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

by A. L. Tyler

  Zinny sighed as she continued to pad her limb until it looked passably normal. There was precious little muscle left on the charred bones—just enough that her arm wasn’t completely useless—but it was going to be ugly for a long time. Things got broken frequently on Tulukaruk, expensive or not, and Ember was going to have to get used to it.

  Looking at Thalia’s comatose body, laid out on the barroom floor, Zinny supposed it was for the best. She would have been a sad little girl knowing that her sister had taken up with demons, but now she had traded it for a hunter’s instinct and outrage. At least those things were easier to feel.

  Hoisting her body up into her arms, Zinny found an old tarp to wrap her in; the fire had taken her clothes and her hair, but given her so much in return. Her face was healed, and so was the hand that she had broken on Acton’s face. The lacerations that had run down her legs and ripped open the soles of her feet were gone. Thalia was a perfect and whole as the day she had been born. Zinny knew that she wouldn’t feel the cold outside that night, and wouldn’t feel the cold on the island ever again. Gina was going to save a load of money on the bill she was paying for the furnace and the water heater.

  Children were expensive, and the thought that her own bills might soon be higher made Zinny smile.

  She knew that Gina wouldn’t care about the nudity, either, or not any more than Zinny did. Hunters were animals, like demons, and clothes were only a perception of armor. But that perception—the perception that being naked was being vulnerable—and the fact that an army of air horns wouldn’t wake Thalia, was the reason she wrapped her up before carrying her home.

  Walking through the forest, barefoot and alone with her thoughts, she tried to work out what she was going to say to Gina.

  Ember was pregnant, and that changed everything. It didn’t matter what Acton wanted anymore.

  Gina wouldn’t want it, and Zinny had always wanted another baby; it was almost as though God had smiled on them all. Ember would finally have her family, and Gina wouldn’t have to worry over her anymore. She never stopped talking about how she had always wanted a family.

  The door was open when Zinny arrived. Gina was standing in the frame, stock still, staring at Zinny with a haggard look that said she would gladly curl up in a coffin, if only the world were finally done with her. But the world wasn’t done with her yet, and she would endure another day.

  Coming to an exhausted halt three steps before the stoop, Zinny sighed as she shrugged her shoulders. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” Gina responded. Her eyes lingered on the stars, trying to prolong her break from reality before she had to come back to earth. Her eyes flicked down to Thalia’s body before settling on Zinny’s face.

  Zinny tried to smile, but only half of her mouth moved. “Hell of a season, right?”

  Thalia had gotten her good. She wasn’t going to see anything out of that eye for a couple of weeks, at least.

  “Did she take anyone with her?” Gina asked calmly.

  Zinny looked down, pursing her lips and shaking her head slightly. She tried not to take it as an insult. “No. She…well, she went after Acton, but…”

  Gina lowered her chin and her voice. “You intervened. You want to be held responsible for him? This time, that’s what you want?”

  “Gina—“ Zinny went to take a step forward, but Gina held her hand up. “Do you hate me?”

  Finally unfreezing from her stance, Gina crossed her arms, swaying a little as she looked back up to the stars. “No. No more than the others.”

  “We were sisters, Gina.” Zinny said quietly. “In a past life. We were sisters.”

  “Just put her down.” Gina finally snapped. “I’ll take her in when I’m done.”

  Zinny carefully set Thalia on the ground. She looked back up at Gina, carefully holding her hands in front of her.

  This time, Gina didn’t look down. “What?”

  “About Ember—“

  Zinny stopped when Gina started to slowly shake her head again. “We’re never talking about her again. She’s going away. We’ll never see her again.”

  “She’s pregnant.” Zinny sputtered.

  “I wish she hadn’t told you that…” Gina looked down at Thalia, sighing. “But okay, yes. So what if she is? It doesn’t concern you. We’re getting rid of it.”

  “It?” Zinny said through her teeth; she felt a flush run across her skin.

  “It.” Gina repeated. “Ethel found an angel capable of fixing the damage. He erased everything he could of what happened to her here, Zinny. She doesn’t remember any of it. It’s done. She’s going away, and I will never be stupid enough to let her come back.”

  “No!” Zinny felt her good hand clench into a fist. “No, that is my grandchild, Gina, and I want him or her—“

  “It’s my grandchild, too.” Gina said calmly. “My first grandchild. And Acton Knox was the father.”

  “You will give her back to me, Gina.” Zinny said in a low tone. “I want her, and I want my grandchild, and God help me, I will never forgive you if you take this away from me. She is my responsibility—“

  “She is my daughter, Zinny. Mine, and she is nothing to you, and you will never speak to me again about how I intend to raise my daughter.” Gina looked at her long and hard, and the light coming from the stairwell behind her suddenly seemed far too bright in the darkness that surrounded them. Without looking away from Zinny’s face, she gave a curt nod. “Acton. You have some nerve…”

  Zinny spun around, her eyes wide as they focused on the black silhouette of Acton’s mask, half hidden in the trees and brush several yards out. The fox took several quick steps forward before the mask dropped, and he was Acton again. He had disappeared after Thalia had passed out, and she hadn’t seen him since she finally went still. Even though his burns were much less severe than hers, he somehow looked more worn down by them.

