‘Don’t be.’ He set the cup down on the ground. ‘Once you get over it, you realise you can get through anything life throws at you. Those things aren’t important. They don’t mean anything.’
‘And by “things” you mean emotions like… love?’
He gave me a pitying look. ‘Love is an illusion. Something people want to believe in because they’re afraid of being lonely. But in the end, we all are.’
‘Is that why you joined the society? To be less lonely?’
‘Loneliness isn’t the same as being alone. Haven’t you ever seen that printed on a postcard?’ He winked at me in amusement. ‘It doesn’t matter how many people you surround yourself with, it doesn’t change anything. It’s just that there’s advantages to not going it completely alone.’
‘So all of your relationships have some kind of utility? Even your relationship with Blake?’
Ashton shook his head, his eyes softening. ‘It’s different with Blake. Nothing about us is temporary–we’re bound together, forever. What we share goes beyond any relationship. Let’s call us… soulmates.’ He was grinning wryly, but the word still sounded earnest. He meant it. He did love Blake. Just as Blake loved Ashton–he’d told me so himself. Love was one of those emotions that usually cast everybody in a flattering light, but now it struck an odd note.
‘For someone who doesn’t believe in love, that’s a pretty romantic word to use.’
He raised his hands, laughing, fingers sticky with mulled wine. I thought of bird’s blood, and shifted back a little. ‘You got me. Don’t tell him.’
‘I don’t plan on ever talking to him again.’
He shook his head slowly. ‘Okay, but surely you can see that what he did is a sign that he has feelings for you. A pretty foolish, hopeless sign, sure, but you should definitely take it as a compliment. I can’t remember him ever rebelling like that before. And definitely not over a girl.’
I stared at him, perplexed. This conversation was taking a turn I couldn’t make sense of. At all. ‘That’s ridiculous. He lied to me. He used me. How is that having feelings for me?’
‘He was trying to protect you by keeping you away from us.’ Ashton took a step towards me. ‘By keeping you away from me, to be more specific.’
My heart skipped two beats, then instantly began to race. I felt a tingling at the nape of my neck, but forced myself not to back down. The bridge was narrow. I sensed the metal bars behind me, only centimetres away. ‘What are you trying to say?’
Ashton hesitated. His eyes searched the empty archways at either end of the bridge, then snapped back to my tense face. He studied me briefly, then sighed. ‘I had other plans for this, but maybe I don’t need to bother.’ In a flash his gaze turned dark and smooth. ‘What I’m saying is that you get on my nerves, Mabel. You really fucking get on my nerves–and I’m reaching the end of my patience.’
I wasn’t surprised, but I didn’t understand why he’d gone through this whole performance when we both knew what was at the bottom of it. ‘Then why did you drag me out here? If you’re so sure I can’t do anything to hurt you, you could have just left me alone. You’d never have to see me again.’
I heard footsteps somehere beyond the bridge, echoing hollowly down the covered walkway. Ashton’s eyes darted towards the sound, but besides a shadow flitting past, we remained alone. ‘Let’s just say that my relationship with finality is different from other people’s,’ he said, when the shadow had gone. ‘There are enough commas in my life already, so I prefer to put full stops wherever possible.’
‘Then don’t talk to me in question marks,’ I hissed. ‘What does that actually mean?’
‘What do you think it means?’
The answer was so trite that my brain refused to think it: the most effective way to put a full stop was to end a life. The cleanest cut, the ultimate conclusion.
I found myself recoiling, and promptly bumped into the bridge. Although I’d spent weeks thinking the worst of the Starlings, turning the possibilities over in my mind, they had never coalesced into a feeling. But they did now. And it was cold and clammy and spreading at unpleasant speed throughout my body.
‘So it’s true,’ I blurted hoarsely. ‘You killed June. And the professor. And you tried to kill Paulina and Davie as well.’
Ashton put his hands into his coat pockets and moved slowly towards me. ‘Yes, yes, yes and no. Believe it or not, what happened to your friend was a regrettable and ironically coincidental accident.’
‘And the others?’
‘Well… Victor overestimated June’s ability to resist, so in a way that was unintentional too. Jack wanted to get rid of Paulina, and Victor egged him on to choose the most effective route. That was… ill-considered. Impulsive. And the professor, well, that’s on you, I’m afraid. He’d been on our radar for years, but he wasn’t a threat. We knew he’d keep his mouth shut. Until you came along. There’s something about you that makes people disregard their own safety. Maybe that’s why bad things tend to happen to the people around you, have you ever considered that?’
My mind reeled as I tried to process the barrage of information. But how could they have done it so quickly? How could they have done it at all? It was crazy. It was… sick. But as I looked at Ashton now, I realised I didn’t doubt for a second that he was capable of it. ‘It was you. You killed him.’
Ashton ran both hands through his curls, pushing them back from his face. In the dim light I saw an unfamiliar edge to his soft features, and the look in his eyes was both amused and exasperated. ‘It doesn’t matter which of us made him jump off that balustrade. With us there is no I or you, there’s only we.’
‘But… how did you do it? How did you make them want to take their own lives?’ Blake had sworn to me Victor hadn’t done anything to June, and although I had no reason to believe him, I did–about that, at least. And even if he had lied to me, what could they possibly have done to Professor Edwards to make him kill himself when he’d only been back in Cambridge a day?
Ashton sighed, audibly impatient.
‘It’s tricky to explain, and anyway, it’s beyond the scope of this conversation. Let’s just say that… a soul is made up of energy. It’s like we’ve all got this sort of vessel inside us, just brimming over with waves. When you siphon some of that off, every bit of it takes away a nuance of the individual’s personality. Their beliefs, their traumas and fears, their character–everything fades. Their very will begins to fray. It varies from person to person, but generally speaking, the more energy you take from someone the easier they are to manipulate. Once you lose enough of it, you don’t really know anymore who you are or what you want. It’s a relief when someone tells you what to do. So if you order someone like that to jump over a railing or off a roof, they don’t hesitate.’
