The Spider Catcher (Redemption by A.L. Tyler Book 1) (26 page)

“I’m not asking you to do anything extreme, Theo.”  Ethel stood to face him.  “I’m just asking you to erase the summer.  Give her something better, or boring, or…anything, really, that isn’t what she went through.  We’ll send her back to school, and she’ll go on to live a decent life.”

“You can’t.” 

They both looked over.  Gina had returned to the room.  Her face was still paler than the moon, and she used one hand on the doorframe to steady herself, but her resolve had returned.

Ethel’s frustration was beginning to show.  “Gina—“

“No,” she said.  “I mean, because there’s another reason.”

Just within earshot and just out of site, Thalia had crept away from the soup in the kitchen several minutes earlier.  No one had told her what was happening to Ember, or what Theo proposed to do to make her better; she only hoped that he could do it.  Sitting on a step, she clutched a washcloth in her hands, twisting it tightly and wrapping it over her knuckles again and again.

“A reason?” 

Ethel sounded upset; it wasn’t often that she stepped up to take any kind of lead, but when she did, she was usually right.  The results weren’t often good, though.  Thalia gulped; she had been afraid for too long, and her whole body shook when she didn’t have something to steady her.

Gina’s next words put a knife through her heart.  “I think she might be pregnant.”

Thalia felt a strangled sound escape her throat as she tried to remember to breathe.  She was sure they had heard her, but no one came. 

“Is that even possible?”  Theo was asking.

Ethel remained determined.  “It doesn’t matter.  Give her a memory of a rape, and we’ll get rid of it.”

“Ethel!”  Theo sounded disgusted.  “I am not going to—“

But sitting on her step, her throat gone dry and her vision going funny, Thalia didn’t hear the rest.  Her world had narrowed to a buzzing noise, and a memory of a wish she had made as a little girl.

Ember had never been well-behaved, and she was wild, but she had been her sister.  Even from afar, they had been sisters; Thalia had always thought that one day, they would be adults together.  They would fight the monsters together, and have their children together—two little girls—and they would raise them together, just as Gina and Ethel had raised them.

Well, just as they had raised Thalia, anyways.

She ran from the house and outside, into the woods.  Determined to find them, she ran into the dangerous place, where the monsters lived. 

It was a childish thing to think, she realized, because now her sister was pregnant by the monster. Thalia was seventeen that year, and finally an adult.  Ember had something growing inside of her that was part of
him
, and it wasn’t a child that she could ever look at without knowing it. 

She felt the tears running down her cheeks; they were the last tears that she would ever cry. They were for the sister she had lost, because Ember wasn’t having a baby. 

She was having an abortion or an abomination, and it made Thalia sick to her stomach.

Chapter 27

In The Garden, the days had 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 an affair 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 whore 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 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 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 perception 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 God had smiled on them all.  Ember would finally have her family, and Gina wouldn’t have to worry over her anymore.  She never stopped talking about how she had always wanted a family.

The door was open when Zinny arrived.  Gina was standing in the frame, stock still, staring at Zinny with a haggard look that said she would gladly curl up in a coffin, if only the world were 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.  “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 were sisters, Gina.”  Zinny said quietly.  “In a past life.  We were 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 an angel 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, and 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.