  He leveled his gaze directly on Zinny. “Go home. I’ll take care of it.”

  Zinny compulsively wiped her hands down the front of her dress, and then remembered that one of them was composed mostly of a silk scarf. She walked forward to him, raising both hands to touch his cheeks. He leaned down so that she could whisper in his ear.

  “I want her back.”

  Acton stood straight again, looking her in the eye but giving her no response. Finally, Zinny walked away.

  When she had disappeared into the dark and there was only silence left, Acton walked up to stand directly in front of Gina. He looked down, fighting the urge to nudge Thalia with his foot.

  “I’m done,” he said quietly. “I told you that I would give her back, unharmed. I’m done. I want you to send her away.”

  “This was what you wanted all along, wasn’t it?”

  The clarity of Gina’s voice startled him, and he looked up. She was a cold woman, and he found it hard to believe that she could still be so objective.

  “You polluted her body, and then left me with the choice of how to defile her.” Gina nodded, unblinking. “I can kill it or force her to have it, whatever it is. That’s what you wanted to do me—force me to make an impossible choice.”

  Acton smiled ruefully as he dragged a hand over his face. “I wanted to win, and that’s what I did. There’s a piece of me inside of her, and you can kill it or let it go. Either way, that’s a part of me that’s leaving this island, Gina. That’s the choice I wanted you to make. Kill me or let me go.”

  Her footsteps made hollow noises on the steps as she walked down toward him. “I could keep it here.”

  “Oh, you won’t do that.” Acton shook his head. “You couldn’t bear to look at it, and you know I don’t have any use for brats. We wouldn’t want something to happen to it, like what happened to the other four.”

  As he smirked, her lip curled just enough to remind him of a threatened dog. Slowly, Gina kneeled down before him to pick up Thalia in her arms. It was going to be difficult to convince her not to burn the island down when she woke up, but she would l
isten. When she met his gaze again, Acton sighed.

  “You’re going to forgive me.” He said bitterly. “After everything I did, after I took your daughter—“

  With glassy eyes, Gina only shook her head. “You’re different, Acton. You wanted me to kill you. That’s what you wanted out of this.”

  Tasting disappointment, Acton turned and spat. “Why?”

  “You’re the only demon I’ve ever known to care about what others think of you.” She said, turning to take Thalia back into the house.

  “I don’t.”

  “You care what I think of you.” Gina said with sudden force, turning back to him. “And don’t call it forgiveness. You belong in hell for what you did to her, but if there was ever such a place, then this is it. This is where you belong, and it’s not my place to kill you. That’s something that only Ember can do, because you’ve earned it, and that’s what I’m telling Thalia to do when I’m dead and gone. No one has the right to kill you but Ember.”

  The expression that spread across Acton’s face was so unsettling that Gina almost dropped Thalia to defend herself.

  “She won’t,” Acton said, suddenly cross. “If I asked her to, she would come back to me, whether she remembered me or not. We have something special. We’re a family now.” He stopped, shaking his head. “Get her off of this island before I change my mind. Zinny wants that child, Gina, but I don’t. Get her out while you have the chance, or Zinny will find a way to make her stay.”

  Epilogue

  Shutting the door behind her, Gina once again lifted Thalia, walking over to set her on the couch before she realized that Ember was already occupying it. She laid them down next to each other, just like she had when they were little. They looked like they were sleeping; it was a shame that neither one actually was. If everything went to plan, they would never see each other again.

  “It’s done?” She asked quietly.

  “It’s done.” Theo said from the chair across the room. “But he’s right, Gina. She didn’t want to give it up. I took what I could. She’ll still remember them, but she won’t know anything about demons. She’s a normal teenager again.”

  Gina nodded, licking her lips. “Acton?”

  “He left her.” Theo said stiffly. “She woke up alone, and he was just gone. He abandoned her. It’s the best I could do without leaving something that would make her suspicious.”

  Gina took a deep breath, shaking her head and trying not to seem disappointed. “The child?”

  “It wasn’t rape.” Theo said again with more force. “That’s not how she remembers it, and I’m not changing it. I’m not putting her through that after everything else that—“

  “—It’s fine, Theo.” Gina said, turning toward him and forcing a smile. “I agree with you. Thank you. Thank you for doing what you could.”

  She excused herself to the kitchen. Theo stood to follow her.

  “Gina…” He said lightly. “Ethel is gone. She went out, trying to track down signs of Joseph, in case he’s still here. I don’t believe he is anymore, but he was. He’s moved on or dead.”

  Gina nodded, scrubbing at a pot in the sink.

  “Gina.”

  She stopped, looking over at Theo. His brow had furrowed in a way that made her worry.

  “I’m not the first person to go erasing things in that girl’s mind.” He said quietly. “She’s a deep ocean of nothing, and something was there before, but it’s all gone now. A massive amount of something is gone now. I think you know that I’m not talking about a meddling, amateur demon that got at her over a single summer.”

  Gina met his gaze, but didn’t say anything. When she started shaking her head a moment too late, Theo’s grip on the counter tightened like a vice to keep his feet on the ground.

