by A. L. Tyler
“Ash, please excuse us,” he said. “Find Kaylee, Isaac—“
“Joseph, beach, yeah, I know.” Asher finished for him, looking at Ember with disappointment before disappearing into the dark.
When he was gone, the silence that surrounded them was so oppressive that Ember could hardly think. There weren’t any crickets or animals making noise, and they were too far from the ocean to hear the waves. Ember couldn’t even hear her heartbeat, but she could feel it, and tried to take comfort in the slow, steady rhythm.
Acton had turned his head at an odd angle, and after several minutes, Ember realized that he was listening to something. However, even as she strained, she couldn’t figure out what it was; the night was dead to her.
His eyes flashed when he finally looked back to her. Flashed—like a deer’s eyes in the headlights.
“Ember, why would you come back out here after I made you eat a rabbit?” He demanded, shaking his head. “By your own word, you shouldn’t trust me, and you came back for your family.”
Ember’s jaw fell open. “You knew I had the note.”
“I made you write it,” he said, frowning. “People have begun to question my sanity for the amount of time I’ve spent with you, novelty though you are.”
“Why would you make me write that?” Ember felt her nerves suddenly turn to panic, and clenched her fists, trying to hold on to reality. The edge she had thought she had on Acton was gone.
He chose a large stump a few feet away, and sat. “I don’t answer your questions, Em. That’s not how the game works.”
“Unless I win,” Ember mumbled.
Acton pointed at her as he smiled again, although he didn’t seem happy. “See? That’s what I mean about the memories of your soul. You don’t remember, but somehow, you know.” He sighed. “What should we do tonight? Do you want to drink? Climb trees? Run? Or maybe you want to choke down more road kill?”
Ember shook her head. “Checkers?”
“Boring.” Acton waved his hand and stood to walk around her in a slow circle. “Cold water. Let’s go down to the waves—“
“No!” Ember said suddenly, falling to the ground and hugging it as though it might save her. As her heart raced, she didn’t know what she was afraid of, but she knew that the beach was a bad thing.
Acton only squatted down next to her, gently prying her hands from the roots and turf they clung to. “Not that beach…a different one. I’m far from done with you tonight.”
Ember felt tears streaming from her eyes, but blinked them away as she turned to look at him, and the world went soft around the edges. She shut them immediately.
Acton’s voice was annoyed. “Fine. You’ve said before you don’t like it, but you’d better make it quick. I don’t like coddling you.”
Ember nodded. Deep down, she remembered that Acton had a sort of gift for gaining compliance that she didn’t understand. She also knew that he wasn’t a patient man where their nighttime adventures were concerned, and when he was angry, it wasn’t a good thing for anyone.
She pulled herself to her feet, and continuing to nod nervously. The world remained cold and dark around them, and he nodded back, offering his arm before leading her off.
Chapter 11
When they got to the water’s edge, Acton explained what he wanted her to do.
“You will start out at the edge, and I will ask you questions. For every question I ask, you’re going to go a step further out.”
Ember swallowed, and hoped she looked worthy of his pity as she stared over at him. “I’m going to freeze to death.”
“I won’t let that happen,” Acton said with certainty. “I’m sure it won’t be pleasant for you, but that’s the game.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“You shouldn’t.” Acton laughed. “But that’s the game. It’s the water, or you’ll be coughing up fur balls again. Take your pick.”
Seeing that he was serious, Ember sighed in desperation. “Fine. But I get to ask you a question for everything you ask me.”
“If you win, I’ll answer as many questions as you want until dawn.”
“How do I win?”
Acton brought his hand to his chin, considering. The sound of the ocean was calm, steady, and peaceful, but it sent shivers down Ember’s spine. The slight breeze over the shore wasn’t helping. “When it’s over your head, you win.”
“Hips.” Ember said quickly.
Acton spun back to face her. “Chin. And, I want good answers, with details. No short answers—the whole story, or the answer doesn’t count.”
Ember considered for a moment, walking to the water, and bending down to dip in her hand. She yanked it back out; the water was frigid. She turned back to Acton, frowning.
“No one could go in there!” She said, crossing her arms. “That’ll kill me, Acton. No.”
Acton looked at her, unimpressed, and then at the water. “Get in the water, Em.”
Nonplussed, Ember took a few steps away from him. “Or what? You won’t make me. Deposit, and all that…”
She laughed nervously; Acton’s frown deepened, and he shook his head.
“Get in the water,” he said slowly, as though he were talking to a child, “Or I’ll have to take you home, and I’ll erase your memory, and you’ll stay there. You won’t come out again. You’ll just be a sad little girl whose mother doesn’t love her, and you’ll go back to school, and grow up to be a fat accountant with three cats and a two bedroom apartment, and a weird obsession with little porcelain cows. No one will visit you on the holidays, and your neighbors will wonder if you’re frigid, but really, you’ll just be depressed until the day you finally hang yourself from your ceiling fan. No one will notice until your cats have already eaten all the meat off of your calves.”
