by A. L. Tyler
“Empty threat.” Acton said, opening the back door for her. “You’d rather be dead than going back there. You’ve said so more than once.”
Walking out the door and closing her shawl as she crossed her arms, Ember chose to ignore the remark. Acton followed her out, putting his hands in his coat pockets. As they walked down Main, dark and lonely and blanketed with stars, Ember was reminded of the first night that she had gone out with Acton. She had been so determined to impress him, and to shed her image as Gina’s damaged, outcast daughter.
She wondered if anything she had done had ever impressed him, or if it had all been a trick.
“What are you thinking about?” Acton asked.
Ember looked over at him; her words came out more sarcastic than she intended them to be. “You don’t read thoughts? I thought Asher said—“
“Kaylee is a thought reader.” Acton cut her off. “It’s a common trick here, more common among the females, but I don’t have it. However, it does seem to answer my question—you’re angry at me for not telling you sooner.”
Ember frowned, looking down. “No, I’m not.”
Acton spun to stop in front of her, putting out a hand to touch just beneath her collar bone and stop her in her tracks. “Yes, you are. You never used to lie to me, Em; are you afraid of me now?”
Ember took a deep breath, staring at the damp, packed dirt road under her feet. She shook her head as Acton’s cold finger dropped back to his side, and looked him in the eye. He had said that if he wanted to kill her, he would just do it, and she believed him. There was no point in trying to escape, and she didn’t want to die a coward or a liar.
“Yes.” Ember tried not to flinch as Acton smiled. “You’re turning into the guy my mother warned me about.”
“Quite literally.” Acton said, his smile stretching wider.
“And tonight, I watched you make a girl cut off most of her hand using mental telepathy, or something.” Ember sighed. “Why shouldn’t I be afraid of you?”
Acton took a moment to make it clear he was contemplating the question. Ember suddenly felt like a five-year-old awaiting a gold star for the picture she had painted.
“Because you’re a lost little girl with a bad family life, you’re secretly excited by the fingers you saw on the table tonight, you’re discovering that you’re attracted to dangerous things—namely, me—and your personal dogma is survival of the fittest.” Acton turned and started walking again, out into the woods. Not wanting to get left behind for whatever demon chose to come for her, she followed after him. “In short, you have potential. But mostly, Em, because I like you.”
“Why?” Ember called at his back.
“There’s no accounting for taste.” Acton responded.
“No—I mean, why do I have potential?” Ember tripped on a rock in the dark and caught herself by grabbing hold of a tree trunk. When she looked back up, Acton was standing in front of her. He had been at least twenty feet in front of her before, and hadn’t made a single noise backtracking to where she was bent over, awkwardly hugging a tree.
“You have potential because you’re here, Ember,” he said, making no move to help her up. “You kept chasing me, begging for my attention and approval, even after I threatened to kill you. Persistence is a key to success.”
“Success at what?”
As Ember finally regained her footing, Acton offered his hand. When Ember took it, he wrapped an arm behind her back and another under her knees, lifting her up to carry her.
“Hey!”
As Acton took off at a run, Ember grabbed the front of his jacket.
“Acton!”
He didn’t respond; they were moving so quickly that Ember could feel a breeze on her cheeks. She shut her eyes against the wind and tried to move her hands from his jacket to his shoulders as she bounced and jostled along, certain at every bump that he was about to drop her.
When the wind on her cheeks finally stopped, and she felt the ground gently rise beneath her back, she cracked her eyes open. The ground was warm, and there were fewer trees here, and they were smaller, allowing for a panoramic view of the night sky.
Shivering on the ground, Ember stared up at Acton’s eyes, eerily flashing in the dim moonlight as he looked down at her.
She shook her head in small, tight jerks. “You can’t do that anymore.”
Acton settled down on the ground next to her, stretching out so that he could stare straight up at the sky. “I’m not going to change, and especially not because you’ve told me to. I’m willing to extend you the same courtesy.”
