Chapter 27
In The Garden, the days continued to come and go as they usually did. It was slow, and growing colder. The vast majority of the summer tourists were gone, and aside from stopovers from fishers, the starving times were coming.
Zinny sighed as she watched Acton, huddled and disinterested at the bar, reading one of the books he had read at least a hundred times before. He had let Ember walk out of the bar. They had all known that something was wrong the moment that Isaac shot up from the table, dumping Kaylee from his lap.
Let it go. That’s all Acton had said. He had known what Thalia’s presence signified, even though the rest of them didn’t. Gina was back, and she intended to take back what Acton had on loan. He had sent Ember back to them without allowing anyone a goodbye.
Zinny had watched him from the corner of her eye for days, with doubt clouding her mind as she carefully re-examined every memory. His interest in Ember was something that she had always hoped that he was capable of, but had never really anticipated. The way he skulked around the house after their private outings told her that it had taken him by surprise as well. Acton didn’t hide his prizes. He showed them off so that everyone would know what he had and envy him for it.
But with Ember, he kept his mouth shut. He didn’t know what he had. He knew that he liked it, but he wasn’t sure if an affair with a hunter made him stronger or weaker in the eyes of his subjects. The fact that he had lured Gina’s daughter into a daliance would make him a legend.
The fact that it had actually happened the other way around…well, that was something that no one could ever know. When Gina’s messenger had shown up to collect the wayward daughter, he had no choice but to let her go. After all, he had taken everything he could from her by that point. Keeping her around would have been an admission that it wasn’t about Gina anymore.
Unless, of course, Zinny was wrong, which she had to admit was possible. Maybe it had always been about Gina.
As she pretended to scrub at a section of the bar, she stole quick glances at her son, wondering why he had let her go. Ember Gillespie was the best thing to happen to the Knox family since Zinny had decided to found it. She appreciated good food, thanked the person who did her laundry, gave Asher attention, Isaac gifts, and Acton almost everything else. She wasn’t a loud-mouth like Kaylee, a brat like Rachelle, selfish like Delia, or stupid, like most of the girls that Asher tried to sneak into the house.
She was a perfect daughter.
Zinny pursed her lips as Acton flicked another page. He was either very bored or very bothered, and Zinny hoped it was the latter. If he wanted Ember back, then she was coming back.
Zinny would find a way to barter the trade if she had to.
When the bar door creaked open, and a small figure crept inside, Zinny almost didn’t see her. But as she walked forward, taking slow, deliberate steps, the bloody footprints were hard to ignore.
Without her shoes, Thalia had apparently been walking through the forest, and taking no regard for the sharp rocks and thorny patches. She had lacerations and rips in her pants clear up to her knees. The few demons who had showed up early that day were staring at her, and all conversation had died.
“Lia!” Zinny gasped, grabbing for a clean towel. “Honey, what happened?!”
Acton turned around to see what was going on just as Thalia stopped in front of him. Her face was still bruised, and she had tired circles under both eyes. When she lifted her fist and slammed it into Acton’s face, he tensed his skin instinctively. Everyone heard the bones in Thalia’s hand crack as they snapped into pieces from the force of the impact. Acton didn’t move; he didn’t even flinch.
Zinny lifted a hand to her mouth. “Oh, my—”
Kaylee tried to stifle a nervous giggle; several gasps went around the room.
Slowly lowering her hand back to her side as her eyes and her face turned red, Thalia opened her lips to speak, but she couldn’t seem to unclench her jaw.
“She’s pregnant,” she hissed.
Caught off guard, Acton glanced from Thalia to Zinny, who was still too shocked for words. Somewhere, Asher laughed. When Acton looked back to Thalia, he saw that she was crying…except that the tears never touched her cheeks.
They were evaporating before they even left her eyes. As a halo of heat sheen started to rise off of her body, Zinny jumped the bar, ripping her dress in the process, but she didn’t care.
“Everyone out!” she screamed.
No one dared disobey her, scattering like cockroaches under a light as she grabbed Thalia by the arm and started fighting her to pull her out of the bar and onto the street.
