Chapter 25 #2
He shook his head slowly. ‘Okay, but surely you can see that what he did is a sign that he has feelings for you. A pretty foolish, hopeless sign, sure, but you should definitely take it as a compliment. I can’t remember him ever rebelling like that before. And definitely not over a girl.’
I stared at him, perplexed. This conversation was taking a turn I couldn’t make sense of. At all. ‘That’s ridiculous. He lied to me. He used me. How is that having feelings for me?’
‘He was trying to protect you by keeping you away from us.’ Ashton took a step towards me. ‘By keeping you away from me, to be more specific.’
My heart skipped two beats, then instantly began to race. I felt a tingling at the nape of my neck, but forced myself not to back down. The bridge was narrow. I sensed the metal bars behind me, only centimetres away. ‘What are you trying to say?’
Ashton hesitated. His eyes searched the empty archways at either end of the bridge, then snapped back to my tense face.
He studied me briefly, then sighed. ‘I had other plans for this, but maybe I don’t need to bother.
’ In a flash his gaze turned dark and smooth.
‘What I’m saying is that you get on my nerves, Mabel.
You really fucking get on my nerves – and I’m reaching the end of my patience. ’
I wasn’t surprised, but I didn’t understand why he’d gone through this whole performance when we both knew what was at the bottom of it. ‘Then why did you drag me out here? If you’re so sure I can’t do anything to hurt you, you could have just left me alone. You’d never have to see me again.’
I heard footsteps somehere beyond the bridge, echoing hollowly down the covered walkway.
Ashton’s eyes darted towards the sound, but besides a shadow flitting past, we remained alone.
‘Let’s just say that my relationship with finality is different from other people’s,’ he said, when the shadow had gone.
‘There are enough commas in my life already, so I prefer to put full stops wherever possible.’
‘Then don’t talk to me in question marks,’ I hissed. ‘What does that actually mean?’
‘What do you think it means?’
The answer was so trite that my brain refused to think it: the most effective way to put a full stop was to end a life. The cleanest cut, the ultimate conclusion.
I found myself recoiling, and promptly bumped into the bridge.
Although I’d spent weeks thinking the worst of the Starlings, turning the possibilities over in my mind, they had never coalesced into a feeling.
But they did now. And it was cold and clammy and spreading at unpleasant speed throughout my body.
‘So it’s true,’ I blurted hoarsely. ‘You killed June. And the professor. And you tried to kill Paulina and Davie as well.’
Ashton put his hands into his coat pockets and moved slowly towards me. ‘Yes, yes, yes and no. Believe it or not, what happened to your friend was a regrettable and ironically coincidental accident.’
‘And the others?’
‘Well … Victor overestimated June’s ability to resist, so in a way that was unintentional too.
Jack wanted to get rid of Paulina, and Victor egged him on to choose the most effective route.
That was … ill-considered. Impulsive. And the professor, well, that’s on you, I’m afraid.
He’d been on our radar for years, but he wasn’t a threat.
We knew he’d keep his mouth shut. Until you came along.
There’s something about you that makes people disregard their own safety.
Maybe that’s why bad things tend to happen to the people around you, have you ever considered that? ’
My mind reeled as I tried to process the barrage of information.
But how could they have done it so quickly?
How could they have done it at all? It was crazy.
It was … sick. But as I looked at Ashton now, I realised I didn’t doubt for a second that he was capable of it. ‘It was you. You killed him.’
Ashton ran both hands through his curls, pushing them back from his face.
In the dim light I saw an unfamiliar edge to his soft features, and the look in his eyes was both amused and exasperated.
‘It doesn’t matter which of us made him jump off that balustrade.
With us there is no I or you, there’s only we. ’
‘But … how did you do it? How did you make them want to take their own lives?’ Blake had sworn to me Victor hadn’t done anything to June, and although I had no reason to believe him, I did – about that, at least. And even if he had lied to me, what could they possibly have done to Professor Edwards to make him kill himself when he’d only been back in Cambridge a day?
Ashton sighed, audibly impatient.
‘It’s tricky to explain, and anyway, it’s beyond the scope of this conversation.
Let’s just say that … a soul is made up of energy.
