The Spider Catcher (Redemption by A.L. Tyler Book 1)

by A. L. Tyler

  “I’m wet.” Acton replied. “And you just got into dry clothes. I don’t want to make you cold again.”

  “Oh. Right.” She eyed him suspiciously. “…and you aren’t cold? Really?”

  “No,” he said with a casual smile. “I never get cold.”

  “Never?” She said again, incredulous. “Well, thank god I have you. Thanks for pulling me out.”

  “Always.” Acton said, stretching out next to her. “I don’t know what I would do without you, Em. My nights would be boring.”

  Ember laughed, turning over to face him, and smiling as the warmth from the ground hit her cold side. “You’re so full of it. I’m nothing special.”

  “You’re actually quite engaging,” Acton said. “You tell some great stories, you don’t mind my eccentricities, and you have an amazing capacity for forgiveness. I’ll miss you when you’re gone.”

  Ember cringed. “I wish I wasn’t leaving.”

  Acton raised his eyebrows, nonplussed. “You should be happy. I would give just about anything to not be trapped here.”

  “Trapped?” Ember said. “Then just leave. You can go wherever you want.”

  Ember’s eyes were fixed on the stars, so she didn’t notice the fleeting expression of disappointment that crossed Acton’s face. “It’s not that simple.”

  “Because of your mom?” Ember pressed. “I like your mom. I like your brothers, too, and Kaylee. They’re all so nice. You’re lucky to have them. Acton, are you sure you’re not cold?”

  She reached over to touch him, and he let her. His skin was like ice. He laughed at her appalled expression.

  “Jesus! Acton, you need to get dry, you’re going to freeze to death!”

  He laughed as he grabbed her hand and held it to his cheek; his fingers were colder than the night air, sending a shiver up her spine. “Em, I’m not cold. I’m different. You haven’t noticed?”

  Ember quietly analyzed him, everything from his freezing skin to his intense eyes that never seemed to smile. She knew that Acton was different; he was exciting, and accepting, and kind. He had brought adventure into her life. “Different how? Don’t you feel pain?”

  “Everything feels pain.” He retorted, laying back on the grass to stare at the stars with her. “I have talents. I can do things normal people don’t do.”

  Confused, Ember rolled onto her side, once again trying to determine if he was pulling her leg. “Like what? Like walking into freezing water without going into shock?”

  Acton only smiled. “Other things, too. I can control people, and make them do what I want.”

  “Prove it.”

  “Well, it doesn’t work on you. It adds to the challenge.” He teased.

  “No proof, no truth.” Ember said flatly; she hadn’t really believed him to begin with, but she was slightly disappointed.

  “I don’t sleep.”

  Ember rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah…because I’m totally going to buy that. You sleep during the days, like me.”

  “I’m not actually human, even.”

  “Uh huh. Sure.” Ember said, yawning. “And I’m a sleeper agent planted by a foreign government, but I can’t prove it to you because I haven’t been triggered yet.”

  Acton rolled closer to her, onto his stomach, so that he could look down at her face. “You’ll never believe me, even if I give you proof, will you?”

  Ember stared up at him sarcastically. But as she watched his eyes trailing around his face, she noticed that they were reflecting light. One of her teachers back at school owned a Siamese cat whose eyes reflected red when they caught the light just right, and right then, Acton’s eyes were doing the same thing. Ember frowned; human eyes didn’t reflect light like that.

  The hair on her arms stood up on end, but she wasn’t cold anymore. At the same time, a broad smile had spread across Acton’s face.

  “So you believe me, then?” He asked. Ember nodded.

  “What are you?” She asked.

  “I’m your friend,” he said, lying back down. “That’s all you need to know.”

  Ember shook her head; she wasn’t tired anymore. “Is that why my mom hates you? Why she’s so afraid, and why she can’t make you leave the island?”

  Next to her, Acton was taking slow, steady breaths. The only other sound was the ocean, and nearby, the little trickle of the spring. He took his time in answering, and Ember was on pins and needles.

