Caleb stands in her path, as large as a wall. “What did he tell you?” he demands.
She can’t think fast enough to lie. “Your dad,” she says, her eyes darting around Caleb’s body for an exit. “The men who disappeared.”
“He told you I killed them.”
Her heart is hammering too quickly to choke out an answer.
“It wasn’t me, Sarah,” Caleb says. “It’s him, it’s always been him. You have to believe me.”
“Of course you’d say that.”
“And of course he’d sayIdid it.” Caleb thrusts a finger toward his brother. “What did he offer you, to get you to take him with you?”
Sarah’s heart slams so hard and fast against her ribs, she can’t hear anything else Caleb says. His mouth moves but she doesn’t understand the words.Make them feel sorry for you, then give love and acceptance. Was Elijah playing her all along as she played him, and Caleb? Showing her a harmless, innocent face, so that she would trust him instantly.
They’re more alike than she thought.
You can really pick ’em, Ben whispers.
Her pulse bangs and clatters. Her vision starts to blur, and Jacob Vass looms over her, leering, while Ben gurgles blood at her feet.
She sucks in a breath. The icy air slashes the inside of her nose, her throat. Her eyesight sharpens, and it’s Caleb standing before her while Elijah drools blood on the snow.
“I thought you knew,” Elijah wheezes. “I thought you understood, because you’re like me.”
Sarah stares down at the guileless boy with his cold, clever hands. Because she does understand. Two peas in a pod. They’re both survivors.
And killers.
“You’ve been protecting him all this time,” she says to Caleb. Protecting him from the law, and from his own urges. From Jacob Vass’s legacy of violence.
“I never lied about that.”
“Why didn’t you turn him in?”
“He’s my brother. He’s all I have.”
Elijah cackles, spitting blood over his father’s shearling coat. “All you’re left with.”
Caleb closes his eyes briefly, and his hands close into fists at his side. “I’m responsible for him. It’s all my fault.”
“You couldn’t have known when you left Sweetside your dad would?—”
“No,” Caleb says. “It’s not that. I’m responsible for who he is. Imadehim.”
“Ask him how it felt,” Elijah says. His left eye is starting to darken again. “Ask him how it felt to kill Dad.Who would’ve thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?”
Sarah locks eyes with Caleb. His Adam’s apple bobs as he struggles to speak, and she reads the truth in his stricken face. He murdered their father, and now Elijah likes to replay the ritual, hungry for a taste of it.
I wanted him to get up so I can hit him again, she’d said.
Oh, she understands Elijah very well.
And then she runs.
That is, she tries to run. Caleb seizes her wrist. Her left wrist, which is still tender from Ben’s hand. “Sarah,” Caleb rasps. Ben had said her name too, both times, practically growled it. A dark fury flares under her skin.
She pulls out the knife and plunges it into Caleb.
