Chamomile backs into the deeper cave. I try to get around or move forward, but every touch of earth scorches my skin. My boot hisses and burnt rubber blooms when I try to brace through the pain. Bridget’s cries for me heighten until she’s screeching, clawing, fighting in every way I wish I could for her.
“I won’t be long,” Chamomile promises, grinning red-toothed, eyes ablaze.
The walls form back around them, covering the deeper tunnel they disappear into. I test the ground, blistering my feet, until it cools enough for me to walk over. I claw at the wall, but it’s solid rock, only making my palms bleed. I pound against it, but no hollow ring promises a thin cover.
I lost her. We were so close to safe. Instead, Chamomile has dragged her into the hell Douglas warned me of.
I should’ve prepared Bridget for Chamomile. I hid this danger from her. Out of shame. Like Elle would. I lie against the rock, legs useless under the weight of misery.
I’ve lost everything.
30Elle
To Kill
The knife thrums with a different energy than any I’ve felt before. It pulses in my hand like a heartbeat. Familiar.
One more death. The dark under-ocean doesn’t seem so big anymore. I’m returning everything to its natural order. That’s all. The souls and I are doing what we must to survive.
I’m the most connected to this spiral, this blood-held dark sanctuary, than ever before. I feel the footsteps in the soil above, the lapping of water against the rocks, even the brushes of snow-swirled air against the few remaining maple leaves.
I like it. I’ve never allowed myself to sink into this power like a warm bath. It’s always been a necessity I winced at. But there’s no reason to play timid anymore.
I peer into the water. Souls swirl in agony beneath its still, shimmering surface. A face appears, warped in the thick water. He wears a sailor’s hat. His mouth moves, but the sound is lost beneath the waves. Instructions, a curse, a plea?
Two others approach from beneath, stirred by my knife or the attention the sailor received. At first they’re only blobs in the brackish tide. Then I recognize them. I know those bird-sharp features in the first. The bulldog jowls in the second.
“Mother,” I murmur, “Father.”
Of course they wound up here, my first kills for the Devil. Their faces are pale and gaunt, sapped of the essence they had in life. My mother’s big eyes are glassy. They look so much like Liney’s that I want to turn away. I ignore my father, though he jostles for my gaze. I hold no tenderness for the man. He’s as at fault for this as I am.
My mother’s mouth moves, but I can barely make out half the words.Whereandsisterandhelp.
An epiphany hits me, either a cruelty or a blessing. My parents never knew I killed them. How could they? They died in their sleep. One night they were preparing for my sister’s imminent nuptials, counting their money and influence to come, and the next they woke up in this place to act as infernal fuel.
They died in their sleep.The words I’ve recited to myself every day for over a year. The words I came so close to truly, bone-deep believing. But they don’t outweigh the truth. What I saw when I glanced behind me as we escaped the house and hid in an alley across the street so Liney could catch her breath. The moonlight gleamed in the window. The window I’d sealed with a substance Mr. Pratterman gave me the night before to ensure an airtight seal.
On that window, dragging downward, was a handprint on the glass.
They stare up at their troubled elder daughter, believing I’m here to—what—save them? It turns my stomach and makes my head swim. I lean back from the pool.
My mother’s pleading eyes stay ghosts in my vision. I’ve blamed her for our descent into torment, but what control did she wield? Her money was my father’s the moment they married. Her children bearhis name, not hers. Every business decision—including the engagements—weren’t hers to decide. Yet she was the middleman for every sin committed against us. Not innocent, yet not the guiltiest party.
They hurt us all, darling.Those words chilled me when I’d come to her hoping for mercy from the monster she’d ushered into our home. I’d shiver now if my body weren’t molten with power.
Am I not a dark reflection of her? She was forced into a contract, as her mother was, and her mother’s mother, and every woman who came before.
That’s our difference. No one forced me to seek out Mr. Pratterman. I chose my condemnation and to endanger my sister. Was I so desperate because he was my only option or because even then I craved the power that stories promised? Revenge. To forge instead of bend or break, no matter how monstrous my creations might become.
Which is worse: to be trapped by others or by your own hand?
My mother is still staring at me, but I won’t look down again. Would decades under Thomas have ground me down like her? Molded me into the next mother to sacrifice her daughter for the interests of men?
I saved Liney from my mother’s fate. But can I take from her everything she’s wanted to save her from a different kind of monster?
They hurt us all.To my mother, to Liney, I’ve joined the ranks ofthem. The figures of their oppression. All the justification in the world can’t argue against that. I’ll hurt my sister to ensure her security, the same reason my mother hurt me.
This is an evolution, not a breaking of the cycle.
