2. #2
Her turn to wince. “Tell me, then. I’d rather know.”
Ash sighed, leaning his head against the glass.
He knocked back into it once, gently, a soft punishment for himself.
“My great-great-great-grandfather went sailing one day.” He shook his head at the ridiculous series of greats.
“Landed on this island. It was empty of everything, no people or wildlife, and it apparently wasn’t plotted on any map.
Seemed like some huge mistake when he reported it to the authorities.
They were eager to pawn it off on him when he said he wanted to buy it.
“The people indigenous to the mainland warned him against settling here, told him it was cursed ground and belonged to a monster, but he didn’t listen.
He bought it for cheap, built the house, made the island the headquarters of his company, and required the higher-ups to move here.
At some point, the monster found him, angry that he’d trespassed onto its territory.
But instead of fighting it, he made a deal.
He’d sacrifice one of his children, and the thing could take their place, so it could live among humans.
Be known to them and have their worship, expand its power.
Gods need that, you know. Worship. Fear. ”
From what little Claire knew of gods, that seemed to be standard.
“It was small when he came, diminished. The island had been kept empty on purpose, starving it out. But my great-great-great-grandfather gave it what it wanted. Made it a god instead of a monster.” Ash snorted.
“That’s the difference between the two, I guess.
Worship. What’s a god no one knows about? Nothing.
“But when the time came for the sacrifice, Old Ashbury wouldn’t give up one of his kids.
Instead, he made his oldest son give his wife to the god instead.
And the god seemed satisfied with that—she was still an Ashbury, and someone the old man cared about, so I guess it hurt suitably enough.
But eventually the body decayed, unable to house the god, and the whole thing had to start over again.
The Ashburys didn’t want to sacrifice one of their own every time the god needed a new body, so they started giving it others—the house staff, the relatives of employees who jumped at the chance to curry favor with the family.
The god didn’t like those bodies, though. It’d use them, but they decayed fast.”
“The skins,” Claire murmured. “All those people in the sanctuary, becoming their own minimonsters.” A shudder made her teeth clench. “Your grandfather. Audrey’s dad.”
“He was a nice man,” Ash said quietly. “As nice as anyone who pledged themselves to a cosmic horror of a god could be.”
“Nice doesn’t mean good.”
“Fair enough.” Ash nodded wearily, then continued.
“The Ashburys gathered some data, through all of that trial and error. They learned the body couldn’t hold the god for long unless it was a true sacrifice for the family, someone they really cared about.
And the bodies that held out longest were those that had been touched by the ocean, somehow.
Hurt by it.” He shifted uncomfortably on the floor, grimacing as the movement jostled one of his countless injuries.
“That’s when they started tracking accidents.
Every Ashbury would marry either someone from the island who knew what was going on and welcomed it, or someone who’d had a run-in with the sea.
They’d send us out to meet them, specifically, to lure them in. ”
Claire swallowed. “But what about caring? That still matters, right?” Cruel to ask, maybe, but she was past worrying about cruelty now.
Ash shrugged uncomfortably. “You’re cared for.”
That was a lead-in to something, a waiting confession that pressed in heavy as the sea on the glass. And it made Claire furious. “You don’t care about me, Ash.”
His brows drew low. “I do—”
“No.” She shook her head. “You don’t even know me.
You care about assuaging your own guilt.
You care about having something to point to that proves you aren’t as bad as the rest of your family.
And that’s true, though the bar is in hell so what does it matter, but you’ve benefited from this for years.
Everything your family has sacrificed other people for, you have enjoyed, and you only balked when it was time for you to do your part.
That is what you care for. I’m just a convenient hollow place to put it. ”
Claire’s shoulders heaved, her teeth clenching hard in her jaw and her recently healed side aching. It was good to feel something other than fear, sorrow, to let another emotion blaze along her nerve endings. Anger felt good.
Ash just stared at her. He didn’t try to defend himself, didn’t try to insist that of course he knew her, of course he cared. He knew, deep down, that it was bullshit. That whatever narrative he’d been trying to spin was just the fraying strings of a story with nothing real to tie them to.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I guess you’re right.”