Ember looked back up at the sky, suddenly taken with frustration and gratitude she felt at the prospect that Acton would never change, but that he never wanted her to either. She supposed his terms were fair.
“Could you at least make an attempt to not do any more mutilation in front of me?” She asked. “It made me sick.”
“It made you worried.” Acton corrected. “But you don’t need to worry. And no, I’m not changing that aspect of my life. I enjoy it too much.”
Ember’s gaze traveled around the sky, searching out the constellations that she had learned in school. They had taken a few fieldtrips to study astronomy, and a handful more overnight camping trips, but the stars in a place as rural and unlit as Tulukaruk were spectacular. It made her feel like she was at the bottom of the ocean, staring up at so much weight, just to be under it.
“They make me feel lonely,” she said suddenly. “It’s like I don’t matter…”
“It’s the alcohol.” Acton said flatly. “And you’re always lonely.”
Ember glanced over at him. “I thought you couldn’t read thoughts?”
“All of us…all of the demons.” He hesitated, as if he hated using the word. “We can’t all read thoughts, but we can read emotions, and especially painful ones. Those come from somewhere else. We feed on them.”
“Ah.” Ember rolled onto her stomach so that she wouldn’t have to stare into the infinite sky anymore. “So, that’s why you like me.”
“And I’m the only one willing to indulge your emotional neediness without killing you, so that must be why you like me.” He retorted. “Don’t judge me. You’re so desperate that you would rather make friends with a demon than be alone. You’re going to hell.”
Ember couldn’t help the sarcastic smile that was spreading across her lips. “At least we’ll be together. So, how does this work, then?”
“What?”
“This…friendship. Relationship. Whatever it is.” Ember paused, trying to order her words to make sense. “What do I do?”
When Acton didn’t respond, Ember looked over. He was giving her an odd look.
“I don’t know.” He said finally. “I’ve never made friends with a victim before. I suppose you’ll come out each night, we’ll drink, torture a helpless soul, talk about our horrible lives, and then I’ll get you home before dawn.”
Ember frowned. “I don’t like the idea of torturing.”
“Well,” Acton snapped, “I don’t like the idea of not torturing. If you’re going to befriend demons, you need to accept that part of the deal.” When he looked and saw the sullen expression on Ember’s face as she huddled in the cold next to him, he shrugged. “I’ll think about it. I suppose it won’t last long, anyways.” He paused, and then looked over at her before quickly looking away. “You could go out in the water.”
For a moment, Ember wasn’t sure that she had heard him correctly. “What?”
It had started out innocent, when Asher had pushed her in. Then it had become a habit, and then, a desire. At first he had told himself that he liked the smell of her better after the water; the salt and cold stripped away all of the soaps and artificial smells, and it felt more like being with an island native. But there was something more to it, and it was in the invitation, and the heat. Every night after he made her go into the water, as she lay on the ground shivering, she would insist that he come and lie next to her because he
was going to freeze to death—never mind the fact that he had been the one to put her in the water to begin with. He had refused her offer until the night she had cut her hand, and that was when he discovered the warmth.
He had accepted her offer the next night, and the next. She would press up against him, putting his hands flat on her back under her shirt and doing the same to him. At first he had worried that he would prevent her from warming back up, but he had quickly discovered that there wasn’t any stopping her. She warmed herself, and him, and the feeling was close to infatuation. On the night that she had kissed him, he had decided that the addiction would end.
Acton swallowed, shaking his head. “Nothing. Forget it.”
Furrowing her brow, Ember looked over at him. “Do you think my mother is going to kill me?”
Acton almost laughed, but it came out as a hiss as he shook his head. “That would be a shocking turn of fate. More likely she would kill me, or Ethel would. God knows she tries.”
Ember sat up sharply, looking down so that she could see his face. “She’s actually killed people?”