  “Yes, that’s why she hates us,” he started. “But it’s not that she can’t make us leave. She kills the ones that do leave, Ember. We’re prisoners here. She’s a hunter, and she believes it’s her place to keep us all in line. So we stay here, or she kills us.”

  Ember glanced over at Acton’s unmoving form, and then gave him a long, hard look. “She’s one woman. There’s…well, you, and your mom, and your brothers, and…”

  “Everyone.” Acton finished for her. “Well, almost everyone on the island.”

  Ember shook her head. “So if there’s so many of you, and one of her, then why do you let her do it?” She stared at the moon, waiting for his reply; it was full tonight, and casting a lot of light. Most of the stars were hidden; there had been two shooting stars so far, but no borealis. “Acton?”

  Acton’s voice sounded irritated. “I stay because I choose to.”

  Ember’s brow furrowed in confusion. “But earlier, I thought you said—“

  “Let’s not talk about it anymore.” Acton said firmly. “Family is that important to you. You would stay here, even though it makes you miserable?”

  Ember heaved a sigh, her thoughts racing as she thought about Gina, so strong and firm in her resolve; she was a prison warden. She mothered Thalia like a grizzly, and in her turn, Thalia was as weak and helpless as a dove. Nan was only half there, and when she was lucid, the sharp edges of her unrestrained and rampant opinions weren’t always easy to be around.

  To Ember, none of them were easy to be around. “They aren’t my family,” she said quietly. “Family is more than blood, but blood is all I have. I can’t love them. Maybe that’s why they can’t love me.”

  Acton nodded, very slowly, listening to the sound of something digging at a stump several yards off. “Family is more than blood. That’s true.”

  There was a long silence, and Ember’s breathing had become so long and regular that Acton thought she might have fallen asleep.

  “If it makes you so miserable, why do you stay?” She asked suddenly.

  Acton closed his eyes, trying to think of something she would believe this time around. Every time he lied to her, and every time, she knew. “It’s all mine, Ember. It belongs to me. Your mother has just temporarily usurped it.”

  Breathing slow, Ember’s voice was beginning to sound tired. Soon, he was going to have to take her back to her mother’s house. “That’s sad.”

  “No worse than life without a family. Or life with one that doesn’t want you, I suppose.”

  Ember let out a slow breath through her nose, shutting her eyes and squeezing out a tear; it was probably because she was so tired, but she was suddenly overwhelmed by the weight of the world. When she left the island, she would never see any of them again, because she knew this place would leave a gaping hole in her life that would never heal. She would never come back to see her mother, and no one would visit her over the holidays. There would be no more birthday cards, and she wouldn’t ever have a sister to call over the phone for advice about boys or babies or fighting with her husband. She was going to go home with a cut up hand, and even with three other people in the house, no one would be there to be concerned for her hurt, or help her with the peroxide and the bandages.

  And whenever she thought about how other people had those things, and she didn’t, the memory of this one summer on Tulukaruk would hurt like a new, bleeding hole in her life.

  “I should just kill myself. I don’t want this life. I don’t deserve this.” Ember said absently; tears suddenly started streaming down her face. “But
the stars are just so pretty.”

  Acton sat up suddenly, looking at Ember with pain and a touch of anger in his eyes; it wouldn’t do to grant her wish, but Gina was going to know about the water, and the cut on Ember’s hand from where she had slipped on the rocks this time. She had sobbed like a little girl when she had tripped and cut it. She had sobbed like the little girl she had been the first night at the bar, and it was touching how she had managed to hold on to her innocence through everything he had inflicted.

  Somehow, it made her seem fresh.

  But as she cried at the sight of her blood on her hand, he had looked at her, so small and pathetic and alone in the world. Her past had been stolen, her future was going to be a string of bad memories and loneliness, and her only friend in the world wasn’t her friend.

  He knew what physically damaging Gina’s daughter meant. Acton had been planning her death for weeks, and now that the night was finally here, he could only think that letting her live would be worse.

