The Spider Catcher (Redemption by A.L. Tyler Book 1) (18 page)

They stared at each other. Thalia had crouched down low behind her mother’s leg, whimpering. Ember felt herself walking toward them.  When Gina’s eyes flashed to her, burning a hole in her head, Ember felt herself speak.

“It was an accident…”

Acton must have smiled, because the scowl on Gina’s face deepened, making her look years older. She was tired, and for the first time, Ember was aware of the bags under her eyes.

In one swift motion, Acton turned the knife in his hand, holding it by the blade as he offered it to Gina. Slowly, she took one hand away from Thalia, and allowed him to place the knife in her hand. Her eyes moved from the knife to Acton’s face, looking caught between gratitude, anger, and confusion.

Thalia’s voice was little more than a squeak. “Mom.”

Isaac had appeared out of the forest behind them, and though she couldn’t see Asher, Ember knew he was there. They were surrounded.

“Now,” Acton said quietly. “You can use that knife, or not. But only one of them is leaving here with you. You know my preference.”

Thalia stood up, and started pulling at Gina’s shirt. “Mom…”

Acton’s jaw clenched as Thalia’s whines continued to get louder. “Shut her up. We’re trying to talk.”

Clenching her jaw, Gina’s eyes looked from Acton to Ember, and the sadness there hardened. As Ember stared at her, a shadow of the woman who had screamed into a fire, she hoped that she would suddenly flare again, tell Acton to step off, and drag Ember back to the house by her arm.

“Are you doing that?” Ember asked over the sound of Thalia’s crying. “Are you making her act like that?”

“No.” He responded with a sneer; his eyes never left Gina. She dropped the knife and spun around, slapping Thalia across the face so hard that she yelped and fell to the ground at Isaac’s feet. “But I did that.”

“Acton!” Ember yelled, trying to run forward. He had out his arm, blocking her from going to her sister.

Gina stood frozen in shock.  Bringing both hands to her mouth, she knelt down next to her daughter as Isaac leapt away. “’Lia I’m so sorry!”

“It’s okay!” Thalia choked through a sob. Her face was red, and the skin on her cheekbone looked like it might have almost broken. She touched at it tenderly as Gina whirled on Acton with malice in her eyes.

The knife was back her hand as she spat her words at him. “You want Ember. Fine—take her. But you leave my daughter—
my daughter
—alone! You take her, and you leave Thalia alone. That’s the deal?”

Acton nodded calmly.

“It’s a deal.” Gina said gruffly. “But you mark my words, Acton. Stay out of my head. Stay out of Thalia’s head. And don’t you dare turn Ember. Because if you do—if you break this deal——“ She had the knife pointed directly at Acton’s chest, but as she paused, her eyes narrowed and she turned it on Ember. “I’ll kill
her
. She’s the root of this trouble. Don’t test me.”

She took the knife, turned around, and ushered Thalia past Isaac and back toward the house. Acton turned back around to face Ember.

With her jaw hanging open, Ember was still trying to figure out if the things she had witnessed had really just happened. “She…she wants to kill me. She left me…”

“She left you years ago.” Acton sighed, looking at the sky. It was almost full dark. “And I’m sure she doesn’t
want
to kill you. She just knows that I hate boredom, and you’ve been keeping me entertained.”

Closing her eyes, Ember shook her head. She had known, but this time it was real. Her mother had looked her in the eye, and then thrown her to the wolves. She had chosen one daughter over the other, and it had been easy.

“Don’t ever do that to my sister again,” she said distantly. She scanned the forest, but Isaac was gone again, and she suspected that Asher was too. They had probably followed Gina back at a safe distance to be sure she wasn’t returning.

“Don’t ever stab me again.” Acton frowned. “And I am not Gina Gillespie’s son, or any other relation to her.  There’s nothing between us but old insults that need repayment.”

Ember shook her head lightly. “She favors you.”

“You’ve mistaken her pointed cruelties toward me for favoritism.” A light smile flashed on his thin lips before he looked back at her. He put an arm around her shoulders.

“Cruelties?”

Acton pressed his lips together, but eventually nodded. “I did something, a long time ago. Something unspeakably evil, by your mother’s reaction. She told me that she would never kill me. I’ve seen many individuals come here, and accept her offer of amnesty as long as they followed the rules. Then they broke the rules, and Gina burned them alive. But not me, Ember. She swore to me that as long as the both of us were alive, she wouldn’t kill me. She wouldn’t let me go. She would just keep me here, forever.”

“But—you leave, I know you leave—”

“From time to time.” Acton nodded; his voice sounded slow and thick. “But they keep me on my toes. This damn island is the only place I can rest.”

Staring at him, and the look in his eyes, Ember suddenly realized what he was getting at. “You hate it,” she said quietly. “You’re pushing her because you want her to do it. You want to die?”

