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He shook his head. “Her spirit lives inside you…and yes, at first, that’s why I was drawn to you, but then I got to knowyou…who you are now…Callie McFay. You’ve got a piece of the ancient Cailleach inside you, but you’remore. I’ve watched you since you were a young girl. I came to you when you were grieving and lonely and told you stories to ease your pain. All I’ve ever done is try to be what you wanted me to be so that you would love me and I could be mortal again.”
“Then I must not love you,” I said, pointing at his iron-cuffed hands. “Or those wouldn’t be bothering you.”
A look of anger passed over his eyes, ripping away the façade of humanity. Beneath there raged the incarnate force that had first come to me as a creature of moonlight and shadow. “No. You don’t love me…yet…but you are close to loving me. I can feel it.” He lifted one hand. It was a struggle, I could see, but still he lifted it and brought his hand to my face.
He won’t be able to move, Brock had said. So if he was moving it meant the iron only had some effect on him…and maybe that was because Ialmostloved him. How hard would it be toreallylove him? And then he would become fully human and we could be together.
He pulled me toward him, his hand shaking with the effort. His lips when they touched mine were on fire. They seared my skin like a hot brand, but I didn’t care. I opened my lips for him and felt the heat of him flooding me. He was peeling me open, the way a boy peels back the petals on a honeysuckle blossom and sucks the nectar off the stamen. He was sucking the life force out of me…
I pushed him back. “No!” I cried. “You lied to me.” I couldhear the indecision in my voice, feel my resolve wavering. “How can I trust anything you say?”
“Is a lie really the worst thing if it’s told out of love?”
I smiled sadly and touched his hand. I saw where the iron had burned through his skin. There was no bone there, only darkness—the shadow he came out of and would return to if I didn’t do something soon. I pulled the key out from under my shirt. If I released him we could still be together and when I loved him he’d become mortal. We could be together without him draining me dry…
I had already fitted the key into the keyhole of the left bracelet, but I stopped and looked into the shadowy pits that had been his eyes. “The students,” I said. “And Liz. You were feeding on them.”
He flinched. “No!” he cried. “I would never…”
“Then why have they been getting sick? Flonia, who you see every day? Nicky, who you went to visit? Even poor Scott Wilder…” I froze, recalling that day I sat in the infirmary. “Allthe students who were sick were inyourclass. You had private conferences with them. You were feeding on them.” My stomach clenched, nausea rising in me again. I tried to find something in his eyes to convince me that I was wrong, but there was nothing in his eyes but darkness and his voice when he tried to protest was the merest creaking of dry branches in the wind.
“I didn’t, Callie, I swear. I didn’t feed on my students.”
But how could I trust him? He’d lied about too much already.
I turned the key right. He screamed. The sound tore through me, but I made myself move the key to the bracelet on his right hand. Before I reached it, though, he grabbed my hand and wrapped his fingers around my wrist. I felt them digging into my skin with the same cold bite as when the shadow-crab had attacked me. They were made of the same thing, weren’t they? I looked up into his face and saw that the shadows werespreading out from his eyes, eating into his flesh. He was dissolving right in front of me, turning back into the darkness he was made of. How could I love that darkness?
But I knew even as I saw him dissolving in front of me that it was the darkness in him that called to me, that I desired even more than the civilized creature he had made himself into to gain my love. I had rebuked him for lying to me, but I suddenly knew that I had lied to him, too. All those things I told him I wanted were lies. I wanted him as he wasnow—a creature of darkness. So what did that make me if not a creature of darkness myself? I looked down at my hand, where his fingers gripped my wrist. My own skin was dissolving under his touch, merging with him. I felt the pull of him, like an undertow dragging me out to sea. I might not have been able to love the man he had made himself into, but maybe I could love the creature he really was. That might not be enough for us to stay together in the light, but maybe it was enough for us to stay together in the dark.
And all I had to do was…nothing. As long as I didn’t turn the key in the second lock I would dissolve with him.
I lowered my hand…and waited, my eyes locked on his. He saw what decision I’d made. In what was left of his eyes I saw surprise, and I heard a gasp from what was left of his mouth. I felt his grip loosen on my wrist. He held out his arms to me. I closed my eyes and dropped the key to hold him…As we embraced I felt the darkness rush around me with a sound like wings. I opened my eyes and saw a wasteland of shadows—no color, no light, no heat. Ghostlike shapes flitted around me like bats but each one had a human—or nearly human—face. I recognized them as my comrades from the long march. This is where they had faded before reaching the door to Faerie. They had counted on me, their doorkeeper, to let them into Faerie, but I had failed them. Instead of going with them I had gone into the woods with my demon lover. Now I had come back to join them. It seemed only right.
A tug brought me back into the real world, into the foyer of Honeysuckle House crouched beside Liam, who had all but dissolved into the shadows. He was holding the key to the lock on the right-hand bracelet. He inserted the key in the lock…and turned it to the right.
“Why?” I screamed.
“I couldn’t let you destroy yourself for me.”
They were the last words that he spoke before his lips dissolved. I reached for him, but he was already gone—a shadow that melted into the colored light pooling on the floor beneath me.