It’s like we’ve all got this sort of vessel inside us, just brimming over with waves.
When you siphon some of that off, every bit of it takes away a nuance of the individual’s personality.
Their beliefs, their traumas and fears, their character – everything fades.
Their very will begins to fray. It varies from person to person, but generally speaking, the more energy you take from someone the easier they are to manipulate.
Once you lose enough of it, you don’t really know anymore who you are or what you want.
It’s a relief when someone tells you what to do.
So if you order someone like that to jump over a railing or off a roof, they don’t hesitate. ’
The words rolled off his tongue, like he’d learnt them all by rote or used them many times before. It was by far the most insane thing I’d ever heard. What did you have to do to someone to take a part of their soul?
‘I don’t understand. What did you actually do to them?’
He tutted, closing more of the distance between us. ‘I just answered that question. You just don’t want to understand, because you’ve spent your whole life thinking in the patterns that have been laid out for you, and now you can’t stop.’
He paused, still a step’s length away from me: an eloquent look, a jeering smile. I almost laughed when I realised he wasn’t speaking in metaphors. The image he had used was, for him, a mirror of the truth.
I let out a breathless sound. ‘You’re serious? You think you can get into other people’s souls and … drain their energy? And you’re saying that’s what you’re doing with Zoe?’
Ashton’s lips twisted into a look of mock contrition.
‘I admit, I’ve bent the rules with her a little.
We’re not really supposed to feed on any one moth for too long.
Gets a bit dicey – you might burn them so badly they just drop dead.
But Zoe is exceptionally strong. Anybody else would have died ages ago, the amount of energy I’ve been draining from her over this span of time. ’
Impulsively, I moved towards him, until our bodies were almost touching. ‘She is dying. She’s almost gone.’
‘Hmm. I suppose I have been overdoing it a bit lately. Your fault again.’ He raised a hand and stroked my hair, so fleetingly that I couldn’t tell if he had actually touched me.
‘I can get a bit tetchy when someone’s trying my patience.
Zoe was just a way of making up for it. If it’s any consolation, I’l keep my hands off her from now on.
After tonight, I can’t afford any more involvement with your social circle. It would raise too many questions.’
I didn’t fail to notice the threat in his words, but all I could think about was Zoe.
For months, Ashton had been the centre of her emotional life.
She had readily made excuses for him every time he let her down, saw depth in every word he said, no matter how shallow, spun rose-tinted magic out of every meaningless moment.
She had been sure he liked her just as much as she liked him.
She was in love with him, and he had deliberately exploited that, while feeling nothing remotely comparable in return. While feeling nothing for her at all.
‘You couldn’t care less about her, could you?’
Ashton laughed softly, and for a fleeting moment I hoped he would deny it. Despite everything I knew about him, despite all I’d just learnt, I would have preferred to know that even a psychopath like him had feelings for her than to have it confirmed he didn’t give a shit.
‘Of course not. We couldn’t care less about any of you, Mabel.’
And just like that, the last trace of hope I’d had in him was gone.
Right from the start, Ashton had struck me as unnatural, like an over-elaborate, perfect image of a human being.
An artifically created construct designed to put forward an illusion that adapted to other people’s desires.
A fake smile instead of a filter, charm instead of Photoshop.
Blake may have been a liar, but Ashton was an actor.
Someone who could slip on personalities like masks. But this, this was his true face.
Ashton sighed. ‘Don’t look at me like that. I’m not crazy, I’m just honest. That’s what you wanted.’
‘And why are you being honest? Why are you confessing to multiple murders?’
The corners of his mouth lifted. ‘Oh, come on. Don’t disappoint me.’
I’d read enough thrillers to know what he was implying.
Even so, it was an effort of will to say it out loud.
It was just so absurd. I was twenty years old, an ordinary student at an elite British university.
I was standing in front of an educated, affluent young man my own age – with a friendly smile and nails that were better manicured than mine.
And yet the truth lurking in his eyes was this: ‘You’re saying I won’t get the chance to tell anybody.
You don’t want to have dinner with me. You want to kill me. ’
‘Blake was right. You really are very intelligent.’ Ashton cocked his head, and the light from the lamp behind him dazzled me.