Chapter 8
When Ember’s eyes opened, she wasn’t sure if the plan had worked or not. She stared at her ceiling, and then her eyes wandered to the window.
It was dark out. The plan had worked.
It had been Acton’s idea. He had taken her to The Garden first, where she had insisted on sticking to soda, and then they had gone out to watch the sunset. Acton had suggested that they stay out to watch the stars, and when Ember had protested that she was tired, he laughed and reminded her that she wasn’t supposed to go home until morning. Then, he told her that he would keep her up all night, and that she could sleep during the day.
It was a perfect deal—if Ember slept during the day, and stayed out all night, she would never have to see her family. Gina couldn’t complain that she was intruding if they were on opposite schedules.
And she had been complaining. The entire time since Ember’s arrival, and she had said some terrible things.
When it got cold, the alcohol had finally seemed appealing. They had stayed out in the forest chasing fairies for what seemed like hours.
Ember shook her head. The alcohol had made the lights seem so real.
She knew they weren’t real fairies, but somehow, she wanted to believe the magic of the previous night. They had chased fairies, and then Isaac collected a pile of bones——it must have been sticks, or small white stones.
Ember rubbed the sleep from her eyes, smiling. It was morning again…or night, rather, and it was time for another day. It was time to go out and meet Acton again.
She slipped out of the clothes she was wearing, because they were the same clothes she had been wearing the day before, and slipped into a new pair of jeans, a tee shirt, a sweater, and her jacket. As a final thought, she peeled up the corner of her mattress, where she had hidden the burned book cover.
Satisfied that it was still there, she tugged on her shoes and went to open her bedroom door. When her mother’s crossed-arm form appeared on the other side, she almost screamed in surprise.
“Where were you?”
“Gina!” Ember hissed. “Don’t do that!”
The woman took two quick steps toward her, and Ember backed up.
“It’s ‘mom’ to you,” Gina said quietly. “Where were you last night?”
Ember crossed her arms, sneering. “Out.”
“With who?” Gina pressed. “Acton? Isaac? Who were you with? Was it Joseph?”
Ember shrugged. “I was with Acton. Sue me.”
Gina reached out and grabbed Ember’s chin, forcing her to look her in the eye. When Ember tried to pull away, Gina only gripped her harder.
“Ow! Geez, mom, ouch!” Ember finally managed to twist out of her grasp. “What the hell?”
“Since when do you talk like that?”
“Like what?” Ember heard the volume of her voice rising, and tried to keep it down. Thalia shouldn’t have to suffer on account of Gina’s craziness.
“Were you there when they killed the deer?” Gina said in another whisper. “Did you see them mutilate the body?”
“Hey!” Ember said, finally ducking around Gina and making it out the door. “No, I did not kill or mutilate any animals last night. We mostly hung out and got drunk and played with junk we found in the forest.”
Ember took the stairs as quickly as she dared, and heard her mother’s fleet footsteps just behind her.
“Ember, this is very serious!” she said. “They are going to kill you! You are going to die, it is not safe to be out there!”
“Mom,” Ember said, stopping at the front door. “You’re exhausted. Get some sleep, and pretend I don’t exist. We’ll both have a better time.”
“I don’t need to—“ Gina grabbed her shoulders. “Ember, I don’t need to sleep. But I cannot stay here watching your sister and be out there watching you too, and something is going on, and you have to tell me—“
“Mom.” Ember reached around her mother’s arms to grab her by the shoulders; she waited until Gina had let go of her to speak. “You’re candy apple crazy, Gina Gillespie. You’ve spent my entire life telling me to get out of your house and your life, and I am granting your wish. I’m gone, and I wish you nothing but the best, and I pray that your condition isn’t hereditary. Just let me go, and go to bed. God knows I am not willing to be your caretaker. You don’t want me to wake up Thalia, do you?”
Gina raised a single finger, pointing at the ceiling. “I am not crazy.”
“Thalia!”
