“Not many left,” he promises, his smile too tight to be true.
I nearly lose my concentration when a laugh bubbles up. “Bastard,” I mutter. “Thank you.”
Another tug upward. Thousands of pounds, thousands of souls, one more foot higher.
“When you want to, Elle, you’re as much a force of nature as—”
“Save. The poetics.”
Sweat blinds me. Each step adds more of the spiral’s stone and meat to the portion I drag up. Can this work? The doubt nearly makes me lose my balance. I imagine myself tumbling back down as all my progress unravels. I stop, catch my breath.
“What happens at the top?” Douglas asks, closer to me now. As though proximity will help.
“The water. Have you noticed?” I ask, licking my lips at the thought of something to quench a thirst I hadn’t noticed until now. But even water would be rotten in my mouth now.
He shakes his head, peering behind me.
“It’s not. Water.” Each word is as hard to get out as each stone is to lift. “Too. Thick. I can feel it. Connect to it.”
Douglas shakes his head. “So, it’s…” he says, slowly, waiting for me to interrupt him.
“Fuel. I don’t…” I gulp down the heavy air, my thoughts as slow as my feet. “I think the lighthouse, the oil… Something merged. Took on. Chara—” I cough. Some of the souls rush to my lungs to calm them. “Characteristics.”
The oil can be burned for the lighthouse, for this, and for Mr.Pratterman’s grand plans. What else can it burn?
“I understand,” Douglas says, that same tight smile on his face.
It’s a relief to stop talking.
Through the power of the sacrificed and the little will I have left to reach Liney—to finally set things right between us—I reach the top of the spiral. The basement. The entrance opens as easily as curtains in wind. Nothing compared to what I’ve done.
I stumble through the gateway into the basement when the whirlpool of tortured oil crashes against itself. Douglas holds his hands out as though he can catch me.
The souls wriggle out of me and into the air of the basement. I need the wall for support without their help. They’re bright, twinkling lights like fireflies as they disappear up and away. I used to hope they were all bound for damnation anyway when I was sacrificing them. Now I hope only for their peace, wherever they’re meant to go next.
“How will I tell her…?” I lose my momentum, breathing raggedly. I can feel her feet on the wood upstairs, moving around in a hurry. She’s still here. She stops, nearly on top of us, and another set of feet hurries to her.
I reunited them. One more tick in mygoodcolumn.
“You must trust her,” Douglas says, standing beside the ladder. “And let her go.”
The small climb up the ladder nearly wipes me out. I flip open the trapdoor and flop onto the old wood boards of the main level. At least they didn’t move the chesterfield back.
I turn my head to where the feet were. My sister is clutching Bridget, both of them staring at me in horror. I could’ve never seen her again. Judging from the bags beside them on the floor, I wouldn’t have if I’d taken much longer.
I collapse on my back and raise my hands in peace. “I’m not here tokill you. The opposite.”
Douglas rises through the trapdoor’s hole and approaches them. Right. They all know one another now. That could make this easier. Would it have been this easy if she’d always known? Douglas as a bridge between us, not a tear?
The three speak in hushed tones, beyond my hearing. The voices turn harsher, sharper, louder, but I still can’t concentrate on the words.
“Liney,” I croak out. “Please.”
She approaches but keeps an arm’s length away.
“I’m sorry,” I say, squinting up at her. “It’s not enough. But I am. Everyone I killed. They helped save my life. They’re helping me right what I can.”
Liney’s eyes shine with tears. There’s conflict in her hands, in her shifting posture. One instinct to come closer, another to run.