  His time on the island was done now. Freedom, or nothing, awaited him tomorrow.

  He had slowly lifted her chin so that he could look into her eyes, and lifted her injured hand. He knelt down before her, the way that Zinny had done to him when he was little—she said it was supposed to make the hurting stop. Those were the words that he repeated to Ember, hoping that she believed the act.

  As she sniffed and wiped at her face with her good hand, he lowered his lips to kiss the cut, long and slow.

  Ember laughed through her tears, pulling her hand back. “Acton, you shouldn’t wish that you were dead. You’re a good person, and a good friend.”

  He didn’t remember when he had said that to her. He had said a lot of things to test her emotional depth.

  “It’s me,” she said, her voice quivering. “I’m a bad person. That’s why no one loves me. I wish I was dead.”

  Acton coughed, licking the blood off of his lips and settling back onto the ground. He felt sick, but she was right. The stars were beautiful tonight.

  When Ember awoke the next evening, and saw her little spider dangling above her bed in the organic dream catcher that he had carefully spun, it took her a moment to gather her thoughts. Her body ached everywhere, and she had the fleeting notion that cold water could do that to a person.

  She got up out of the bed and started pacing, but her legs were too stiff. She went to the bathroom and filled the tub with hot water, stripping out of the sweat suit that Acton had given her. It was too big for her, and must have been one of his. She set it by the door and got into the bathtub, letting the heat soak through her as she planned her next move.

  Not human. The words rang in her head, and she couldn’t decide how she felt about it. She thought she had seen his eyes glow, like an animal’s eyes, but that could have been a trick of the light. He had made her see things—lights, and beauty in the night and the forest—but that could have been anything from alcohol to something he had put in her drink.

  Ember sank lower into the tub, dunking her head under to get the ocean smell out of her hair.

  Acton had pulled her out of the freezing water, and it hadn’t affected him at all. He had just hung out in the night, and the wind, in his soaking clothes, and he hadn’t even looked cold—it should have put him into shock, at least.

  That one was harder to explain away.

  As Ember tried to puzzle it out, she washed her hair, and when the water in the tub was too cold, she stood up to shower off. When she got out and started to towel off, a different question crossed her mind.

  Acton would be expecting her that night, and she wasn’t sure if it was safe to go with him. He was her friend, and he wanted her. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, she tried to smile; it was something to hope for, at least.

  She wondered if she should dress up or wear something fit for hiking across the island. As she bandaged her injured palm, she hoped she hadn’t ruined the sheets with blood. She should have wrapped it when she got home, but she didn’t remember coming home. It was odd, because forgetting that one detail, she remembered more about the previous night than she did almost any other so far.

  Butterflies erupted in her stomach when she thought of Acton’s lips on her hand, and the sad look in his eyes as he had kissed her. She hadn’t really thought of him as anything more than a friend, and now she wasn’t sure what he thought of her.

  As Ember quietly puzzled, walking back to her bedroom as she contemplated the thought that she might not die alone, she had no warning for what she was about to see.

  The room was empty, and it stopped her in her tracks. Her suitcase was gone, and the clothes, and the bed sheets and blankets and pillows. Even the mattress was gone. Her drapes had been stripped from the window, and as Ember walked forward, frowning, she saw the blaze going in the backyard—a pillar of fire that stretched clear to the second story of the house. Tendrils of red and orange curling into the darkening night as sparks drifted like deadly fireflies from every hot wisp.

  And down in the yard, pitching in one item after another was Gina, working in a frenzy to empty Ember’s suitcase into the blaze before throwing in the bag itself. She hurled in the bedclothes, and finally, a small, bundled wad that looked uncannily like Acton’s sweat suit.

  Ember stood slack-jawed, now with nothing to wear but a towel as she watched the rest of her things burn up. Gina raised her hands to grab at her hair before lowering her clenched fists to her sides, screaming into the fireball in front of her.

