Chapter 11
When they got to the water’s edge, Acton explained what he wanted her to do.
“You will start out at the edge, and I will ask you questions. For every question I ask, you’re going to go a step further out.”
Ember swallowed, and hoped she looked worthy of his pity as she stared over at him. “I’m going to freeze to death.”
“I won’t let that happen,” Acton said with certainty. “I’m sure it won’t be pleasant for you, but that’s the game.”
“What kind of a game is that?” she asked.
Acton tilted his head. “I tried to explain it to you once, but you didn’t get it. However, you were less sober then than now, so let’s try again. Pain is like food to people like me.”
“You’re a psychopath.”
“Probably,” he said. “But that’s not what I mean.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“You shouldn’t.” Acton laughed. “But that’s the game. It’s the water, or else I’m sure Isaac would like to watch you skin a few more rabbits. Take your pick.”
Seeing that he was serious, Ember sighed in desperation. “Fine. But I get to ask you a question for everything you ask me.”
“If you win, I’ll answer as many questions as you want until dawn.”
“How do I win?”
Acton brought his hand to his chin, considering. The sound of the ocean was calm, steady, and peaceful, but it sent shivers down Ember’s spine. The slight breeze over the shore wasn’t helping. “When it’s over your head, you win.”
“Hips.” Ember said quickly.
Acton didn’t blink. “Chin. And, I want good answers, with details. No short answers—the whole story, or the answer doesn’t count.”
Ember considered for a moment, walking to the water, and bending down to dip in her hand. She yanked it back out. The water was frigid. She turned back to Acton, frowning.
“No one could go in there!” she said, crossing her arms. “That’ll kill me, Acton. No.”
Acton looked at her, unimpressed, and then at the water. “Get in the water, Em.”
Nonplussed, Ember took a few steps away from him. “Or what? You won’t make me. Deposit, and all that…”
She laughed nervously; Acton’s frown deepened, and he shook his head.
“We’ve been over this before, too,” he said slowly, as though he were talking to a child. “It won’t kill you, because you’re not human. If you remember any of this, then you can ask your mother about it. It won’t be pleasant, but it won’t be deadly, and I know how much you want to be a part of something. A family. That’s all you’ve ever wanted, and I am offering it to you for a very low price. If you don’t want it, then I’ll have to take you home, and I’ll erase your memory, and you’ll stay there. You won’t come out again. You’ll just be a sad little girl whose mother doesn’t love her, and you’ll go back to school, and grow up and live under the weight of all the issues your childhood has caused and die alone. Is that what you would prefer?”
Ember stared at him for a long moment, waiting for him to blink, or laugh, but he didn’t. He just stared back at her, too serious, and it left her with a bitter taste in her mouth. But even as he stared back at her, there wasn’t any judgment or hint that he was trying to threaten her. He was being honest, and somehow, it turned her stomach to think that he might actually have a way to know. She didn’t want to die alone.
She took a deep breath, nodding, and knew it was entirely in her hands. Acton had a way of making it easy to see what her life was, and until recently, it hadn’t been hers. She was making her decisions for herself now.
It was terrifying, and exhilarating.
“If you walk in to that water right now,” he said quietly. “I’ll keep you, because I do like you. If you can keep up with me, I’ll take you with me every night.”
“You’re not my friend,” she said sternly.
“No,” he conceded. “But I can be something, and that’s more than your family will ever be to you. You’re nothing to them, and it’s only a matter of time before you return the sentiment. You never know—perhaps we will be friends someday. Perhaps we’ll be more.”
She shook her head slightly. Acton shifted his feet, smiling genially.
“It would be a shame for you to die alone, Em. I don’t want that to happen to you.”
She took a deep breath, cursing lightly as she used the toe of one shoe to hold down the heel of the other, slipping out her feet. She took her jacket off, and then her sweater, and was starting to unbutton her pants when Acton held up his hand.
“No need. I’ve got a change for you afterwards.”
Sighing, Ember turned to the water, and then turned back to face Acton with her heels at the tideline. She took a step back, and felt her socks soak through at the soles before a wave caught her up to her ankles. She gasped, and Acton laughed.
“And so it begins,” he said, crossing his arms. “If you had to kill someone, how would you do it?”
Ember’s face contorted with distaste. She tried lifting one foot, and then the other, but it didn’t do anything for the pins and needles. Her feet were throbbing. “What kind of a question is that?”