It wasn’t even a full second after they had passed the door that flames erupted from Thalia’s arm, and the girl screamed. She wasn’t in pain. She was screaming in rage. As she slapped at Zinny’s face and hands and body, the flames were spreading, and it wasn’t a normal fire. Zinny cried out as she felt the heat seeping under her demon’s skin and sending jolts and daggers up her arm and into her chest.
The girl would go down—Zinny knew she would, because everyone succumbed—but there was just too much fire. If she let her go, she would burn down the entire island, but the fire was so hot that she could see her fingers melting—literally melting—as she wrestled Thalia to the ground.
A hand came flying at her face, and she screamed in pain as her left eye went dark and the smell of burning hair and flesh filled her nostrils. She twisted away, and saw Acton on the other side of the flames.
“Go!” she screamed.
But Acton’s eyes were as cool and resolute as ever. He reached out and grabbed Thalia’s loose arm, and they both flinched as his skin made a loud sizzle and pop on contact. Together, they held her down until she stopped fighting and went silent.
The first time for every hunter was always the hardest and the most exhausting. With her one good eye, Zinny looked down at the girl and shook her head. She had been a kind girl. She had gentle, wide, wonderful eyes. They were the color of robins’ eggs, and wanted to see the best in people.
Thalia would never look at her with those eyes again. When she woke, she was going to be as cold and determined as Gina.
Having cooled her arms in the ocean, and Thalia’s unconscious body as well, Zinny returned to the bar and wrapped her mangled arm in a silk scarf that had once belonged to one of Dani’s girls. Acton had persuaded Kaylee to bring it for Ember, but she wasn’t fond of fine things. She liked pretty things, and practical things, but not ones that were expensive. She was afraid of breaking things.
Zinny sighed as she continued to pad her limb until it looked passably normal. There was precious little muscle left on the charred bones—just enough that her arm wasn’t completely useless—but it was going to be ugly for a long time. Things got broken frequently on Tulukaruk, expensive or not, and Ember was going to have to get used to it.
Looking at Thalia’s comatose body, laid out on the barroom floor, Zinny supposed it was for the best. She would have been a sad little girl knowing that her sister had taken up with demons, but now she had traded it for a hunter’s instinct and outrage. At least those things were easier to feel.
Hoisting her body up into her arms, Zinny found an old tarp to wrap her in. The fire had taken her clothes and her hair, but given her so much in return. Her face was healed, and so was the hand that she had broken on Acton’s face. The lacerations that had run down her legs and ripped open the soles of her feet were gone. Thalia was a perfect and whole as the day she had been born. Zinny knew that she wouldn’t feel the cold outside that night, and wouldn’t feel the cold on the island ever again. Gina was going to save a load of money on the bill she was paying for the furnace and the water heater.
Children were expensive, and the thought that her own bills might soon be higher made Zinny smile.
She knew that Gina wouldn’t care about the nudity, either, or not any more than Zinny did. Hunters were animals, like demons, and clothes were only a percep
tion of armor. But that perception—the perception that being naked was being vulnerable—and the fact that an army of air horns wouldn’t wake Thalia, was the reason she wrapped her up before carrying her home.
Walking through the forest, barefoot and alone with her thoughts, she tried to work out what she was going to say to Gina.
Ember was pregnant, and that changed everything. It didn’t matter what Acton wanted anymore.
Gina wouldn’t want it, and Zinny had always wanted another baby. It was almost as though the fates had smiled on them all. Ember would finally have her family, and Gina wouldn’t have to worry over her anymore. Ember never stopped talking about how she had always wanted a family.
The door was open when Zinny arrived. Gina was standing in the frame, staring at Zinny with a haggard look that said she would gladly curl up in a coffin, if only the world was finally done with her. But the world wasn’t done with her yet, and she would endure another day.
Coming to an exhausted halt three steps before the stoop, Zinny sighed as she shrugged her shoulders. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Gina responded. Her eyes lingered on the stars, trying to prolong her break from reality before she had to come back to earth. Her eyes flicked down to Thalia’s body before settling on Zinny’s face.
Zinny tried to smile, but only half of her mouth moved due to the damage from the fire. “Hell of a season, right?”
Thalia had gotten her good. She wasn’t going to see anything out of that eye for a couple of weeks, at least.
“Did she take anyone with her?” Gina asked calmly.