With the light almost gone, Acton’s eyes flashed a deep red glow when he looked over at her.

“What I want,” he said. “Is to make Gina a liar. And until the day I force her to break her vow, she’ll let me do whatever I want.”

Ember shifted uncomfortably, but Acton didn’t move away. She gave him a sideways glance. “What am I going to do now?”

“You’re going to come out with me, like you do every night.” Acton shrugged. “You’ll help me impress people at the bar, and try on some of the clothes from Kaylee. Then, I’ll take you out by the spring and we’ll watch the stars because that’s what you like, and I’ll bring you home at night and you can use your mother’s house like a hotel. That’s all we ever have to do, forever.”

“Forever?” Ember repeated.

Acton’s eyes were fixed on her face. When he didn’t respond, she looked over and saw the look on his face.

“Death in a trap. Of course.”

Ember furrowed her brow. “What?”

“Nothing.” Acton frowned, taking his arm away from her shoulders. It swung awkwardly at his side until he tucked his hand into his pocket. Ember crossed her arms. “Come out with me tonight to keep me company. I promise I’ll let you go when it’s dawn.”

Chapter 19

Back at the bar, Ember and Acton sat in silence at a table in the corner.

“Asher and Isaac could have kept you company,” she said quietly.

He sighed, leaning back. “Do you have somewhere you need to be?”

“No.” She looked down at the table, wondering exactly when and how her life had spun out of control. Was it when she had decided to defend Acton to her mother? When she had taken her first drink at the bar? The shattered window? Or maybe it had been long before she had even come back, when she decided she wanted to come back. In any case, she couldn’t go home; the situation with Gina was beyond an apology. It was beyond salvation, and even if Thalia would continue to befriend her, Ember wasn’t sure if she wanted to risk bringing her sister down with her.

Acton was all she had left, for as long as he wanted her. She had a sinking feeling that he wasn’t of a disposition to let her leave until he was done, if he let her leave at all.

The thought made her blood run cold. “Are you going to kill me?”

Acton didn’t move. He hardly reacted to her accusation. “No.”

“Not tonight, I mean. I know you’re not going to do it tonight.” She licked her lips. “But eventually. Eventually…”

Finally, he looked over at her, unblinking. “I suppose I could be the death of you, eventually. But as of this moment, I have no intention of killing you myself. I’ll protect you, as Gina seems to have left her post. I suggest you don’t push me though—I am prone to changing my mind.”

Ember stared at him; after a moment, she started to shake her head. “Why would you want to help me?”

Acton looked back out over the bar; when he placed his arm around her shoulders, using his other hand to gesture at Isaac, she didn’t bother trying to stop him. “I may have my moments, Ember, but I do occasionally like to entertain. Allow me to entertain you.”

Ember tried to relax, but the threads of tension that ran taut through the dark bar every time someone glanced over at her kept her on pins and needles. As Isaac walked up to the table, wearing a sheepish expression and pulling something from his back pocket, she sat up at attention.

Acton filled her in before she could ask. “I told you, Isaac had a surprise for you.”

With her eyes fixed on Isaac’s intense stare, Acton had to nudge her before she looked down at his hands.

“My book!” She gasped, taking the book from his hands. It was dirty, and the pages were wrinkled like they had been wet, and they smelled slightly of mold and something unsavory, but it was her book. One of the many she thought that Gina had burned.

“I was there the night when she was doing it.” Isaac seemed unsure about what to do with his hands now that the book was gone, and they hung awkwardly in the air before him. “She had it all bundled up in her arms, and this one dropped. I picked it up before she could come back and find it, and I was holding on to it, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it.”

Ember looked back up at Isaac, too grateful for words.

“I thought you might like to have it.” Isaac finished. “As a welcome present.”

As she stood up from the chair, Isaac shied away. She took two more deliberate steps forward, and hugged him as he stood stalk still and stiff as a board. Moving away, she saw the horrified look on Isaac’s face as he stared at Acton.  When Ember looked over, she saw that Acton was smirking.

“What?” She asked.

“He’s afraid I’m going to do something, because I told him not to touch you.” Acton explained.

“Oh.” Ember frowned, stepping away from Isaac and sitting back down. “You won’t, will you? I mean, he gave me back my book…”

“Not this time.” Acton said quickly. “But don’t make a habit of it.”

Giving her one more curt nod, Isaac shoved his empty hands back into his pockets and left. It wasn’t long before Asher appeared with drinks, and Ember was grateful for the crutch that the alcohol provided. Time started to speed up, and soon she was laughing at jokes, and expressions, and even Asher—just for being Asher. He had a way of making her feel loose and happy.