“A fair one,” Acton replied. “How would you do it?”
“A knife,” Ember said, shaking her head. “Ease of availability.”
“Step.”
Ember took another step back, and the water rose up to her calves. This time when she winced, it was because the water felt like tiny teeth.
“What’s the worst lie you’ve ever told?”
Ember stared down at her legs, shaking her head. She wasn’t a liar, and her knees were aching like someone had taken a sledgehammer to them. “I don’t know.”
“Not good enough,” Acton said. “Think about it. But, I suggest you think quickly.”
“I don’t…I…I told a friend that I was an orphan, once, when I was little. I was embarrassed that I didn’t get letters from my parents like she did.”
“That’s hardly a lie,” Acton snorted. “Step. Why aren’t you afraid of spiders?”
Even as the water hit her thighs and sent ice shooting up her core, she felt her head snap up to meet Acton’s eyes. “How do you know I’m not afraid of spiders?”
“You told me once,” he replied.
“I had a roommate who liked them.” Her teeth were starting to chatter, and she clenched her jaw when she wasn’t talking to keep from biting her tongue.
“So?”
“So?” she spat out quickly. “They’re just an animal, like any other animal.”
“The skittering legs don’t bother you? The way they capture and kill weaker bugs?”
Ember shook her head, and took another two steps back. Acton was about to protest, but instead he laughed and wagged a finger at her.
“Clever.” He squatted down on the shore so that he was closer to her height; the water was at her hips. “Have you ever tried to kill yourself?”
“No,” Ember said, but when she spoke, her teeth slammed back together in a shiver so hard that she bit her tongue, and she had to bring her hands to her face to control her jaw. “N…no…not until…t…tonight.”
She stepped back. Acton grinned as her stomach disappeared.
“Do you want to?”
Ember felt warm tears streaming from her eyes. She couldn’t feel her legs anymore. If she couldn’t walk, the game was over. Her tongue was bleeding, and Acton had purposefully asked a complicated question.
“Sometimes.”
“Not good enough. Like when?”
“When…s…s…sad.”
She took a step back. Acton didn’t seem satisfied with her answer, but he let it go. The water was at Ember’s shoulders, and she was shaking so hard that he was impressed she hadn’t passed out. The first time, when Asher had shoved her into the water in jest, he had been sure she was a goner. People didn’t often survive in the water for long, but Ember wasn’t a person. She
was a hunter’s whelp, and apparently made of stronger stock.
This would be his last question.
“What’s the cruelest thing you can imagine?”
Ember’s brain had gone numb, like the rest of her, and she found herself looking up, hoping for something, anything, to come to her. The water had stopped feeling cold. Now, it burned. And as she looked up at a million stars, the image of a dead mouse appeared to her. The school cook had set traps in the kitchen—traps of every variety, to catch a sudden spree of bold mice. One of them had been caught right in the middle, and Ember had walked into the pantry one day to see the poor thing, crushed at the waist, his back half useless as his front legs worked furiously to escape.
The image had haunted her for months, and she had begged the school to use only no-kill traps after that point. The school had conceded, and the cook set out the traps. More than a year later, when the mouse problem was long over with, Ember had been helping to clean out dust bunnies from under the refrigerator when they found a trap that they had forgotten. There was dust and gunk a centimeter thick on top of it, but it was still good, so Ember wiped it off.
Inside, there was a mouse, curled up into a corner. His eyes were gone—long ago having shrunken back into his skull, and the fur was just starting to fall off of his tiny, starved body. The peanut butter they had used to set the trap was gone, and replaced by the mounds of dried mouse poop. The mouse had died, forgotten, emaciated, and thirsty, in his own waste.
She had spent hours wondering what the mouse thought about in the final days, if mice thought. Was there a warm, safe place somewhere in the wall insulation that he missed and wanted to get back to? Did he wonder how or why he couldn’t? Did the other mice come to the trap and stare in at him, incapable of doing anything but watching him die a slow, lonely death?
Ember had cried for a week.
She looked back to Acton, her jaw snapping furiously, and when their eyes met, she knew he was listening. “D—d—d—dying, in a t—t—t—trap.”
Acton’s smile turned into a frown, and she saw him look at the ground as he stood. She slipped as she went to take her final step, but somehow, he was carrying her out of the water. His jaw was clenched and his eyes were sullen.
“Wh—wh—what?” she managed.
“Nothing,” Acton said quietly. “I agree with you.”