Zinny looked down, pursing her lips and shaking her head slightly. She tried not to take it as an insult. “No. She…well, she went after Acton, but…”
Gina lowered her chin and her voice. “You intervened. You want to be held responsible for him? This time, that’s what you want?”
“Gina,” Zinny went to take a step forward, but Gina held her hand up. “Do you hate me?”
Finally unfreezing from her stance, Gina crossed her arms, swaying a little as she looked back up to the stars. “No. No more than the others.”
“We could have been sisters, Gina.” Zinny said quietly. “In a past life. We could have been sisters.”
“Just put her down,” Gina finally snapped. “I’ll take her in when I’m done.”
Zinny carefully set Thalia on the ground. She looked back up at Gina, carefully holding her hands in front of her.
This time, Gina didn’t look down. “What?”
“About Ember—”
Zinny stopped when Gina started to slowly shake her head again. “We’re never talking about her again. She’s going away. We’ll never see her again.”
“She’s pregnant,” Zinny sputtered.
“I wish she hadn’t told you that,” Gina looked down at Thalia, sighing. “But okay, yes. So what if she is? It doesn’t concern you. We’re getting rid of it.”
“It?” Zinny said through her teeth. She felt a flush run across her skin.
“It,” Gina repeated. “Ethel found someone capable of fixing the damage. He erased everything he could of what happened to her here, Zinny. She doesn’t remember any of it. It’s done. She’s going away, and I will never be stupid enough to let her come back.”
“No!” Zinny felt her good hand clench into a fist. “No, that is my grandchild, Gina, and I want him or her—“
“It’s my grandchild, too,” Gina said calmly. “My first grandchild. And Acton Knox was the father.”
“You will give her back to me, Gina,” Zinny said in a low tone. “I want her, and I want my grandchild, and God help me, I will never forgive you if you take this away from me. She is my responsibility—“
“She is my daughter, Zinny. Mine, and she is nothing to you, and you will never speak to me again about how I intend to raise my daughter.” Gina looked at her long and hard, and the light coming from the stairwell behind her suddenly seemed far too bright in the darkness that surrounded them. Without looking away from Zinny’s face, she gave a curt nod. “Acton. You have some nerve…”
Zinny spun around, her eyes wide as they focused on the black silhouette of Acton’s mask, half hidden in the trees and brush several yards out. The fox took several quick steps forward before the mask dropped, and he was Acton again. He had disappeared after Thalia had passed out. She hadn’t seen him since she finally went still. Even though his burns were much less severe than hers, he somehow looked more worn down by them.
He leveled his gaze directly on Zinny. “Go home. I’ll take care of it.”
Zinny compulsively wiped her hands down the front of her dress, and then remembered that one of them was composed mostly of a silk scarf. She walked forward to him, raising both hands to touch his cheeks. He leaned down so that she could whisper in his ear.
“I want her back.”
Acton stood straight again, looking her in the eye but giving her no response. Finally, Zinny walked away.
When she had disappeared into the dark and there was only silence left, Acton walked up to stand directly in front of Gina. He looked down, fighting the urge to nudge Thalia with his foot.
“I’m done,” he said quietly. “I told you that I would give her back unharmed. I’m done. I want you to send her away.”
“This was what you wanted all along, wasn’t it?”
The clarity of Gina’s voice startled him, and he looked up. She was a cold woman, and he found it hard to believe that she could still be so objective.
“You polluted her body, and then left me with the choice of how to defile her.” Gina nodded, unblinking. “I can kill it or force her to have it. That’s what you wanted to do me—force me to make an impossible choice.”
Acton smiled ruefully. “I wanted to win, and that’s what I did. There’s a piece of me inside of her, and you can kill it or let it go. Either way, that’s a part of me that’s leaving this island, Gina. That’s the choice I wanted you to make. Kill me or let me go.”
Her footsteps made hollow noises on the steps as she walked down toward him. “I could keep it here.”
“Oh, you won’t do that.” Acton shook his head. “You couldn’t bear to look at it, and you know I don’t have any use for brats. We wouldn’t want something to happen to it. Like what happened to the other four. The ones you’re so sure I killed.”