Acton’s expression remained impassive. “Ethel has had a few. But your mother…yes, she’s killed more than a few of us.”
The image of Gina with a knife in her hand as she opened the front door the night that Ember had locked herself out flashed through her mind, and she wondered how lucky she had been. Ethel had asked what was wrong with her before slapping her hard across the cheek.
It will all be over soon enough. Ember wasn’t sure if it was a threat or not. The way Gina had said it, she seemed to have meant it more as a promise. It was an inevitability to her, whether she wanted it or not, and Ember was almost sure she knew what Gina had meant now.
She had given up. Gina had given up trying to stop Ember from being with Acton and his friends, and she had already accepted her death. In her mind, she was already one of them.
But as Ember looked down at Acton, spread out so casually in the tall reeds, with the faint sounds of waves and the bubbling of the nearby stream on the breeze, she didn’t mind. Even if she was only an amusement to him, she could accept that he was only the same to her. If she was going to die in this place, it wasn’t the worst of things. The forest was magic at night when demons were involved. They were brutal, and beautiful, and if she had to do all of her living in only a few weeks, Ember was prepared.
Acton’s brown-green eyes watched her carefully, almost hesitantly, as she slowly laid back down, close enough that her arm was touching Acton’s but still far enough to allow him his space. He closed his eyes and shook his head, wishing that he didn’t want to reach out and take her hand.
Chapter 16
In the cold wet of dawn, Acton stood up and lifted Ember into his arms, walking at first, and then building to a sprint. He harangued her into changing back into the clothes that Thalia had given her, and then carried her and her new bag of supplies back out into the brightening woods. When he set her down several hundred feet from her mother’s home, she almost cried.
“I don’t want to go back there,” she pleaded. “Can’t I just stay outside? I could live out here, like Isaac.”
“You’re one of them, even if you don’t act like them.” Acton said back to her, nodding toward the house. “That will never change. And I have needs that you don’t meet.”
“Acton…”
“Just stay in your room,” he said over his shoulder as he walked away. The back of his black suede jacket was damp from being on the ground all night, and little bits of dried grass had stuck to it. It was the messiest she had ever seen him. “Come back out tonight, or don’t. I’ll watch for you either way.”
Ember watched him until he was gone, but then turned around, picked up her bag, and slowly trudged back to her mother’s house, thinking about how nice the stars looked through the haze of Acton’s hypnotism. The world was filled with broad strokes of bright colors whenever he did it; it was like looking at a living impressionist painting.
There was a layer of damp on the stone wall at the back of the yard, and Ember didn’t even have the energy to care. She wasn’t going to walk around to the gate. She laid herself flat, hugging the wall as she slid over on her stomach, feeling the cold and the grime as they attached themselves to the cotton garments she was wearing.
The fire pit where her mother had created an inferno the night before had gone to a cold grey muck. Ember stared at it longingly; everything she had brought with her had gone into that pit. That was what it all came down to in the end; ash and mud.
She picked up a stick, poking through the mess, wondering if anything had escaped the blaze. It wouldn’t be like having it back, but even something little—like a metal button, or a coin—would be enough to remember it all by. She would keep the little souvenir safe forever after, and it would be like she had somehow salvaged a piece of everything she should have kept safe to begin with.
But as she stirred the gunk, she hit on something hard and smooth. She poked at what she thought was a large river stone until it turned over. Two empty eye sockets and a gaping maw of teeth stared back at her.
Ember dropped her stick.
Acton had said that Gina was a killer. He had said that she killed on a regular basis, but it hadn’t been a reality to Ember until right in that moment. She wondered what unfortunate soul had gone up in flames with her tennis shoes, underclothes, and cell phone, and felt sick to her stomach when Thalia’s words came back to her.
Gina and Ethel had had a fight. Ethel had “gone away,” and Thalia wasn’t sure when she would come back.
Ember wasn’t sure if she was ever coming back.
