Modern Wicked Fairy Tales: Complete Collection (10 page)

The old man countered with something even
more cryptic. “Love beyond your fear.”

Silas snorted. “Did you consult some Native
American sayings handbook before you showed up today?”

Abe laughed. “Don’t sacrifice yourself,
friend," he said again. “The world needs more men like you, not
less.”

“I got work to do.”

“We’re going to the community board meeting
next week," Abe called.

Silas's voice sounded further away. “I’m
sure you’ll get a lot done with the bureaucrats. In the meantime,
I’ll do it my way.”

Jolee chanced a peek over the windowsill,
seeing Silas heading off into the woods down a trail. The old
Indian watched him go for a moment and then headed the other
way.

She made a quick decision, running to the
back door and pulling on her boots. She followed him as quietly as
she could. Silas wasn't the only one who could track. Her father
had taught her to shoot and hunt, how to track a deer for miles.
Even when she lost sight of Silas in the distance, she knew the
signs to look for on the soft ground, through the brush.

He walked a long time, going through parts
of the forest that hadn't been cleared at all. She hopped logs,
ducked under hanging branches. She was so focused on marking her
way back and looking for signs of Silas's direction, she was
startled when the forest opened up into a clearing.

She stopped, seeing Silas standing too,
still, head down, in the middle of what was left of a house that
had been ravaged by fire. He stood a long time amidst the charred
remains, so long that she almost called out, went to him.

Then he went to his knees and made a noise
that scared her so much she couldn't even think about moving. It
started low, a keening wail, that grew into an intense, primal
scream of rage so deafening she could have sworn the trees shook.
Startled birds flew out of their nests, rabbits bolted, and Jolee
stared, watching, terrified, as Silas began to sob.

I shouldn't be here.
That was her
first thought—to walk away and leave him here alone with his
sorrow. Then she thought she should go to him, offer comfort, but
how? The man didn't share much under normal circumstances. Why did
she think he would in such a vulnerable state? She imagined him
pushing her away, telling her to go home, and couldn’t bring
herself to risk the rejection. After following him for over two
hours, she was just going to turn around and go home and leave him
to his secret pain.

She stood, undecided, until Silas got
slowly, heavily to his feet, rubbing his masked face on his
shirtsleeves. He drew a few, deep, shuddering breaths and she
thought she’d never seen anything so sad, the way his shoulders
slumped and his arms hung at his side.

“Jolee.” The sound of her name drew a
startled gasp from her throat and she actually took a step back
into the forest. “Come here.”

He’d known. He had known she was following,
had probably known the instant she was out of the house. She crept
forward, wary, picking her way through the rubble, and came to
stand beside him. They stood quietly like that until he reached
over and took her hand, squeezing gently.

She found the courage to speak. “What is
this place?”

“It was my home.” He kicked at the ashy
residue. “Our home.”

She wanted to ask, but she was afraid to
break the spell they seemed under. Silas was talking about his
past? Was she dreaming?

“Who’s we?” she prompted gently.

“Isabelle.” He gave another great sigh. “I
haven’t said her name out loud in five years.”

“She was your wife?” Jolee guessed. “What
happened?”

“She was killed.”

Jolee surveyed what was left of their home
together, her heart breaking for him. “In the fire?”

“No.” Silas’s voice hardened, his grip
growing tighter on her hand. “My brother took her and he killed
her.”

“Carlos?” Jolee whispered, incredulous.
Although she knew what the man was capable of—she really shouldn’t
have been surprised. “But why?”

“Because I wouldn’t give him this.” Silas
gestured toward the forest, to the hundreds of thousands of acres
of land that lay beyond. “Our father left it to me, and I wouldn’t
let him destroy it.”

Jolee leaned her head against his shoulder,
her heart swelling with pride, knowing how much he loved the land,
how he protected it, just as he protected her. But oh, god, how it
had cost him. She couldn’t even imagine his pain.

Silas glanced down at her, offering a small,
sad smile behind his mask. “But really, he did it because he wanted
her, and she wanted me instead.”

Jolee’s spine straightened. “I don’t blame
her.”