Even as she sloshed about at the table, and Asher gently pushed her back upright, or off of the table, or back into her chair, she noticed the way that Acton glared at him for it. She was mostly sure that he wasn’t touching her except to help her stay off the floor, but as the night went on, she became less and less sure of anything.

It wasn’t until the cold blast of air whipped past her face that she looked up and realized that they had left the bar. They were among the tall grass by the spring again; this time, however, they were closer to the water. The sound of the waves was deafening to her overly sensitive ears, and as she watched the hot spring water slowly join the freezing ocean, she realized where so much of the fog was that hung around this place—it was steam.

The stars filled her vision, and she felt gravity shift. Acton was sighing.

“You shouldn’t drink so much,” he said.

“Why do your eyes do that?” Ember asked, a thin, sick smile crossing her lips. “You look like a doe in the headlights.”

He laid down next to her, and Ember was surprised when she felt him right next to her as he turned her on her side. “It’s because my night vision is better than yours.” Ember tried to roll onto her back. She wanted to drown in the stars again, but Acton held her shoulder firmly, keeping her facing away from him. “Don’t—you could choke if it all comes back up.”

Ember smiled grimly. “At least it would be beautiful.”

“Em, vomit is never beautiful. Never.”

“The stars, I mean.” She sighed. “I’m going to die here, aren’t I?”

Acton kept a hand on her shoulder, but she felt him as he rolled away from her. “We’re all going to die here, Em.”

The waves were so loud, and the grass started to glow a faint blue. Ember tried to roll onto her back again, protesting, but Acton rolled her back.

“Don’t fight it. Just sleep it off.”

“You make it do that?”

“It’s your dream.” He said quietly. “You see what you want to see, which is often fairies and glowing things. You’re not very original, but whatever does it for you.”

“What did you do?”

Acton paused. He sat up, scanning the forest and the ocean. He didn’t like being so close to the water, because sounds didn’t carry well from the water to the air. Asher had caught him off guard that way too many times. But the loud sound usually discouraged her talking, and made her sleep faster.

“Acton?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said you did something unspeakably evil.” She yawned. “What did you do?”

“I said that I had been accused.” Acton replied. “And by very virtue of the word ‘unspeakable,’ we will not be speaking of it, now or ever again.”

She coughed a little, and Acton reached over to be sure she wasn’t on her back again.

“Is that why she hates me?”  She asked.  “Did I do something unspeakable”

“No.”

“But if she won’t talk about it—“

“Em, you didn’t do anything.  Not that I know of, anyways.”

After a long silence, he was almost sure that she was finally surrendering.  But then she suddenly flopped onto her back, and he allowed her to turn to face him when he realized she wasn’t going to stop until he let her.

“Everything’s going to be alright for us, isn’t it?”  She asked.  Her eyes were glassy and her breath was sour from all of the alcohol.  “There’s forgiveness for people like us, Acton.  There’s forgiveness for people that can’t be loved.”

He sighed, and fought the urge to roll his eyes.  He tried to keep his voice soft and touched.  “Everything will be alright.”

She didn’t speak again. After a while, she curled up on her side on the patch of grass he had laid her on. It was always a challenge to find an appropriate spot to lay her on this part of the island; the ground was covered in rocks, except for the soft and muddy areas where there weren’t enough rocks to raise a body off of the spring-permeated ground. The large ones left bruises on her body when she laid on them wrong, but it was better than when she laid in a puddle for most of the night. The shivering was incessant, and the second time her lips had gone so blue that he had taken her back to the house and wrapped her in towels and blankets until she had stopped and returned to a normal color.

He left her in the forest that night, exhausted and sore, and eventually Ethel had found her and carried her home. He didn’t dare take her back himself—it was one thing to taunt the Gillespies, but quite another to spit in their faces. When Gina came for him, it would be because she had decided to end his life, and not because he had forced her hand.

That was when he had started keeping blankets and clothes hidden around in plastic bags in the grass; when he could get her out of the wet clothes fast enough, she didn’t shiver for nearly as long.

He laid back down next to the soft sounds of Ember’s breathing. He had sworn that the night she had kissed him would be the last time, but he found himself cursing everything from the cool breeze to God as he found himself slowly inching up next to her again.

She was warm; not as warm as the spring, or nearly as hot as the fires that Gina set to execute offenders. When he laid next to her, he liked the soft warm that came off of her. It made him want to put his hands inside her stomach the way he had seen Zinny hold her hands in the warm oven when she baked; he had never understood the expression of pure bliss on her face when she did it.

He understood it now. He also understood that he couldn’t put a bloody, steaming hole in Ember’s stomach without killing her. If she died, the warmth would be gone forever. 

But his moods were like the tide, and what went out eventually came back.  Killing Ember was not what he wanted to do; for now, at least. There was always tomorrow.