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Just a girl.
It’s just a girl.
Yasuo lunged at me. Did Toby lunge, too? Later I told myself he did. Later, I told myself he hadn’t been flinging himself between us.
Because when I speared the pitchfork, I speared Toby.
There was a horrific moment. A sharp inhale. A gurgled exhale. His eyes met mine, confused. Bewildered. It was a weird look, like he’d asked me to prom and I’d surprised him by turning him down. It wasn’t the look you’d expect from a guy impaled on the business end of a dung fork.
He fell.
Yasuo laughed, a cackling, gleeful sound. “Told you. Killer. ” He repeated it over and over, manic and high-pitched. “Killer. Killer. ”
It hit close to home. Too close. I was a killer.
But I wouldn’t kill Yasuo. He might’ve been turning Draug, but he’d once been my friend. I wouldn’t attack him. Not like this. Not today.
I dug into my coat pocket. My fingers found my prized possession. Emma’s handkerchief.
I rubbed it between my fingers. It was a sacrifice. But a fitting one.
I pulled it out, holding it like a white flag in front of me. Yasuo recognized it at once,
his eyes growing wide.
“That’s right,” I said. I waved it. I hadn’t washed it and wondered if it still bore some scent of hers. “You know this. ”
He took a step forward.
“You want it?” I tied a couple of loose knots in the fabric. Just enough to give it some heft. I threw. “Then take it. ”
Yasuo went for it.
I ran off. I ran like a crazy person. Leaving Rob and the body of Toby-the-Trainee dead and cooling by the paddock gate. Leaving my friend Yasuo behind, maybe forever. I ran until I realized my feet had carried me all the way to the water.
Screw it.
I’d end this now.
I loped up the beach, running until there was just a thin sliver of rocky sand, and when there was no beach left to run on, I sloshed through the breakers, lifting my knees high, trying to stay upright. Waves slapped at me, the freezing water sloshing over my boots, biting through the thick fabric of my catsuit, each swell rising in a moment of peace and then whooshing, back, trying to suck me out to sea. The waves came over and over, relentless, violent smacks against my thighs, trying to topple me.
But I refused to topple. I was seeing red. I’d lost everything and everyone. Would it kill me? Probably. But I’d see the secrets of this castle once and for all.
Finally, when the water was deep enough to buoy me, lifting me with each swell of the tide to my tiptoes, I stopped. Looked up. The sea gate was overhead. Not as far a climb as I’d have guessed, concealed from above by a coarse shelf of brush.
I let the breakers sweep me closer and higher, grabbing ahold of the rocky cliff side, using hands and feet and knees to scramble up until I found a shelf wide enough to perch on. The tunnel’s stench reached me first, wet and sulfurous, like hot springs and rotting things. I looked back down from where I came, scanning the lay of the land, seeing just how well situated this spot was.
The wind was picking up, and I wasn’t in the mood to be blown off the cliff, so to be safe, I shuffled on hands and knees to get closer and assess the gate itself. Almost immediately, I cracked my kneecap hard against something. An explosion of pain like my bone had split in two felled me. Tears sprang to my eyes, and I curled onto my side, swallowing a cry of pain.
When I was able to breathe again, I saw what I’d run in to. Two large, rusted rings had been secured into the granite. Mooring for supply boats? Or did the boats come bearing victims? Who knew what evil visited these shores…? Either way, it was a good sign. Somebody used this entrance, which meant it led somewhere.
Resting against the bars with one arm, cradling my nose in the crook of my other, I peered inside. Up close like this, the thing looked more like a sewage runoff than ever. I whispered, “Here I come, boys,” and gave the gate a jiggle, but it was much more solid than the rusted iron would suggest. “No problem. ” I turned my attention to the handle and froze, taken aback. “What the—?”
I’d expected a simple lock, maybe a sliding bolt or a padlock hanging from a latch, but not this. Rather than a single gate, there were two, like French doors opening up the middle. I ran my fingers along the outer edges of the portal, feeling for hinges, but they weren’t visible from this side.
A lack of hinges wasn’t the strange part, though. Instead of a traditional lock, a circular medallion roughly the size of my palm connected the two doors in the very center. Tracing my finger, I could feel a seam between the doors, above and below the medallion, but the disc itself was a solid whole, not atop the metal, but a part of the iron itself.
How would I ever break into this? There was no keyhole. No lever or latch.
