Marlowe’s jaw clenched. “And if I never come back?”
Pike snatched up the decayed fish. Snail shells cracked as she slammed it in the mud. A sliver of driftwood speared the fish to the shoreline.
Trapped.
Marlowe had spent the last 9 years trying to leave this town. First her parents were gone, then Heather was the only thing keeping her here, and when she thought she might rid herself of the last fucking thing, Heather had fucked that over too, by never shutting the fuck up beforethey’d been attacked by a lake monster. Alake monster, as if the earth itself were against her.
Marlowe was willing to bet even if she could get the biggest fucking fishing pole and haul Pike out of this miserable little lake, whatever she’d done to her went deeper than a desperate pull between them.
If Pike died, Marlowe could die, and if Marlowe died, Heather would be alive, and she didn’t deserve to live. Heather deserved to be gone.
All the broken things in Marlowe’s life had rotted because of Heather.
“If I”—Marlowe’s mouth went dry and she licked her lips and again shoved her hand, palm up, at Pike—“if I bring you someone else, can you get rid of it?”
Pike tilted her head, lips stretching greedily. A soft trilling noise hung between them.
Yes.
A sudden, unwanted image flashed in Marlowe’s mind: Heather, sweetly talking to Pike, bleeding-heart pajamas folded on the shoreline, Heather’s hands on Pike’s tail, slipping along the curve of her scales, her tongue in her throat—
They always believed Heather. Everyone always listenedto Heather.
Marlowe scrambled to her feet, stomach heaving. Pike hissed, tendrils snapping around her face.
The uneaten lobster carcass had washed up on shore next to the corpse of the swan, tattered caution tape still hanging from its neck, and its dead eyes bored into Marlowe.
Heather wouldn’t come back to Pike’s Lake willingly. She might come to her apartment willingly if Marlowe was careful. That’s why she had the plan, the acid burning in her tub like the burning at the back of Marlowe’s throat.
“I’ll bring someone.” The words wheezed from her like she was being strangled. “I’ll bring someone, and you’ll let me go.”
Pike’s lips stretched wide. Taunting, almost, like this was a challenge. Then ripples on the lake marked where she’d been a moment before.
Heather, sweet-talking, cunning,dangerousHeather, couldn’t die here. Marlowe would find another way. The acid, her hands clamped too long around her throat, something,anythingbut bringing her back to Pike’s Lake.
If a creature could hear, Heather would worm into their brain until she consumed it. The same would happen to Pike. And if itdidn’t—
The alternative turned Marlowe’s stomach and she stumbled to her truck, keys clattering as she stretched and snatched them off the wheel well in the box.
Heather, mouth dangling open, blood staining the backseat; Heather, flesh cold under her hands, slipping underwater; Heather, bloated, snails sliding over her teeth, her tongue, leeches burrowing into her ears.
Heather, finally dead.
Marlowe couldn’t.
She would get Pike a different body. Free herself from the mark. Take care of Heather so her body would dissolve before the memory of her could brand itself into Marlowe’s mind.
Marlowe wasn’t a killer, she thought that night, as she considered who to bring as a sacrifice for the creature at Pike’s Lake. Marlowe wasn’t thinking about the creature at all, she told herself, as she suffocated into sweaty sheets, rutting against the mark on her hand. Lake-rot melted into her finish, and the room smelled like Pike’s mouth.
Exhaustion followed her home from another work day. Mercy Hospital had turned away another sallow-skinned young man, and when Marlowe hauled out the trash she found him stifling a cough by the overflowing dumpsters. Marlowe could only offer a cigarette and a nurse’s phone number who had been fired a few months back for reasonscited as ‘not upholding the values of the organization’. Marlowe knew she’d still be looking for work—rural religious hospitals kept small circles, and gossip about a lesbian caregiver traveled fast.
When Marlowe’s break was up, after sitting in silence on the concrete curb, the young man slipped her note in his pocket and gave her a thin-lipped smile. She only hoped it wasn’t too late for both of them to get out of this town.
Wood paneling sapped away Marlowe’s remaining energy and she sprawled on the paisley couch after a shower, staring at the smoke stains on her ceiling and pressing a napkin to her hand that had begun to ooze again.
The phone on her wall rang.
A shrill, battering sound against her already achy head, and Marlowe groaned, unmoving. She’d gotten home barely an hour ago. The hospital could wait. No fucking way was she going back in tonight.