She crouched down in front of the skull, wondering if she would even recognize her grandmother, inching closer, trying to make her hand leave the side of her body to fetch the bone, thinking that someone ought to give it a proper burial. It didn’t deserve to rest there, covered with black-brown goo and grit; it looked like it was in a cesspool.
With her throat gone dry, and just as she had finally convinced her fingers to reach out and brush a glob of fine-ash muck from the skull’s brow, the skull moved.
Ember jumped back in surprise, landing on her rump in the mud. She crab-walked backwards a few feet, keeping her eyes on the skull, unsure if she had actually just seen what she thought she had seen.
After a few more moments, as the skull and Ember stared each other down, the skull gently rolled onto its side, and something black started to come out of it.
It wasn’t like the mud or the wet ash, or even like decaying flesh. What was slowly inching its way out of the eye socket, like a massive worm trying to wiggle away from the mouth of death, was the same substance that Ember had seen bleeding from Kaylee’s hand.
It was alive.
As Ember sat transfixed, the worm slowly gyrating and pulsing as it struggled to birth itself from the eye socket, the skull suddenly exploded beneath the heel of Gina Gillespie’s boot heel. She kicked at the struggling black worm, and then tossed a soaked towel over it.
Ember caught a whiff of the kerosene just before Gina struck the match and flames shot up from the ground; the black thing writhed and hissed, like bacon shrinking in a hot pan. Gina beat her hand against her apron to put out the part of her that had caught when she had lit the towel she had carried, and then looked Ember coolly in the eye.
“We’ve got food, and you’re welcome to it,” she said. “But I don’t want to talk to you, so keep your mouth shut unless you’re putting something in it.”
Chapter 17
Inside the house, Thalia was hunched over a bowl of oatmeal. Her eyes peeked out from under her brow for a split second before she refocused on her food.
“’Lia,” Ember said quietly, fetching a bowl for herself from the cabinet and filling it at the stove.
Thalia didn’t look up. She didn’t move. She just sat there, clutching her spoon and staring into the specter of her breakfast like it held her escape. Ember took a quick look out th
e kitchen window to be sure that Gina was still outside; she was, kicking and beating at the thing that had squirmed from the skull.
Ember turned back to her sister. “Who was that out there? Who did she kill?”
Thalia’s eyes darted up once again, but disappeared again just as quickly.
“’Lia,” Ember tried again, this time lowering her voice. “Where’s Nan? Did mom kill her?”
Without a word, Thalia got up from the table, scooping her uneaten oatmeal into the garbage and putting her dish in the sink. She ran the water enough to fill it and keep the food bits from sticking, and then made a beeline for the pile of shoes by the front door. She pulled on a pair, and turned for the door leading to the garden.
Ember gingerly stepped in to block the door, and Thalia was forced to face her. Her hair hung in pigtail braids today, much as it had when they were little. As their eyes met, Thalia only gave a little nod of surrender.
“You should shower,” she whispered, pushing past Ember to join her mother in the garden.
Watching her go, Ember sighed, nodding, and looked down at the bowl of oatmeal in her hands. Thalia wasn’t going to talk to her anymore, and Ember couldn’t blame her. Gina was…well, she was in the back yard, crushing something unnatural beneath her foot while burning it alive.
She wasn’t someone that anyone would want to cross.
Ember went up to her bedroom, pausing in the doorway as she looked around the empty shell; she had almost forgotten. She turned and went down the hall, opening the door to her grandmother’s room. Without touching anything else, she set the bowl of oatmeal on the nightstand, her bag by the bed, and returned to the hall. As she fetched a towel from the linen closet and went into the bathroom to shower, she felt dead on her feet.
Balling up the clothes Thalia had given her and putting them in the sink, she hoped they didn’t stink too badly. Zinny had washed them, but Acton had carried her most of the way home. She washed, paying close attention to her hair, and then wrapped herself in a towel and went back to her grandmother’s room.