She settled back against the cold glass wall, her heartbeat settling. She changed the subject. “So Audrey and your mother… I assume they were from the island.”
He nodded, seeming almost relieved to talk about the past rather than the future.
“Their father worked with my grandfather. The company VP, before becoming a skin. But my dad…” Here he trailed off, and his eyes closed as if he wasn’t sure how to continue, what words to use.
“He loved my mom,” he said finally, voice kept to a whisper so it wouldn’t break.
“As much as an asshole like him is capable of loving, anyway. When it came time for a new sacrifice, he wanted to try the younger sister, since she’d almost drowned when she was a kid.
Married her to Patrick, so she’d be an official Ashbury.
” He shrugged. “Grandpa offered to try first, but he didn’t last long.
Later, they sent him with Elias as a reminder of what he had to do. ”
The woman who’d tried to eat her. Lucille.
Lucy. Claire remembered the careful detachment in Audrey’s voice, saying that Lucille’s family had been cooking for them for years.
Audrey’s family, too. How did she stand looking at what her sister had become?
How did she stand knowing that her father lived in a fucking aquarium in her son’s house, keeping watch for the god who’d ruined him?
“But Lucy didn’t work, either,” Ash said.
“I think the god knew how much Wellington loved my mom. It wanted that. Wanted to feel it, then wreck it.” A swallow, working hard down his throat, but when he spoke again his voice was stronger.
“It held for a long time, when they finally gave in. Well enough that the god could live on land among us, for a while, compacted down into my mother’s skin.
The day it couldn’t hold together on land anymore and had to go back to the sea was the happiest day of my fucking life. ”
Seeing Elias as the god’s costume was bad. She couldn’t imagine seeing your own mother. Watching her and knowing something awful lurked under her skin, knowing it wasn’t really her in there at all.
“And then, about three years ago, it started breaking apart even in the sea. The body wouldn’t hold, and the god didn’t want to stay in its own form, not once it had gotten so close to humanity.
” He rolled his head to look at her, still leaning against the glass.
“I’d already run off. Elias had already been sent to the island in my place, then sent off to get you.
But it was time to officially bring you into the family, then. For him to marry you.”
Despite everything, despite knowing that what she and Elias had had wasn’t real, Claire still made an involuntary wounded noise. She thought of that fortune they’d gotten out of Zoltar, the first day they met. You will always go back to the ocean.
She’d asked whom the fortune was meant for. Both of them, it turned out.
“Elias had dragged his feet,” Ash said, jolting her back to the present. “On marrying you, I mean. Maybe because he was a decent person, in a sense. Maybe as a final fuck-you to our dad. Who knows. Either way, it didn’t work out for him. The god killed him for stalling.”
All those times she’d tried to get him to set a date. Make it official. She’d taken his reluctance as a sign that he wasn’t fully committed, but it was probably the kindest thing he’d ever done for her.
“Is that why he had to spend five years on that island?” Claire asked. “To… commune? Get those lesions in his brain? So it would have an easy way to kill him if he stepped out of line?”
Ash nodded.
“He knew, then.” A cold kind of comfort, cold as seawater leaking into a tackle chest. “He knew it could kill him, and he stalled anyway. He cared.”
“And yet you think I don’t.” Ash shook his head, made a soft noise. “All that shit about it being guilt, not care. Don’t you think that goes both ways?”
She clenched her teeth until she could hear them grinding in her jaw.
Ash shifted, winced when it jostled one of his bruises.
His mouth worked like he might say something, then closed, then opened again in a long sigh.
“Do you want the truth, Claire? I’m not being facetious.
I’m asking. Because I have it, but it isn’t pretty, and I’d understand if you’d rather not know.
You deserve whatever peace you can find. ”
Her muscles seized up, her stomach turning in on itself. The truth was a dangerous thing. The truth made you look the world in its eye and see it plain, not wrapped up in gauze to hide the sharp parts, not barely tethered to your body so every feeling was a distant echo.
If there was ever a time for truth, though, this was it. Claire nodded, once.