What You Don't Know(103)

“All you’d ever talk about was working for the Post,” he says slowly. His eyes are glowing with a fevered light, and when she tries to look away he pinches her cheeks and forces her to look at him. “About your work on Seever. I knew that if people thought Seever was back, the paper would let you write again. And they did, didn’t they? That’s exactly what happened.”

“You didn’t have to. No one asked you to do any of this.”

“No, no one did,” he says, grinning, his eyes rolling. “But I did anyway. And you got to write again, didn’t you? I’ve never seen you so happy. And I was the one who made you that happy. I was.”

Ethan’s hair is stiff with gel and hair spray, his scalp is shining whitely beneath. It’s the same way Seever always wore his hair. When did he start doing it like that, and why didn’t she notice?

She tilts her head back as far as it will go, until the tendons in her neck scream in protest. Maybe, she thinks, Seever was meant to kill her. She’d asked why he’d let her live, and he didn’t have an answer, there wasn’t an answer; he didn’t let her live, it was just delayed a little. She’d managed to put it off for a few years, but it’s all already been written, and a person can hide from fate for a while but can never be free of it altogether.

Maybe, she thinks, she always belonged to Seever, and she always will.

“I love you,” Ethan says, running his thumb down her exposed throat. It makes her shudder, in revulsion, and in fear, but with something else too. Anticipation? “I love you so much, so I gave you a story to write. I got rid of that Chris Weber. You hate him, you told me that. I did it for you. All of it.”

He tilts his chin up at a childish angle, daring her to argue with him. She doesn’t.

“This isn’t your grandparents’ house, is it?” she asks. Tries not to think about Weber, or Carrie Simms, or anyone else. She’s not going to ask, she’s not giving him the satisfaction.

He blinks, twice in a row, hard. “How’d you know?”

“You’re not in any of the pictures.”

That makes him smile. “You caught me,” he says. “I’m staying here for a while.”

“Where are the people who live here?”

“Oh, they’re around,” Ethan says absently, and she has to bite her lip, hard, to keep from moaning. That’s what the smell is, she should have known.

“If you love me, let me go,” she says instead. “Untie me and let me go.”

“I do love you,” he says. “Seever loves you too. I saw one of his paintings yesterday, of you. Have you seen it?”

“No.”

“He made you beautiful.” Ethan ducks his head and smiles, a coy smile that makes her shudder, and then it disappears, and everything is dark. “And he made you dead.”

“Please, let me go. I want to go home.”

“No.” Ethan gives her a sly look. “If I let you go, you’d go to the police. You’d tell them everything.”

He leans closer. He smells of sweat and piss, of food gone bad. It’s the smell of insanity, she thinks, as if his pores have opened up and bloomed with crazy.

“You would tell on me, wouldn’t you?” he asks. “You’d turn me in?”

He’s waiting for her answer; her life depends on it. She could lie and tell him no, that she’d never turn him in, thank him for everything he’s done. She’s been telling lies her whole life, she’s been weaving her stories at the loom and pulling the threads tight, she’s good at it, she could make Ethan believe, and he might let her go, but he might not. He has an eager look in his eyes; he’s waiting for her to say something, to tell him she loves him, to plead for her life, because he loves her, that’s what he says. It’s a boyish look, the desperate look of a man terrified of rejection, but there’s something else there too, buried deep under that charm but still peeking through, just around the edges but it’s enough for her to see.

It’s nothing. Nothing at all. A screaming void that swallows up everything it can. He’s used her as an excuse, said that he killed all those people for her, that she’d wanted him to, and maybe he believes it, but it was really for himself; he’d probably been fantasizing about killing for a long time and needed an excuse to soothe what scraps of conscience he might’ve had, and he’d latched on to her. And even if she lies to him, it’ll be the same. He doesn’t love her. He’d been the one to call her, he knew she was coming over, he’d already had the twine in his pocket. He was prepared. It’s all the same to him. He wants her to beg and cry, but it’ll be the same in the end. Do you like it fast or slow? Seever had asked her once, and she’d found it funny then, but now it’s horrible, it has a completely different meaning.

So she doesn’t bother lying. Not because she’s a hero, not because she wants to die, but because she’s so damn tired of it all. And she’s angry that she’d fallen right into this, that she hadn’t had a clue, and now here she is, and she wants to hurt him.

“I would go straight to the police, I’d tell them everything,” she says. “I’d tell them that you killed all those people. That you’re a sick fuck.” She blinks, slowly. “I’d tell everyone that you couldn’t get it up, even when I was jiggling your dick in my hand.”