“It’s easier than you think to bring more into the fold,” Mr. Pratterman’s saying. He doesn’t notice my expression anymore, lost inhis visions of expansion. What a fool I was to think he was a cosmic being. One more conman, tapped into forces too big for both of us. “That Mr. Croxton you’re so worried about? His greed is easily manipulated. I started with him.”
It’s been too long since I answered. “Terrific,” I say. Like my parents, like Thomas, that’s enough for Mr. Pratterman.
I must concentrate on that night in the lightroom. His specific wording. The first living nonkin I saw. I’d ruled Mr. Pratterman out as a being outside of life and death. I prepared to kill Bridget instead. Because who’d offer a deal where they themselves would be the target?
Everything lines up finally. It creates a tableau of mutually assured torment.
He promised to give me a chance to kill my target. I have what I need to do it here. I must. He knows me as the fool turned villain. Could I yet rise the victor?
Douglas’s strength surges through my muscles. It’s different from the spiral’s power. Cool within but not ice. Refreshing.
Mr. Pratterman convinced me—like my parents, like my congregation, like Thomas—that I wasn’t strong enough without him.
Who was this man of ash before becoming a false demon? How did he gain this power? I picture generations of men like Mr. Pratterman engulfing themselves in this business of misery one after the next. Did each deceive the last? This plan to create a human-run network of suffering under the guise of hell’s protection—is this what the Devil really is? Not a tall man with moonlight eyes and an ashen cloak. Not burning lips and grasping hands.
It’s torched souls fanning the flames of agony by igniting the next nightmare. A cycle of violence. One after the next. Like the melting candles in his dark dream, each building itself from the degradation of the last.
Douglas was supposed to be next. A protégé, eventually. When he resisted, Mr. Pratterman changed tactics. He couldn’t let a wickie whocould foil his plans survive. He had to find someone desperate who could be convinced to come to the island. To kill first and ask questions never.
I was his perfect victim. His perfect monster.
A surge of chill from the knife runs up my hand. Douglas. Comforting me. Even now I feel his impossible hope. Despite every wrong I’ve committed against him, Liney, and the cowering girl before me waiting for me to end her.
Douglas, I call out within my mind, directing every word to his captivity in the knife.Those souls. Do you suppose they feel kindly toward Mr. Pratterman?
He laughs, shaking my arm with the resonance. That’s enough of an answer.
“I came here to do as you asked,” I tell Mr. Pratterman. “One more sacrifice. The first living nonkin that I saw after we bound the new contract.”
Mr. Pratterman’s eyes shine with glee. He grabs the back of Bridget’s dress and drags her up.
I don’t pray to God anymore. Mr. Pratterman’s parting words to me from our last meeting have haunted me too much.When she prays, do you think it’s only God who listens?
I think only to my ghost. The gentle man I’d say I loved if I were still capable of it.Take care of Liney if this fails.
Bridget opens her mouth to convince the ash-heart she believes me to be not to hurt her. Mr. Pratterman swipes his hand over her face. She tries again but no sound forms.
“Easier,” Mr. Pratterman says, winking at me. He calls me a hound dog, yet he’s the one frothing for murder.
I hold out my hand for him to pass Bridget to me. I call on the spiral as he does. Flames lick up through my feet, crashing into Douglas’s cool presence like waves within me. Oil and water, mixing inside me in a dangerous symphony. I need enough fire to appear to perform one deed while preparing another.
“Find her,” I whisper into Bridget’s ear as she struggles against me. She stills, turning to me, twin blue eyes searching for hope.
Direction in the spiral isn’t like the world above. Down doesn’t mean down. In a realm outside ours, a compass’s rules don’t apply. And if Mr. Pratterman isn’t eternal, other aspects of this power may be mine to manipulate as much as his.
I draw a line with my foot beneath her. A seam in the spiral’s stone foundation opens with a crackle of sparks. I forge a new link to the lighthouse here, the same as the entrance I made at the top of the stairs. Bridget barely has enough time to open her mouth in shock before she falls through the floor and back into the living world.
I’d never have done this when I believed Mr. Pratterman’s facade. But now I see his slow, human reflexes. I feel how little power he holds in himself as the spiral chooses to fuel me instead. It knows me. Does it understand my change of heart?
I lunge at Mr. Pratterman. Every vengeful instinct I’ve suppressed crashes through me and into him. I knock him back. He falls. His head hits hard against the stone. He howls in pain. Only inches from the drowned ocean.
I straddle him, one hand on his throat and the other lifting the dagger high.
He splutters under me but can’t get any of his snake words out beneath my hand’s pressure. Good. All my muscles are full to bursting with the fuel of those sacrificed through me.
I can’t grant the damned peace. But revenge—I can do that.
He’s so weak. Bridget was much harder to subdue when I first attempted to kill her on the sands. Without the spiral’s power, he has nothing to rely on. Only a man.