He began to walk, slowly pulling her with
him. “They left me here to die.”

“But you survived,” she countered, finally
understanding his scars, the mask.

“My body did.” Silas drew her around the
rubble to a white fence, an old trellis there filled with roses.
They had grown up wild from the ashes, thick and red, weaving their
way up the trellis and blooming open toward the sun.

“So beautiful,” she murmured, reaching to
touch one of the velvety red petals.

“I don’t know how they survived.” Silas
reached into his pocket and withdrew his hunting knife, a monstrous
thing, and cut one of the stems. “These were Isabelle’s roses.”

She watched him, thoughtful, as he trimmed
the thorns, talking the whole while. “Isabelle tried to play
peacemaker between us. She invited Carlos to dinner. I should have
known better, but I thought…I hoped…” Silas studied the flower in
his hand. “He drugged us both. I woke up duct taped to a chair with
the house on fire.”

“Dear God.”

He lifted the flower to his masked face,
breathing in. “And Isabelle was gone.”

“How do you know she’s...I mean…” Jolee
swallowed, almost not wanting to say the words. “How do you know
she’s not still alive?”

“I’ve looked for her body.” He gestured
toward the forest again. “It wouldn’t have been the first time
Carlos had someone killed. You know that as well as I do.”

Jolee nodded, feeling sick.

“You were my last clue.” Silas reached over
and tucked the rose behind her ear. “If Isabelle had been alive,
Carlos would have taken her, made her his. Instead, he had
you.”

“She would never have betrayed you like
that.”

“I don’t know.” He tucked her hair behind
her ear along with the flower, shaking his head. “My brother can be
charming. He seduced you, didn’t he?”

She didn’t have a response for that, didn’t
want to think about it. Instead, she turned to look at Isabelle’s
roses, wondering at their beauty in the midst of the devastation.
There were no other plants growing, even after all this time,
amidst the wreckage. The soil must have been completely drained
after the fire. And then it occurred to her.

“Silas, she’s here.” Jolee knelt in the
soil, her hands turning over the dirt, knowing somehow that she was
right. “She’s right here.”

“I feel her here too.”

“No.” She looked up and met his eyes. “He
buried her right here. With her roses.”

Silas’s eyes widened in realization. She saw
the emotions passing, just in his eyes—the horror, the anger, the
sorrow. And then he sank to the earth beside her with a howl of
rage and pain so great it hurt her heart, tearing at the dirt with
his bare hands. He’d dug down two feet, bleeding at his knuckles
and fingernails, before Jolee located a shovel at the other end of
the rubble. It was rusted through entirely at the handle, but the
business-end still worked.

He accepted it with a grunt when she handed
it over, making quicker work of the soil under his feet. She sat
with her arms curled around her knees and watched him until he
found her, still eerily preserved and recognizable.

Jolee knew Silas had forgotten about her
sitting there. He was lost in his memory of Isabelle, the woman
whose body he held and rocked, dead in his arms.
I’m not a part
of this
, she thought.

So she turned and headed for home. She knew
he would come to her, when he was ready.

* * * *

He couldn’t have thought of a better resting
place for her. He hated his brother for thinking of it, for burying
her here. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it himself. All
these years, she had been right here. How many times had he come
back to walk this perimeter, reliving their life together? He could
still see her pruning her roses, singing to herself. Now she was
giving new life to the same roses she had so lovingly grown. Thanks
to his brother.

Carlos had always taken whatever he wanted.
Had she refused him? Silas knew she would, although what had he
done to her while she was drugged? Or worse, while she was awake,
by force? That thought burned and he tore two roses off the bush,
breaking off the stems, ignoring the rip of thorns against his
bleeding palms.

He had said his goodbyes, his final
goodbyes, and buried her again under the roses. Now he stamped the
dirt down under his feet and began tearing the roses apart,
scattering the petals over her grave.

He stood a long time, thinking about his
past, about his future. He hadn’t realized, until he saw Isabelle’s
body, how much he’d hoped she was still alive somewhere. Now he had
closure, and knowing she was really gone changed everything. His
brother had taken her, had probably raped her, and then, when she
refused to bend to his will, had killed and buried her. He’d
imagined the scenario so often it had become truth in his head, but
now he knew it was true, or at least, a close approximation.