  Chapter 13

  As Ember stood looking out the window, unsure about what would come next, she heard soft footsteps behind her. She turned to see Thalia next to her, looking out at her mother pacing around the fire, with regret.

  “She said it was the smell,” Thalia said finally. “She could smell them on everything, and she couldn’t take it anymore. Not inside the house.”

  Ember was almost speechless. Thalia was so calm about it. “Is she crazy?”

  “She…well, no.” Thalia’s face had crunched up in concentration. “She’s just protecting us, from all of the bad people on the island.”

  “Who?” Ember asked.

  Thalia shook her head, looking at the floor. “Everyone. Come on, I’ll get you some clothes.”

  Ember followed Thalia to her room, and was shocked to realize that Thalia didn’t have a room of her own after all. There were two beds, identically made with blue quilts, that shared a wide nightstand between them. The walls were covered with an old floral pattern wallpaper, and the lampshade on the light between the beds was so old that it had turned from white to yellow in spots.

  “You sleep with Nan?” Ember asked incredulously.

  “Nan has her own room.” Thalia explained, walking over to a wardrobe that was wedged between the wall and the foot of one of the beds. “I sleep with mom.” When she turned around and saw the look of horrified bewilderment on Ember’s face, she smiled politely. “I like it that way. It makes me feel safe, and she likes to keep me close. I hope these fit you——they fit me and mom. You just have to roll the waist up, and the sleeves and the cuffs sometimes, and make sure your belt is tight enough.”

  Ember looked down at the pants and shirt that Thalia had handed her, and her sister shyly excused herself from the room so that Ember could dress. Ember shook her head in disbelief as she laid out the pants and shirt; they were both made from simple cotton. The green shirt had buttons down the front, but the pants operated by a simple drawstring. As Thalia had indicated, they both fit marginally well once they had been rolled up in the right places, but she wasn’t about to borrow the underthings of her crazy mother or frail sister—that would cross a line to intimacy that didn’t exist.

  However, she did look through the drawers, one by one, until she located a small metal box on one side of the nightstand that had a wad of money in it. Ember could only assume that her cash was gone, and she was going to need to replace a few things. Her mother’s habit so far had been to take her keep out
of her trust fund, so she couldn’t see why taking some money would be any different. Fair was fair—Gina had taken her money away, and she was going to take it back.

  But as she took the money out of the little box, and quickly counted out more than five thousand dollars, she knew she wasn’t going to steal it.

  She set it back in the box and closed the lid, staring mournfully at her chance to buy underwear and shoes. Makeup, books, and jeans; Gina had taken it all. But as Ember stared longingly into the nightstand drawer, she saw something else, pushed to the very back behind a little tray of pens and notepads, and next to a little bag of potpourri.

  It was a stack of all of the letters that Ember had sent over the years. She picked them up, thumbing through them absently, and hardly believing that anyone had bothered to keep them all. Gina didn’t seem like the sentimental sort. Some of them were years old—large letters drawn in crayon on the back of childish drawings, but even from a young age, Ember had impeccable spelling. She sighed, going to put the letters back, but noticed that they had been sitting on top of a stack of photographs in the drawer.

  She slowly pulled out each one of her school photos, one for each year that she had been away, ending with the photo she had sent with her last letter. The letter she had sent to her mother to say that she was unhappy at school, and that she wanted to come home.

  “Ember?”

  Ember looked up sharply to see Thalia’s face poking out from behind the door.

  “Oh…” She said, sliding into the room and shutting the door behind her. She sat on the opposite bed to face her sister as Ember put the photos back under the stack of her letters and snapped the drawer shut. “Mom wanted to get rid of those, but I asked if I could have them. I wanted to know what you looked like. I guess I could have just looked in the mirror.”

  Thalia laughed nervously. Ember only frowned.

  “Am I going to have to sleep in here with you, and her?” She asked.

  Thalia matched her frown, and quickly looked down again. “No, mom doesn’t want you getting attached. She said you could have Nan’s bed.”