“God—damn it!” Gina spun toward the stairs, and the noises of Thalia’s distressed waking, as Ember broke and ran out the front door.
It was dark in the forest, but to Ember, it felt bright. There was girlish laughter ringing through the trees; it took a moment for Ember’s eyes to focus, but then she saw Kaylee, running through the forest. Isaac was chasing after her, trying to grab something from her hand, and it took Ember a moment, squinting in the dark, to figure out what it was.
It was a dead rabbit.
For a second, Ember’s smile faltered. Then, as she stared at the limp body swaying in Kaylee’s grasp, she realized that she wasn’t looking at rabbit ears. They were socks——white socks—poking from the top of her hand.
“On the one night that Isaac decides to wear shoes, too.”
Ember turned around to see Acton standing behind her with someone she didn’t recognize. She smiled, shoving her hands into her pockets. It was cold, and her breath made little clouds that disappeared on the wind.
Acton wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pushing his dark hair back with his hand. It glimmered like it was wet, but Ember couldn’t imagine being out in the cold with wet hair.
“This is Joseph, my cousin,” Acton said, gesturing to the stranger. “He’s come to stay with us for a few weeks.”
Ember looked down at Joseph’s shoes. They were all taped up, and for some reason, it bothered her. He was wearing jeans and a tee-shirt, and he didn’t have a jacket, but he didn’t look the slightest bit cold.
With a vacant expression in his eyes, Joseph stepped back, and Ember shifted uncomfortably, suddenly realizing that Acton’s grip on her had tightened like a vice. As Joseph’s large frame moved away, a woman appeared behind him.
“We can do this all night, Ethel, but it won’t stop me,” Acton said, annoyed. “She wants to be with me. We’re only having fun, and I haven’t returned her with so much as a scratch yet.”
“You’re dripping on her,” the blond woman said, taking two more steps forward. “She may be one of us, but she’s still human. She can die of cold.”
Acton’s arm jerked tighter, and Ember suddenly felt the chill run down her side. She turned her head as she ran her hand down Acton’s sleeve. He was soaked through. She couldn’t say why it didn’t bother her, or why she hadn’t noticed before.
“One more step and there might be a scratch,” Acton said, taking a half step backward and dragging Ember with him. “She makes these choices of her own free will, so this isn’t a matter for your concern. I’ve broken no rules.”
“She’s high on hypnosis,” Ethel said. “She comes home comatose and forgetful. You’re saying that isn’t a mark? You’re calling that free will?”
“I’m defending her innocence,” Acton said, raising an eyebrow. “I thought you might appreciate the gesture. However, if you want her to start remembering these outings…well, it can be arranged.”
Ethel took another step forward, and Ember could see that she was soaking too—as though everyone had gone swimming with their clothes on. Acton’s fingers twitched, digging into her upper arm, and Ember let out a yelp.
Ethel stopped. Her lips peeled back into a snarl. Faster than Ember could see, she suddenly had Joseph on the ground in front of her, holding a butcher knife that looked larger than life in the moonlight to his throat. Not knowing what had just happened, Ember withdrew, burying her face into Acton’s arm for protection.
She wanted to speak. She wanted to ask
what was happening, but the questions seemed to evaporate as quickly as they formed.
“Now, see what you’ve done?” Acton said forcefully. His grip loosened, just a little, and he ran his hand down Ember’s back and laid a light kiss on her brow. “This one is damaged. You have another one, and you never wanted this one to begin with. Let me have my fun, and she’ll leave alive, unharmed, and none the wiser. You have my word, Ethel. Let me have this one for the season, and I’ll never touch your family again. It’s the best deal you’re going to get—you know you can’t catch me, and you can’t kill what you can’t catch. Take my mercy and be happy with it.”
Ethel’s eyes sparked with a sudden rage, and even though Ember could swear that the air around them had suddenly gotten warmer, a chill ran down her spine.
“I’m doing you a favor,” Acton added. “I could just take her, but I’m going to let her go.”