He’d planned his revenge all along,
sabotaging Carlos at every turn, but never going so far as to
completely put him out of business. What had he been waiting for?
Silas wondered. He could have gone to the police at any time, shown
them where Carlos had buried other bodies—men like Jolee’s father,
people who had gotten in his brother’s way.

I’ve been waiting to find her, Silas
realized, squatting down and sifting his fingers through the
freshly packed dirt, spreading the rose petals. And now that he
had?

His plan to expose his brother, to sacrifice
himself in the process, would hurt Jolee. She cared about him too,
he was sure of it. Even if she could never really love him—who
could love the monster he’d become?—his death would be a hard blow
for her. She’d grown used to him, comfortable. He would be leaving
her alone, unprotected, to fend for herself.

He thought about Isabelle, but he also
thought about Jolee, who had followed him, who had witnessed his
unabashed pain and who had been the one to realize where his wife
was buried. She had come to mean far more to him than he’d
realized.

There are other ways.
Abe’s voice
came back to him. He’d worked closely with the old man, once they’d
realized what Carlos was planning to do at the old White Pine
Mine—re-opening it to get what was left of the copper with sulfuric
acid, most likely poisoning the aquifers in the process, which
included not only Silas’s land, but the local Indian Reserve land
next to it as well. Sabotaging the sulfide mine had set Carlos
back, Silas was sure, but it wouldn’t stop him. Nothing would stop
him, unless his brother was either dead or in prison.

Carlos had paid off all the mining safety
inspectors to get the White Pine Mine opened again and had received
all the necessary permits. While Abe and others on the Bad River
reservation had been trying to draw attention to the issue, Carlos
had been seducing the media on his own, telling them, “At this
strength, sulfuric acid is a very diluted solution. This stuff is
safe as lemon juice!” And, as Silas as pointed out to Jolee, his
brother could be very persuasive.

But Abe had proof that the stuff was already
leaching into the water. And Silas had dropped one of the dead
rabbits he’d snared into a vat of the solution, watching the stuff
eat away at its flesh, leaving it just a floating skeleton, in the
space of a three minutes. The media wasn’t listening, the local
mining safety commission wasn’t listening. The only way to get it
all to stop was to use the media himself and get the EPA
involved.

This spring would mark five years since
Isabelle had died. That meant, this year, Carlos could have Silas
declared legally dead and inherit all the land. Silas’s plan of
self-sacrifice, to martyr himself for the cause, to die like the
rabbit in a vat of sulfuric acid on the day of the spring mine
opening with cameras rolling, had seemed like a good one back
before Jolee had been thrown into the mix.

Before Jolee, life hadn’t been worth living.
Silas had sacrificed far greater things than his own life, he
realized, standing on his wife’s grave. And it was a good plan. It
would work. With Carlos exposed, the media would run with the
story, the EPA would get involved. Silas had already provided Abe
with enough evidence to give them after Silas’ death to put his
brother away for life—including plots of land where the bodies were
buried and a long laundry list of detailed, illegal activity.

But for the first time since his wife’s
death, Silas had found something—someone—worth living for.

“Goodbye, Isabelle.” He pulled his mask off
and threw it aside, turning and walking into the forest, heading
for home.

* * * *

Jolee should have known. Silas would have
been on guard the moment he walked into the yard, she realized
later as she bounced up and down, once again locked in her
husband’s trunk, zip-tied and duct-taped.
Right back where I
started. Déjà-fucking-vu
.

But hindsight was 20/20, and she’d been
distracted, worried about Silas. Should she have stayed with him?
What was he going to do? Would he be okay alone? So she didn’t
notice the muddy tracks, men’s shoes, not boots, on the wooden back
steps. She hadn’t noticed the tire-tracks either—definitely made by
a car, not a truck—running up the rain-softened driveway. She
hadn’t even noticed that the back door was open. Because she’d
probably left it open, in a hurry to run after Silas, hadn’t
she?