As he smirked, her lip curled just enough to remind him of a threatened dog. Slowly, Gina kneeled down before him to pick up Thalia in her arms. It was going to be difficult to convince her not to burn the island down when she woke up, but she would listen. When she met his gaze again, Acton sighed.
“You’re going to forgive me,” he said bitterly. “After everything I did, after I took your daughter—“
With glassy eyes, Gina only shook her head. “You’re different, Acton. You wanted me to kill you. That’s what you wanted out of this.”
Tasting disappointment, Acton turned and spat. “Why?”
“You’re the only demon I’ve ever known to care about what others think of you,” she said, turning to take Thalia back into the house.
“I don’t.”
“You care what I think of you,” Gina said with sudden force, turning back to him. “And don’t call it forgiveness. You belong in hell for what you did to her, but if there was ever such a place, then this is it. This is where you belong, and it’s not my place to kill you. That’s something that only Ember can do, because you’ve earned it, and that’s what I’m telling Thalia to do when I’m dead and gone. No one has the right to kill you but Ember.”
The expression that spread across Acton’s face was so unsettling that Gina almost dropped Thalia to defend herself.
“She won’t,” Acton said, suddenly cross. “If I asked her to, she would come back to me, whether she remembered me or not. What we have is special. We belong together, but I would rather see us apart if it means she’ll get out of this hell hole.” He stopped, shaking his head. “Get her off of this islan
d before I change my mind. Zinny wants that child, Gina, but I don’t. Get her out while you have the chance, or Zinny will find a way to make her stay.”
Epilogue
Shutting the door behind her, Gina once again lifted Thalia, walking over to set her on the couch before she realized that Ember was already occupying it. She laid them down next to each other, just like she had when they were little. They looked like they were sleeping; it was a shame that neither one actually was. If everything went to plan, they would never see each other again.
“It’s done?” she asked quietly.
“It’s done,” Theo said from the chair across the room. “But he’s right, Gina. She didn’t want to give it up. I took what I could. She’ll still remember them, but she won’t know anything about demons. She’s a normal teenager again.”
Gina nodded, licking her lips. “Acton?”
“He left her,” Theo said stiffly. “She woke up alone, and he was just gone. He abandoned her. It’s the best I could do without leaving something that would make her suspicious.”
Gina took a deep breath, shaking her head and trying not to seem disappointed. “The child?”
“It wasn’t rape,” Theo said again with more force. “That’s not how she remembers it, and I’m not changing it. I’m not putting her through that after everything else that—“
“It’s fine, Theo,” Gina said, turning toward him and forcing a smile. “I agree with you. Thank you. Thank you for doing what you could.”
She excused herself to the kitchen. Theo stood to follow her.
“Gina,” he said lightly. “Ethel is gone. She went out, trying to track down signs of Joseph, in case he’s still here. I don’t believe he is anymore, but he was. He’s moved on or dead.”
Gina nodded, scrubbing at a pot in the sink.
“Gina.”
She stopped, looking over at Theo. His brow had furrowed in a way that made her worry.
“I’m not the first person to go erasing things in that girl’s mind,” he said quietly. “She’s a deep ocean of nothing, and something was there before, but it’s all gone now. A massive amount of something is gone now. I think you know that I’m not talking about a meddling, amateur demon that got at her over a single summer.”
Gina met his gaze, but didn’t say anything. When she started shaking her head a moment too late, Theo’s grip on the counter tightened like a vice to keep his feet on the ground.
“Who is she?”
“She’s my daughter,” Gina said quietly, turning back to the sink. “She’s leaving tomorrow to go back to school, and everything is going to be okay.”
His eyes scanned the window as he leaned in toward Gina, and watched her swallow her nerves. Pointing back toward the living room, he kept his voice low. “Is she the one they talk about?”
Gina smiled, and then laughed, but looked like she was going to be sick as she shook her head and went back to the dishes. “No.”
“Why does Zinnia want her so badly?” His stomach turned to knots; he still wasn’t sure that it was all about the child anymore. “She’s not going to stop, Gina. Everything I have ever heard about that woman says that she gets what she wants, and she wants that child.”
Gina dropped the pan, letting it clatter into the sink. She stared Theo down with such intensity that he took a step back. “Over my dead body.”
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