Tobias half turned to Ben, still holding my head fast, and said, “See? I told you he’d find it nonsensical.” There was an odd, prideful delight in his tone, as if my confusion was a test I’d passed. He drew my focus back to him, the side of his thumb curving against my jaw. “You don’t owe this man anything, Cove. You never did. But he thought you belonged to him—in his own petty, bureaucratic way.”
Ben squatted next to Mark, his hands hanging loosely between his knees. “It’s more common than you’d think,” he said, scanning Mark’s face for something I couldn’t see. “People get fixated on things they lose control of.”
Mark’s eyes cut to me, so quickly I flinched. I wondered what he could feel—if the fear spiked through his body, if he was screaming inside or if it was just a cold, slow panic inside your own head when your body was a wet rag on the floor.
“What did you do to him?” I asked. My own voice sounded tinny, like it belonged to someone else. “Is he drugged?”
Tobias’s hand finally left my neck. He kneeled beside Mark and, with a chilly gentleness, pushed an errant lock of hair off Mark’s sweaty forehead. “The first time I killed, it was a disaster, Cove. The cunt flailed and screamed, and the sea snakes couldn’t get a clean strike. One of them hit the glass so hard it ruptured its jaw. I had to cull the poor thing,” he said, his voice pitched low, almost apologetic.
He tapped a knuckle on Mark’s cheek, three light raps, then continued, “He can feel, but not move. He’ll be conscious, but there won’t be any thrashing or screaming. It’s important to me that nothing gets hurt, except what I intend.”
It was like being told a story, except I was in it, and the story was true. I sank to my haunches, legs suddenly weak.
“So you just—do this?” I asked quietly. “Whenever someone annoys you?”
“Not often,” Tobias admitted, straightening. “But when I do, I do it right. You understand, don’t you, my little siren?”
I did, and I didn’t. The logic was nauseating, but it was unassailable—if I accepted that my life had any value to this man, it was only because I played by his rules.
I swallowed, my eyes dropping to where Mark’s fingers twitched, ever so slightly, on the tile. “What—what do you want me to do?”
“Just watch,” Tobias said.
That was it. I didn’t have to help or even look particularly happy about it. I just had to be here, an audience for whatever came next, and that was all he needed from me.
I could do that.
Ben stood and rolled his shoulders like a pitcher getting ready to deliver. “We’re on a pretty tight schedule,” he said, not to me, but to Tobias.
“Let’s get started then,” Tobias replied, his voice fond as he looked down at me and petted my hair. “Just sit here, precious, watch, and you can have anything you want.”
I gave him a small nod, though my hands were trembling.
“Good boy,” he praised, scratching his nails deliciously over my scalp before stepping away.
Ben and Tobias hefted Mark’s weight between them with practiced efficiency, like they were moving a particularly awkward shipment. I realized, distantly, Mark must have been on some kind of paralytic, the kind that left the important stuff running and everything else soft and unusable.
They maneuvered him up the stairs to the catwalk above the sea snakes’ tank.
Was it wrong that I was kind of relieved to know Tobias paralyzed his prey first…? After the whole incident that’d gotten me trapped in here, I’d been extremely concerned about the jellies. They’re such delicate creatures, and imagining a panicked, dying individual fighting for his life in their tank made me feel sick. So somehow, although I definitely wasn’t a fan of all the murders here, I was content that Tobias had at least put some thought into the animals’ safety.
I sat on the floor, knees to my chest, picking absently at the seam of my lounge pants while watching as Mark’s body, limp as a dead seal, was propped over the rail by Tobias’s and Ben’s combined strength. The catwalk’s mesh panels made a faint metallic hiss under their shifting weight.
“Tobias,” I said, my voice thready. “Um… what if they only dry bite him?”
Above me, Tobias looked down with a degree of patience that made me ache. “That’s a great question, precious. Dry bites are certainly possible, and in that case, even without the venom in his veins, he’ll feel excruciating terror thinking that it is as he drowns.”
“Oh, okay…”
After the first awkward lift, Ben and Tobias found a mutual cadence—one man bracing at the shoulders, the other at the hips, careful to keep the limp arms from swinging and knocking against the safety rail. The body wasn’t completely dead weight, not yet, but it carried the same inertia, the same heaviness that reminded me of hauling stranded marine mammals across sandbars—every muscle slack, skin turning to wax right before your eyes.
What did it feel like, I wondered, to know you were about to die, but to have your body betray you this way? I wanted to ask, but all that came out was a dry rattle in my throat. I forced myself to watch, to keep my promise, even as the muscles in my calves twitched with the urge to run.
They positioned Mark over the open water, just above the spotlit oval of deep blue. The snakes reacted instantly, a dozen liquid, beautiful ribbons writhing up from the sand and crags like the ghosts of their namesake. They sensed that something was about to happen, undulating in a slow, dramatic ballet, tongues flicking out to scent the water.
I pressed my palms to my ears, not to block out noise, but to ground myself in the pressure, the reality of my own body.
Tobias and Ben slipped Mark into a harness then. It looked custom, thick black webbing and stainless-steel buckles—like the rescue slings we used to haul sedated dolphins, but remade for a human. They slipped Mark into it with careful, competent hands, never rushing, never speaking louder than was necessary. I watched Ben’s expression, searching for a flicker of second thoughts, but saw none.