“We know what you’re doing!” Ethel hissed. “I know what his trick is, and two can play at that game. And you’ll do what you feel like, Acton, that’s always been your problem.”
“Well,” Acton said as Ember wrapped her arms around him. He looked disdainfully at Joseph, laying patiently on the ground as Ethel’s knife dug in uncomfortably beneath his chin. “I suppose I’ll face those consequences, if it comes to that.”
Ethel shifted, her knuckles turning white around the knife handle. “I will kill him, Acton, and then your game is over.”
“Yes, and you’ll have a mess on your hands in the morning.” Acton laughed. “Go ahead and cut him. If you kill him now, she will remember it in the morning, and she’s no hunter, Ethel. She’s a little girl from Pennsylvania. She’ll spend the rest of her life in a psych ward if she watches you take his head off, and you can go home and explain to your daughter what you did to take away her baby’s normal, perfect life. Or, you give me back my ward, we all walk away, and tomorrow she’s just another rebellious teen home from a night of drinking and light debauchery. Your choice.”
Ethel took several deep breaths, her eyes never leaving Acton’s face. When she finally withdrew the knife, and Joseph scrambled away into the dark, Ember briefly wondered if she was about to charge at them.
Instead, she turned and walked away. “I’ll be watching, Acton.”
“Always,” he replied. “I wouldn’t expect any less.”
As Ethel dissolved into the darkness, Asher appeared in her place.
He sighed, shaking his head as he looked at Ember and offered up Acton’s jacket. “You’re dripping all over her. Is she going to need a change of clothes?”
“Only if she starts to shiver,” he said, taking his jacket from Asher and draping it around Ember’s shoulders. “That should be good enough.”
Looking around, Asher raised his hands. “And you’ve lost the stooge. Where is Joseph? You know he can’t take care of himself.”
“Isaac will bring him back,” Acton said, waving him off. “He was here before Ethel arrived.”
“Where are the fairies?” Ember asked, gazing around the forest. The world had darkened when Ethel arrived, chasing away the little drifting lights she thought should have been there.
Asher laughed, taking a step forward, but one look from Acton made him stop where he was. Acton turned to Ember, rubbing her arms. “I’m sure they’re around, Em, but tonight I want to do something special.”
“Special?” Ember echoed.
“Very,” Acton said, with a glitter in his eyes. “Tonight, we’re catching rabbits.”
“Rabbits?”
“I have no doubt that you’ll be very good at it. You’re a hunter, after all.”
“A hunter?”
“So many questions!” Acton said, walking away.
Ember followed him, and at a safe distance, Asher followed her.
“Why are we hunting rabbits?” Ember asked, trying to whisper.
Asher walked closer to her, enjoying the invitation. “Well, Isaac likes to use them, and Acton is giving him a treat for his assistance with Joseph.”
Ember nodded, but she was having trouble retaining the details. “His cousin Joseph?”
Asher looked confused for a moment, and then called up to Acton. “Are you going to stick to a story?”
“Nope,” Acton replied. “Making them up is too much fun. Although, I did like it when he was having an affair with Zinny, and she was twitching all night whenever he got too close. I think maybe next time I’m going to just make him some guy who’s stalking her.”
“If you give her a heart attack, I will help Ethel bring you in,” Asher said, grabbing Ember’s arm as she stumbled and threatened to fall. “I’m not going down for killing a hunter.”
“She’s not a hunter. Not a proper one, anyways, and we’re all going down, Ash.” Acton stopped, gazing around the forest. “We’re all going to pay with our lives eventually, so you may as well live it up while you can. Take it out on her—she’s as close to Gina as you’re ever going to get.”
Ember staggered along, hardly aware of their conversation until they stopped in a clearing. A small fire was burning, and Isaac was sitting on a log with Kaylee next to him. She was wringing something in her hands as Isaac nuzzled her neck, but Kaylee wasn’t enjoying it.
