The monster’s preternatural awareness of any and all signs of life in its proximity sometimes gave me a heightened ability to sense things beyond my natural limitations, such as the whisper of chlorophyll in the window-box plants or the slow chug of a heartbeat upstairs.
Andthere.I squinted, trying to make sense of the squirming mass that twisted between Jack Moreau’s ribs, high up where the heart should be.
I sucked in a hard breath.Is that… rot?
“No.”Wonder crept into the monster’s voice.“Look again.”
I squinted.
“Damn it.” Jack rocked back, a sickly pallor to his face. I’d never seen him like this, bowed from pain as thesomethingin his chest wriggled like a worm.
I blanched, instinctively stepping forward, only for the monster to tug me back.
“Don’t.”
It was right. I couldn’t touch him, or any living thing. Tonight had made perfectly clear that there should be no exceptions, not even—no, especially not for Jack’s family.
Jack’s hand clenched the tea towel draped over the oven’s door handle. “Leave me.”
“You’re hurt,” I protested.
“I’m fine,” he said through gritted teeth. “Check on Eva.” When I didn’t move, his eyes snapped to me. “Go.”
“But—”
“Now!”
The force of his censure sent me stumbling back into the shadows, shame sickening in my gut. I shoved a fist into my mouth, biting down on my knuckles to hide the sound of a sob. My skin tasted of soap and woodsmoke.
Jack had never spoken to me like that before tonight.
At the sound of heavy feet shuffling, I peered through the open kitchen door, watching silently as Jack pried back the grill of the heater vent over the fridge. The grind of metal fell heavy in the quiet space.
When Jack pulled out a jar of honey, I sensed thesomethingin his chest stretching. He buried a groan of pain.
My heart tithed a beat.
The monster was right. I knew decay like I knew my own name, and the pulsing, dark knot inside him may have been distinctly wrong, but it wasn’t rot.
With heavy, labored breaths, Jack unscrewed the cap with a loudpopand fished out a bit of honeycomb. The moment it slipped between his teeth, the wriggling thing inside him slowed.
I stepped back, heart in my throat as my fingerstap-tap-tappedagainst the side of my leg. The usually soothing rhythm did nothing to stall the catch of my breath.
What had I just witnessed?
My mind flipped through the night’s events in a nightmarish zoetrope. Oil-slick feathers exploding from the rafters. Wildflowers bursting through the cracks between the chapel’s floorboards. Blood seeping under the body of the man I’d—
“Stop,”the voice inside me whispered.
But I couldn’t. The monster was right: We were one, and so were our sins.
Jack opened the kitchen door and slipped out into the yard, the lumbering weight of his boots on gravel my only clue to his direction. When I turned, my elbow bumped the landline, nearly knocking the handset off its cradle.
A decision settled inside me. I lifted the handset, unwrinkling the slip of paper still clutched in my fist. I knew the numbers by heart, just as I knew how much I had to lose by making this call.
When I reached for the handset, the monster stiffened.“What are we doing?”
I punched the numbers in. My breath caught on the first ring, and I squeezed my eyes shut. If I didn’t do this now, I never would.
