claw at her face.
Maybe she’d go fully around the bend and decide to stay there.
Once she was out of here, she’d turn it all loose, and wherever the impulsivity of emotion led her, she’d go.
She had years of it, all pent up and waiting, compounded now by what she’d seen.
(great name for a—)
But first, stairs. Surface. Let Ash explain what the hell was happening here, because she did want to know, because maybe gathering information could keep her from utter and total shithouse madness. And then she would be gone, off into the world again alone.
Ash stood on slightly shaky legs. He still looked pale and sweaty, but somewhat steadier than before, able to straighten fully upright. He padded to the door in his socks, opened it on silent hinges.
He leaned out, looked left and then right. Beckoned to her. When she came close enough, his hand gripped her forearm, his mouth dipping low to her ear. Humid breath fanned across her cheek, bile and cigarettes. She wrinkled her nose and turned her face away.
“From here on out,” he whispered, “you do what I tell you. Even if you think it’s insane. Because if you don’t, you’ll wish you were dead. Dead would be better.”
A shudder started in Claire’s hands, traveled up to her shoulders as she looked at him again. Ash stared down at her with too-bright, too-blue eyes, mouth a rictus and the musk of his sweat sharp with fear. He wasn’t OK. He wasn’t safe. She shouldn’t trust him.
But she didn’t have much of a choice, at this point.
“I will,” she whispered, barely sound. “I’ll do what you say. Now get me the hell out of here.”
His grip on her softened. “OK,” he murmured, letting go of her arm, running a hand through his hair. “OK.”
Ash looked into the hall again, leaning a bit farther out of the doorframe.
Claire pressed herself close so she could speak as quietly as possible, his elbow digging into her stomach. “Lucille was out there. With Greg. She was taking…” Bile rose in her throat. She squeezed her eyes shut, shook her head. “A tub full of… meat. Mike.”
“They’ve all been waiting. I guess she got greedy,” Ash said. “Good thing you saw. If you’d waited until tomorrow, I couldn’t do anything.”
She felt his stomach tighten, and she tensed, too, in case she needed to dart out of the splash zone of a torrent of vomit. But Ash didn’t get sick. He took a shivering breath.
Gingerly, Ash stepped out into the hall, gesturing for her to follow. She did, both of them crouching low, scuttling along the carpet like crabs to surf.
Ash went to the railing and straightened just enough to peer over.
When Claire tried to creep up beside him, she tripped.
The sound was quiet, muffled by plush carpeting. Still, there was a thud when her knee hit the ground.
“Shit.” Ash’s curse was barely sound, just a breath shaped to a word. He grabbed Claire and hauled her back, smashing her spine to his chest as they both cowered against the wall of the open hallway, away from the railing.
Claire didn’t know if Ash had seen anyone in the open room, but they both reacted as if he had, even if it was just for caution.
He pulled her against him, one hand covering her mouth.
And she should probably balk against that, but instead she twisted her neck to burrow into his chest, an animal seeking shelter.
They breathed together, the rise and fall a steady tide flow as their lungs barely filled to empty again.
A minute, then they unfurled, Ash’s hand leaving her face.
He didn’t speak, only cocked his head to the side, toward the elevator.
A small door Claire hadn’t noticed before was set into the wall next to it, its edges barely perceptible, cut into the rock of the cliff face.
Ash crept toward it, casting another glance over his shoulder before gently pressing on the stone.
“Greg,” he mouthed, no sound to it. So he had seen someone down in the main room. “Still awake.”
Waiting for Lucille to bring back the empty tub, she guessed.
There was a moment when the door squeaked, the high-frequency grate of rock on rock, and both of them froze. Claire could taste her heartbeat.
But nothing happened. No movement from down below. Ash opened the door just enough to slip inside the dark beyond. Claire followed.
Inside, the back staircase was cool, with a sense of space that made her chest expand in relief even as the utter darkness pressed in close.
Ahead of her, Ash’s large shape rummaged in his pocket, cursing, the movement felt more than seen in the black void.
A click, and a tiny flame flickered into being.
Ash’s lighter. He brought it to the cigarette in his mouth, hand shaking, but kept the flame on the lighter even after the butt turned cherry.
Wordlessly, he offered another cigarette to Claire.
She took it, bent close to let the fire start the smoke, breathed deep.
She hadn’t smoked in years, but her lungs took to it again like they’d been waiting, and she didn’t cough.
They stood there in silence for a moment, smoke pluming from their mouths as tails of fog against the utter dark.
“Tell me,” Claire said calmly, “what the hell is going on.”
Ash sighed. The glowing end of his cigarette juddered in his still-trembling hand, like he’d caught a firefly. “Told you. Can’t yet. Gotta wait until we’re on the surface.”
“Out of the house?”
“Not necessarily. Just in the part that isn’t underground.
” He took in a deep breath of nicotine. “It can’t listen as well, up there.
Sound doesn’t travel well from water to land.
” He flipped his wrist up, making a watch face glow in the dark.
“Causeway won’t be around for another hour or so, and there’s no door we can open to the outside that won’t trigger an alarm.
Best to wait until the last minute to leave.