Next to them, there was a large pile of what looked like drowned rats. As Ember got closer, the small dead eyes of twenty dead rabbits stared back at her, and she took a sharp breath in.
“Jesus. Finally,” Kaylee said, standing up and thrusting something slimy at Ember. “Make her do it—it’s boring when they’re already dead.”
When the dead ruin of a rabbit slapped wetly against the front of her jacket, Ember starting walking backwards.
“No, no, no, no…”
Isaac’s dreamy smile quickly sank into a frown as Kaylee snorted, turning around and tossing the corpse into the fire before wiping her hands off on her shirt. Isaac snatched the rabbit from the flames as she stalked off into the forest, grumbling about Acton’s fetishes.
Ember looked to Asher, who rolled his eyes before looking to Acton. As his eyes settled on her, and he gave her a calm, confident smile, Ember felt the weight of the situation settle on her.
There was a pile of cold, dead rabbits sitting next to the fire; Isaac was slowly stroking one of the skinned corpses.
“No, no, no—“
Ember looked down sharply when she felt Asher’s hand close like a vice around her upper arm, and felt her stomach sink when she looked up into the cold, cynical expression on his face.
Without knowing what she was doing, or even meaning to do it, she wrenched her arm free from Asher’s grasp and darted into the forest. Behind her, she heard Acton barking an order for Isaac to bring back Joseph before the loud buzz of adrenaline and a racing heartbeat filled her ears.
She didn’t know what was going on, but she knew it was wrong. She had to get away.
She took ten long strides into the dark, and then turned, hoping that she was going back in the direction of her mother’s house, but she wasn’t sure—she couldn’t remember leaving the house, or which direction they had come from to begin with.
She hurdled a fallen tree and ducked between two bushes, and was almost sure that she had gotten away, when a tree branch sprung out in front of her at the level of her chest. She didn’t even feel the impact until she was lying on her back on the forest floor, staring at the stars, and sucking in air as her chest and back throbbed.
“Ash, if that jacket is damaged, I’m making a new one out of your hide.”
Ember felt a pair of hands grab her and lift her up from under her armpits, the way someone would lift a small child. She was staring into Acton’s face, wondering how he could look so studiously calm and annoyed when she could hardly breathe after her sprint.
“She ran into me. Make it out of her hide.” Asher laughed.
Acton’s brow furrowed as he gently squeezed Ember’s ribcage. When she tried to push him away, he gave her a long, icy stare, and she di
dn’t dare move again—he was checking her for injuries. Even when he set her down, all she could do was stand there. If she ran, he would catch her.
“Ash,” Acton said, turning toward his companion. “If you had damaged this jacket, you would be less some skin. But if you had damaged Gina’s daughter, you would be less a life.”
“I’m not your size,” Asher said with exasperation. “And the girl and the jacket are fine! What would you have me do, Acton? She could just as easily hurt herself struggling if I had tried to tackle her.”
Ember was already eyeing the next break in the bushes, and wondering if she would be able to slip her arm out of the jacket fast enough if he tried to grab her. The woods were suddenly dark and cold, and the sharp shadows cast by the moon made everything black or white and feral. The air was sharp and wet, and Ember was suddenly so aware of her surroundings that she couldn’t stop staring at the glimmering light on every fog-dripping trunk that loomed ahead of her; she turned her gaze back to Acton.
He was staring at her with a small frown. He knew what she was thinking, and he wanted her to run. And as the stars behind him started to glitter like sequins, so bright that it was blinding, somehow, she knew he was making it happen.
She clenched her fists as she stared at him, gritting her teeth until pain shot through her jaw and she could see his face again.
She heard Asher laugh, and it broke her concentration, making her shut her eyes and shake her head at the ground as her knuckles turned white. “Is she actually fighting it?”
“Go help Isaac,” Acton said curtly. “Get Joseph back to the beach, and wait for me.”
“You’re sure—“
“Yes,” he snapped, his eyes resting heavily on Asher for a second.