  “Who is she?”

  “She’s my daughter.” Gina said quietly, turning back to the sink. “She’s leaving tomorrow to go back to school, and everything is going to be okay.”

  His eyes scanned the window as he leaned in toward Gina, and watched her swallow her nerves. Pointing back toward the living room, he kept his voice low. “Is she the one they talk about?”

  Gina smiled, and then laughed, but looked like she was going to be sick as she shook her head and went back to the dishes. “No.”

  “Why does Zinnia want her so badly?” His stomach turned to knots; he still wasn’t sure that it was all about the child anymore. “She’s not going to stop, Gina. Everything I have ever heard about that woman says that she gets what she wants, and she wants that child.”

  Gina dropped the pan, letting it clatter into the sink. She stared Theo down with such intensity that he took a step back. “Over my dead body.”

  ###

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  Prologue

  The garden was a large space behind the house that was fenced off by a great, hand-stacked stone wall. The wall was fully closed from the back of the house to where it wrapped around the side yard, and small animals often nested between the largest gaps between the flat stones. It was late September, and things had mostly died down to a large pile of dead foliage and old pine needles. Thalia picked up one of the jump ropes, shaking off the dead leaves with little fear of the creepy crawlers that might have been hiding there, and immediately started to trot around the yard with it. Ember pushed her hands deep into her pockets as her teeth chattered against the dropping temperature that came with a premature northern night.

  Thalia’s feet crunched on the leaves. “One, two, three, four, five...”

  Thalia didn't like to play with others, and often neglected Ember, who might have preferred the company. Ember liked to trick herself into believing that Thalia liked being alone. It wasn't really that she liked being alone--she liked being with her mother and Nan. She just didn't like being with Ember, and oftentimes, Thalia thought she was a figment of her imagination, and if she ignored Ember long enough, she might disappear and go away.

  But as a real flesh-and-blood child, Ember was incapable, as many times as she had tried. Sometimes, when it was time for bed, or when Ember found herself alone in a corner, she would shut her eyes tight, pretending that she really had been a figment. With the world blacked out to nothing, she would imagine that she was Thalia, the girl with the pretty hair and the perfect demeanor, and that Ember had been something she pretended.

  But it never came true.

  "...seventeen, eighteen, nineteen...”

  Alone with herself, Ember stared up at the sky, and the trees, and she felt the breeze blowing through the fabric of her jacket and cloths and touching her skin. She shivered with both the cold and the sensation.

  “...thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three...”

  She walked to the wall at the back of the garden and started searching for birds' nests or signs of ground squirrels in the gaps and holes. She stared intently, hoping they hadn’t all gone away to wherever they hibernated, though it was getting late in the year and late in the day. Dragging her hand along the wall as she went, over the sharp edges and unforgiving hardness, she turned the corner into the side yard and heard her Nan and mother talking about something. It was something upsetting and serious, by the sound of it. Ember only sighed heavily, and then looked up to stare at the sky as she tried to ignore the voices. The sky was darkening, but it was still too light for stars; Ember stayed looking straight up until it made her dizzy.

  She finally looked back down at the far end of the side yard, where the alleyway made by the stone wall ended, and noticed something. There was something red on the wall, and the presence of the red thing piqued her interest. It wasn’t a natural red, like one would see on flowers or birds; this red was artificially bright. It was not from her mother’s garden.

  She walked toward the pretty thing, and picked it up. It was a scrap of cheap ribbon, like the kind used to tie a child’s helium balloon to their wrist.

  “Hell
o.”

  Ember looked up with surprise to see a boy sitting on top of the wall. She was sure that he hadn't been there before. He wasn't quite a man, though he certainly appeared more of an adult than a child. He had dark hair and deep, dark eyes, and long limbs which he had composed around himself like casual accomplices.

  Ember smiled at his friendly confidence. The stranger smiled back.

  “Hello.” Ember said, intrigued with the turn of events. “Is this yours?” She asked, holding out the bit of ribbon. It seemed rather a melancholy treasure without its balloon, frayed at one end and clipped straight at the other.

  “Yes.” The stranger smiled more broadly, revealing starkly white teeth. “But I am giving it to you. Do you like red?”

  Ember stared back down at the red ribbon, and suddenly realized that she did very much like red. She was also pleased that the stranger would find the bit of ribbon of enough value to give to someone like it was a gift; her mother would have called it a piece of trash. “Yes, I like red. Red is my favorite color.”

  “Mine too.” The stranger said with another grin that never touched his eyes. “What is your name?”

  “Ember Gillespie.” Ember said wistfully, rubbing her head against her shoulder to push a stray bit of hair back behind her ear.

  “Ember. Gillespie.” The stranger repeated back to her without blinking. “May I come into the yard, Ember?”

  With a pleased smile, Ember nodded. “Yes. You can come down.”

  He dropped gracefully from the top of the wall to kneel down on ground before her. He had black hair and a handsome face, like a prince from a storybook. He brought his hand to touch the part of the ribbon that hung from Ember’s hands. “I like red, too…Though I believe I like a different red than you. Red is a very special color.”