Ember stared at him for a long moment, waiting for him to blink, or laugh, but he didn’t. He just stared back at her, too serious, and it left her with a bitter taste in her mouth that he could be so cruel. But even as he stared back at her, there wasn’t any judgment or hint that he was trying to threaten her; he was being honest, and somehow, it turned her stomach to think that he might actually have a way to know. She didn’t want to die alone.
She took a deep breath, nodding, and knew it was entirely in her hands. Acton had a way of making it easy to see what her life was, and until recently, it hadn’t been hers. Like the first night at the bar, he made her see that her life was in her hands, to be defined by her decisions.
It was terrifying, and exhilarating.
“If you walk in to that water right now, Ember,” he said quietly. “I’ll keep you, because I like you. If you can keep up with me, I’ll take you with me every night.”
“You’re not my friend,” she said sternly.
“No,” he conceded. “But I can be something, and that’s more than your family will ever be to you. You’re nothing to them, and it’s only a matter of time before you return the sentiment. You never know—perhaps we will be friends someday. Perhaps we’ll be more.” She shook her head slightly. Acton shifted his feet and clasped his hands in front of him, smiling genially. “Ember, do you know what happens to animals that eat cadavers? They put them down. They think that once an animal has eaten human flesh, it might be tempted to do it again, weather the next body is already dead or not. So they shove the poor creatures into little boxes and take them to a shelter or a veterinarian. A stranger grabs them by the back of their neck and shoves a needle into them, and they die terrified, and all because they were forced to make a horrible decision to eat their master or starve to death. You don’t want that for your poor cats, do you?”
She took a deep breath, cursing lightly as she used the toe of one shoe to hold down the heel of the other, slipping out her feet. She took her jacket off, and then her sweater, and was starting to unbutton her pants when Acton held up his hand.
“No need. I’ve got a change for you afterwards.”
Sighing, Ember turned to the water, and
then turned back to face Acton with her heels at the tideline. She took a step back, and felt her socks soak through at the soles before a wave caught her up to her ankles. She gasped, and Acton laughed.
“And so it begins,” he said, crossing his arms. “If you had to kill your mother, how would you do it?”
Ember’s face contorted with distaste; she tried lifting one foot, and then the other, but it didn’t do anything for the pins and needles. Her feet were throbbing. “Jesus—what kind of a question is that?”
“A fair one.” Acton replied. “How would you do it?”
“A knife.” Ember replied, shaking her head. “She threatened me with a knife once.”
“Step.”
Ember took another step back, and the water rose up to her calves; this time when she winced, it was because the water felt like tiny teeth.
“What’s the worst lie you’ve ever told?”
Ember stared down at her legs, shaking her head. She wasn’t a liar, and her knees were aching like someone had taken a sledgehammer to them. “I don’t know.”
“Not good enough.” Acton said. “Think about it. But, I suggest you think quickly.”
“I don’t…I…I told a friend that I was an orphan, once, when I was little. I was embarrassed that I didn’t get letters from my parents like she did.”
“That’s hardly a lie.” Acton snorted. “Step. Why aren’t you afraid of spiders?”
Even as the water hit her thighs and sent ice shooting up her core, she felt her head snap up to meet Acton’s eyes. “How do you know I’m not afraid of spiders?”
“You told me once,” he replied.
“I had a roommate who liked them.” Her teeth were starting to chatter, and she clenched her jaw when she wasn’t talking to keep from biting her tongue.
“So?”
“So?” She spat out quickly. “They’re just an animal, like any other animal.”
“The skittering legs don’t bother you? The way they capture and kill weaker bugs?”
Ember shook her head, and took another two steps back. Acton was about to protest, but instead he laughed and wagged a finger at her.
“Clever.” He squatted down on the shore so that he was closer to her height; the water was at her hips. “Have you ever tried to kill yourself?”
“No.” Ember said, but when she spoke, her teeth slammed back together in a shiver so hard that she bit her tongue, and she had to bring her hands to her face to control her jaw. “N…no…not until…t…tonight.”
She stepped back. Acton grinned as her stomach disappeared.
“Do you want to?”
Ember felt warm tears streaming from her eyes; she couldn’t feel her legs anymore. If she couldn’t walk, the game was over; her tongue was bleeding, and Acton had purposefully asked a complicated question.
“Sometimes.”
“Not good enough. Like when?”
“When…s…s…sad.”
She took a step back. Acton didn’t seem satisfied with her answer, but he let it go. The water was at Ember’s shoulders, and she was shaking so hard that he was impressed she hadn’t passed out. The first time, when Asher had shoved her into the water in jest, he had been sure she was a goner. People didn’t often survive in the water for long, but Ember wasn’t a person. She was a hunter’s whelp, and apparently made of stronger stock.
This would be his last question.
“What’s the cruelest thing you can imagine?”
Ember’s brain had gone numb, like the rest of her, and she found herself looking up, hoping for something, anything, to come to her. The water had stopped feeling cold; now, it burned. And as she looked up at a million stars, the image of a dead mouse appeared to her. The school cook had set traps in the kitchen—traps of every variety, to catch a sudden spree of bold mice. One of them had been caught right in the middle, and Ember had walked into the pantry one day to see the poor thing, crushed at the waist, his back half useless as his front legs worked furiously to escape. He had worn his tiny paws to bloody nubs scraping against the wood of the trap, just trying to live.