Ember was slowly sinking to her knees, her hands still clenched in on themselves and her eyes shut, shaking her head as she whispered to herself. She had to stay lucid. Something wrong was happening here, and Acton was the cause of it, and somehow he was making her forget things.
She didn’t know what, but she knew people kept asking her what she remembered. And that meant that she had forgotten.
Asher took off through the brush, and Acton stared down at the girl on the ground.
“You should listen to your mother,” he started, his voice flat. “She must have told you by now that I’m nothing but trouble, but you don’t care, do you? Ember, I believe you’re the only person I’ve ever met who wants to prove her wrong more than I do. Is that why you keep coming out here?”
Ember was silent, her arms wrapped around her knees, and Acton’s coat was so large on her that the hem was dragging on the forest floor. Acton slowly lowered himself down to her level, staring at the top of her head as she buried her face in her knees.
“You break the spell every night. You know what we’re doing, but you keep coming out here.” He raised a hand to feel a stray lock of her hair. “You came out here once, and when I didn’t come for you, you screamed my name, over and over and over—it was very flattering. But Ember, I’ll give you the courtesy of a warning, because I don’t play gently with my toys. You should go home.”
When she heard him rise and move away, she counted to one hundred before she slowly lifted her head. He was gone. The world was quiet and dark again; the only sounds were her breathing, and the slow pulse of blood in her ears.
“You want me to run, don’t you?” she whispered.
The seconds slowly ticked on. Ember was counting her heartbeats in her head, knowing that she wouldn’t stop for days now that she had started. Counting things was something she did when the anxiety started, although usually, it was her footfalls that she counted as she walked, and that fact made her legs ache beneath her even more.
When the cold, damp hand laid against the back of her neck, snaking around to her collar bone and raising chicken flesh on her arms and down her back, she knew she had been right.
“And what do you want, Ember?” he whispered, his breath colder than the night air on the back of her ear. “You seek me out every night, and you follow me. You make me babysit you, and keep Asher’s hands and Isaac’s teeth off of you. If Gina didn’t hate the thought of you out here so much, I could swear that you were some trick of hers. Is that what you are? A Trojan horse? Does she intend for me to split you open and find my death inside?”
Despite the bravery she thought she felt, Ember was shaking. She didn’t know what to say. “She burned your books.”
“Yes, you told me yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that,” he sighed.
Ember furrowed her brow. He had only given her the books two days ago…or was it three? The more she tried to line up the events in her head, the more muddled they became. She shook her head, and felt his hand snap away from her. “How long have I been here?”
“Long enough,” Acton said, walking back in front of her. “Stand up.”
Ember peered up at him, and when she didn’t rise fast enough, he grabbed her by the neck of her shirt to force her up.
“Tell me why you came back,” he demanded.
Ember stared at him, trying to swallow the dry knot in her throat. When the light caught Acton’s eyes right, they flashed, like animals’ eyes. “You’re…not human.”
“Neither are you,” he said answered. “Answer the question. Why did you come back here? Why are you chasing me?”
“I’m not!” Ember insisted.
“I went for a walk in the forest, in the dead of night, and you followed me. I went in the water, and you followed me,” he said, circling her. “One night, when I wasn’t up to babysitting you, Asher told you that I had climbed a tree, and you went up the tree after me. Why?”
Ember was shaking her head, trying to comprehend what he was saying; the water was too cold. No one could swim in it without going in to shock, and she had never climbed a tree in her life. “I don’t…I don’t remember.”
“Does she want me to kill you?” Acton said, stopping in front of her. “So that she has a reason to burn me?”
Ember was still shaking her head. She felt like Alice, fallen into Wonderland, but one where all of the rabbits were dead. She stopped, looking Acton in the eyes for the first time since he had tried to hypnotize her. “What are you, Acton? Are you a ghost? A monster?”
“I’m the only person willing to be your friend here,” Acton spat. For the first time since she had met him, his slow, cool smile went all the way to his eyes, and it terrified her. “But that doesn’t matter. You won’t remember.”