It’ll be Acceptance by then, but there’s nothing I can do about that. ”
“Acceptance?”
His fist pressed into his ribs. “Higher, C.”
Claire ashed her cigarette, dusting her still-bare feet. Surely their shoelessness would be a problem, eventually, but there were many others to surmount before then, so she wouldn’t worry about it yet. At this point, she could run barefoot back to the mainland. Hell, she could swim.
She’d say this for herself: Once she decided on a direction, as agonizing and inconsistent as the decision-making process might be, she stuck to it. Whether that was marrying an emotionally unavailable millionaire or escaping a seaside mansion.
Claire waited to ask more questions until they’d climbed a few flights of stairs. Ash wanted higher, he’d get higher. Once her ass started to burn, she tested the waters. “So how often do they do… do this? Bring people into the family?”
God. That shouldn’t sting to say.
“Just through marriages,” Ash answered. “At least, into the…” His tone altered, as if he was quirking his mouth. “Inner sanctum. The people who work for us on the higher levels know, but they aren’t as involved.” He snorted. “Except the more mercenary shareholders, like Mike.”
Yeah, it seemed like Mike was about as involved as one could get.
But there was a bigger picture, and that was what she should focus on.
To keep from going bonkers, if nothing else.
Claire thought of all those good-looking white guys on the website.
“So when they’ve done this before,” she asked, waving her hand to encompass the whole of the Ashbury estate as this, “brought someone who was in… in that weird room, with the pictures…”
“The Shrine of the Chosen,” Ash supplied.
Claire paused, swallowing the urge to laugh, the jagged and insane kind. “From that, into the house—into the family—is it always due to a death? Does there have to be a set number of you, or something?”
Ash’s shoulders tensed ahead of her. “Yes and no.”
She arched a brow, even though he couldn’t see it.
“Death is part of it,” he continued, hurrying up the seemingly endless stairs. “A kind of death, anyway. But it’s not always like this.” A pause. “This one is my fault.”
“Explain that.”
“Can’t. Not high enough.”
There were no lights on the staircase, the only illumination coming from the wavering flame of Ash’s lighter. Claire wanted to ask him for another cigarette, if only to distract from the fact that her feet were freezing.
Her eyes had adjusted to the dimness, and she could make out enough of her surroundings not to stumble. Wide, empty stairs, no decoration and no windows. A utilitarian passage cut into the cliff itself.
She lost count of stair flights after ten. Her legs were in agony.
“We still have twenty minutes before the causeway extends.” Ash didn’t even sound winded, which seemed unfair for someone who dabbled in so many illicit substances.
“Once we open the door, the alarms will sound, and we’ll have to fucking book it.
It’s past midnight, we’re fully in Acceptance now. You can’t rescind your will.”
Claire knew what the words meant individually, but couldn’t string sense from them all together. “That’s the second time you’ve said Acceptance. Are we high enough for you to tell me what the hell you mean?”
Ash paused, as if he was waiting to choke again. The pause was brief, though. They were getting closer to the surface, and words came more easily. “Acceptance is the third day of the Four Stations.”
“Gonna need more than that.”
“Four days, Four Stations.” He ticked them off on his fingers, hand raised so she could see it over his shoulder. “Arrival, Anticipation, Acceptance, Ascension. Once you cross into Acceptance, you don’t get to leave. Not easily, anyway.”
It still didn’t make any sense. But she guessed cults didn’t have to. They wanted her here for something, and she was very, very sure she did not want to be involved in whatever that something was.
A few more floors, her legs starting to go numb, then Ash glanced behind him. “We can talk at the next landing.”
Claire ran up the rest of the stairs, meeting Ash at the aforementioned landing.
She could see the end of the endless stairs now, two more flights stretching from here to a door at the top.
Ash stared into the middle distance, even when Claire reached him, as if seeing some memory play out in the dark.
Another cigarette smoldered in his hand.
It was time for her questions now. They were high enough, far enough away from the water. But the first thing she wanted to know didn’t have to do with the Four Stations or cannibalism or the weird shit happening at Harrow Point.
“Is Theo OK?”
Ash shot her an incredulous look. “Why do you care?”
“He told me to get out,” Claire murmured. “I’m afraid he got hurt for it.”
He raised the cigarette to his mouth. Breathed in deep. “Theo will be fine.” A pause. “I told you to get out, too.”
“I trusted Theo more.”
Ash flinched. Exhaled, watched the smoke twist. “I guess that’s fair.” He straightened, rolled his neck. “Don’t worry about him. An Ashbury would have to really piss it off to die. Like Elias did.”
Claire’s turn to flinch. His name felt like a gut punch, like stepping on an exposed nail. “How did El… how did he piss it off?”
She didn’t really want to know. As soon as the question was out of her and in the air, she wanted to grab it back, stuff it down her throat.
Ash shook his head, rubbed at the bridge of his nose as if staving off a headache. “By keeping you away.”
“But why would they want me here in the first place?” She needed it spelled out. She needed to know exactly what she was dealing with.
“They want to sacrifice you to their god, Claire.” Ash stubbed out his cigarette on the railing. “The lease on its current body is up. Next one is due.”