The image had haunted her for months, and she had begged the school to use only no-kill traps after that point. The school had conceded, and the cook set out the traps. More than a year later, when the mouse problem was long over with, Ember had been helping to clean out dust bunnies from under the refrigerator when they found a trap that they had forgotten. There was dust and gunk a centimeter thick on top of it, but it was still good, so Ember wiped it off.
Inside, there was a mouse, curled up into a corner. His eyes were gone—long ago having shrunken back into his skull, and the fur was just starting to fall off of his tiny, starved body. The peanut butter they had used to set the trap was gone, and replaced by the mounds of dried mouse poop. The mouse had died, forgotten, emaciated, and thirsty, in his own waste.
She had spent hours wondering what the mouse thought about in the final days, if mice thought. Was there a warm, safe place somewhere in the wall insulation that he missed and wanted to get back to? Did he wonder how or why he couldn’t? Did the other mice come to the trap and stare in at him, incapable of doing anything but watching him die a slow, lonely death?
Ember had cried for a week.
She looked back to Acton, her jaw snapping furiously, and when their eyes met, she knew he was listening. “D—d—d—dying, in a t—t—t—trap.”
Acton’s smile turned into a frown, and she saw him look at the ground as he stood. She slipped as she went to take her final step, but somehow, he was carrying her out of the water. His jaw was clenched and his eyes were sullen.
“Wh—wh—what?” She managed.
“Nothing,” Acton said quietly. “I agree with you.”
Chapter 12
When he set her down on the ground, the air felt warm. Even the ground felt warm, and she knew she was in trouble if the cold night air felt tepid against her skin.
“Am I going t—t—t—to d——d—d—die…” she asked. Her memory had gone bleary on her again, but the water had evidently sobered her up. “Wh—wh—what—happ—happ—happened?”
“You fell in the water,” Acton said gently. “Here—put these on.”
He threw a plastic bag at her. It had a large, warm, dry sweat suit in it. Ember was shaking so hard that all she could do was curl into a fetal position on the blessedly warm ground.
“Come on--your body temperature is dropping, Em.”
Ember rolled onto her back, trying to let the heat of the ground soak into as much of her as possible, and for the first time, realized that Acton was soaked from head to toe. He had taken off his jacket and his shoes before going in after her, somehow, and was now perched on a large rock several feet away. His hair was dripping and his shirt was sticking to him, but he didn’t seem to notice. He just stared at her, unblinking, as she laid on the ground like a drowned rat.
When Ember finally managed to sit up, and found her hands shaking too hard to be of any use, he slid down from his rock and helped her. Staring at her useless, she wondered at the fact that she could still control them at all.
“Aren’t…you…fr——fr—freezing?” She managed as he pulled her shirt over her head; it was full overcast that night, and there were no stars. He wrung her hair out with his hands before grabbing the sweatshirt and yanking it over her head, going about every step of it with the procedural ambivalence of making a sandwich.
Ember undid the button and zipper on her jeans, and laid flat on the ground as Acton pulled at the cuffs to get them off.
“You’re not the brightest, Ember,” he mumbled, struggling to unhook the fabric from her ankle as her foot flopped numb and uncontrolled. “Most people fight for their lives. You walk into life threatening situations like it’s your job.”
“Oh, for goodness sake, it was an accident,” she said, gritting her teeth to keep them from clapping on her tongue again, and curling her bleeding hand around the edge of her sleeve. “At least I think it
was…”
“You bet Asher that you could walk into the water up to your neck.” Acton snorted, throwing the sweatpants at her. “I think you can manage the rest.”
She shakily pulled them on, and he returned to his perch on the rock. She eyed him cautiously. “And you let me?”
“I’m not your keeper,” he said, sighing. “I’m just the guy who has to keep fixing you up after you do dumb stuff that could kill you.”
Ember scoffed, glad to be warm, and ignored his quip. “Do I have nerve damage, or is it actually warm out?”
Acton went back to staring out toward the water, shifting his bare feet on the rock; he looked like a vulture. “There’s a spring nearby. It’s the only place out here where you can keep warm outside at night.”
Ember nodded, looking back to the stars. So many, and they made her feel so small. “You’re kind of a jerk. Why aren’t you cold? I’m freezing.”
“And you’re kind of suicidal,” Acton replied. “And attention hungry, and desperate, and annoying. And under the right conditions, kind of a slut. I’m not cold because I’m not a weakling like you.”
“Liar,” Ember retorted; but as his words sank in, she shrugged. “About me being a slut, at least. Why are you so mean tonight?”
“I have been nothing but tolerant of you since your arrival,” Acton snapped. But when he looked over at her, his expression softened. “I suppose that was uncalled for. I apologize, Em. Are you warm enough?”
“Will you sit with me?”
Acton climbed down from his rock, and walked over to compose himself in a lounging position next to where Ember was laying in the tall grass.
“Better?” He asked.
Ember shrugged. “You could lay down with me. I’m cold. I need the body warmth.”