“Y-y-you’ve been practicing,” she blubbered. “You’re getting better. You can help him!”
My stomach flipped. I’d been practicing how to slow down the effects of my death-touch on plants, not… this. I shook my head. “Ev, I…”
“You can fix it!” she snapped. “Kill the vine!”
My body snapped to obedience at her command, my heart pounding with adrenaline as I snatched up Dane Walker’s hand. Instantly, my death-touch woke at my fingertips. As power surged inside me, dark and familiar, I closed my eyes and did as we’d practiced, forcing my breaths to slow, forcing myself to hold back the hungry thing inside me that wanted totake.
“Arthur,” Jack roughed out, his voice unsteady. Beyond him, Lenny knelt in a pool of his own vomit, panting and clawing his throat where the monster’s poison had seeped into his skin until it blistered and bubbled.
A whisper of doubt moved through me. But… no. This was different.Iwas different. The monster had wanted to hurt Lenny, but I was in charge now, and I could help Dane if I chose. There was more to me than death.
“Arthur,” Jack spoke a little louder. He pushed to his feet. “Step back.”
But I couldn’t. Not yet.
Blood dribbled from Dane Walker’s mouth as he stared at the starlings in the rafters.
“Little one,”the monster cautioned, but I flung its voice aside and clasped the vine, begging it to stop. I could do this. I had to do this. The vine withered under my command, verdant green giving way to a hard, knotted brown.
That was it. Relief unfurled in my ribs. I could do this. I just had to isolate the power, to kill the vine and not the man.
“Arthur!” Jack bellowed, wrapping both arms around my stomach and hauling me away. “I told you to stop!”
I startled, a wave of unchecked power rolling down my arm and into the vine still clutched in my hand. Dane gasped, and his eyes rolled back into his head.
The whole room stilled, and I stared, uncomprehending, until Jack dropped me and my body crumpled onto the bloodstained floor.
No.
I snatched up Dane Walker’s wrist, seeking the slug of a pulse. Instead, the glow of life inside him—warmer and brighter than any plant, bird, or mouse I’d ever stolen from before—slipped from his grasp and crashed into me. Iron coated my tongue at the sudden rush of life blooming in my bones.
It tasted divine.
“Fuck.” Jack stripped off his shirt and pressed it to the wound in the younger man’s chest. He checked Dane’s pulse, as I had done, but it was too late.
No, no, no.
There was no denying the horrible truth in front of us. The empty glaze in his eyes. The preternatural stillness of a man made into an empty shell. Dane Walker was dead.
Because of me.
Outside, the sounds of merriment died down and someone shook the chapel door. “What’s going on in there?” they called.
Jack yanked a set of keys from his pocket and hurled them at me. “Go. Now.” He sounded scared, and that more than anything finally pulled me out of my haze. Jack was staring at Eva, and Eva was staring at the body on the floor. “Go to the house andwash up. Burn your clothes. They can’t connect her back to this. Do you understand?” When I didn’t answer, he barked my name. “Arthur!”
I jolted. “Yes.” Took her hand. “Ev. Come on.”
“I killed him.” Her voice was the smallest and weakest I’d ever heard it.
I shook my head violently. “No.” I had done that. Jack had told me to stop and I wouldn’t—couldn’t—stop. My throat went hard with grief. He’d been so angry, and now he wouldn’t even meet my gaze.
Why hadn’t I stopped?
Izzy stayed with her father. Their voices dropped to a hush as I half walked, half dragged Eva to the back of the church. A layer of moss coated the pews, and wildflowers bloomed in every crack and crevice. A storm of honeybees filled the room. They were all I could hear, the hitch in Eva’s breath all I could feel. Every step she took, more flowers bloomed.
Rough-cut pieces of a life-size nativity set filled the storage room in the back of the chapel. I shivered with cold as I led Eva through the labyrinth of painted plywood figurines.
She looked down at herself. “I’m… bleeding?”
