A Lesson in Vengeance(57)

“I wasn’t trying to kill you at all.”

“You won’t kill me,” Ellis says, and from the way she says it I get the distinct impression she finds this exchange distastefully remedial. “Really. But you have to make sure your victim can’t escape. Or do you really think you’re capable of chasing someone down and killing them by brute force when they’re already fighting back?”

“I’m not planning to kill anyone, period,” I argue, and one of Ellis’s brows pops up.

She doesn’t say it, but I can still hear those words hovering unspoken in the space between us: Even Alex?

My chest aches, badly enough I press my closed fist against my sternum and press down hard. Ellis would never say I’d killed Alex. And even if I insisted on my own responsibility, I know what Ellis would argue back: People fight, Felicity, she’d say. People drink, and they fight, and accidents happen.

I haven’t told her about the séance, or Margery Lemont. How sometimes I wonder if Margery’s spirit has burrowed itself into my body, curling up tight and cold around my heart.

And yet here I am, pretending to murder Ellis. Putting the garrote around her throat, where, if I truly was possessed by Margery, it would be only too easy for her to take over my body and draw the twine tight.

Possession doesn’t exist, I hear Ellis say. Magic doesn’t exist.

Only it does. Just because Ellis can’t see it doesn’t make it not real.

“My turn,” Ellis says. “Give me the garrote.” My palms are damp as I shove the twine back into her hands; she twists it around her knuckles hard enough the skin blanches. “Turn around.”

I do, slowly. Knowing Ellis has no intention of letting me die doesn’t do much to quell the way my heart has started to race. What if she makes a mistake? She might not mean to hurt me, but if she draws the cord too tight, if she holds me too long, it would be an accident, and I’d still be just as dead.

I’m about to tell Ellis I’ve changed my mind when she snaps the cord around my neck.

I stumble back against her chest, both hands grasping at the twine. But Ellis drags it tighter, crossing the cord behind my neck and eking out a wet, convulsive noise from my windpipe. Her body is firm and unshifting, even when I jab an elbow back at her stomach, her breath hot in my ear. The twine digs in, a white-hot streak across my throat. I try to tell her to stop, but my voice doesn’t work. I can’t breathe. I can’t—

Ellis jerks me sideways, and for one reeling second I think she’s about to break my neck. But it’s only to turn me toward the mirror.

We’re both reflected there: me with my face gone scarlet, my throat straining against her makeshift garrote and Ellis’s fists clenched around the twine.

“See?” Ellis says. In the mirror her eyes are bright and alive with their own internal light, shoulders rising and falling with a shallow tremor. “You can’t escape. You can’t resist—not effectively, anyway. I’ve compressed your carotid artery, so there’s very little blood flow to your brain.”

I can barely even understand what she’s saying. My thoughts have gone to static, blurring out at the edges. Ellis tips her head in against mine.

“Like this, see? Even with you fighting back…you’ll be unconscious in thirty seconds. Within another minute, you’d be dead. Just like Tamsyn Penhaligon.”

She’s going to kill me.

The thought flares in my mind, red and lethal. Tears leak from my eyes, hot on my cheeks. I taste copper.

Only then Ellis lets go. Color blooms back into the world, and I stagger. I would fall to my knees if not for the way Ellis catches me with an arm around my waist.

“There,” she murmurs. “There…You’re okay. Did you think I was going to hurt you? I would never hurt you. You’re safe.”

I’m still crying. The sobs come out hoarse and inhuman, like my vocal cords have been dragged over asphalt. My throat burns.

Ellis’s hand is in my hair, stroking it like I’m a frightened animal. My mind circles around and around the white noise of encroaching death. Of suffocation.

Is this how Alex felt after she hit the surface of the lake, the first shocked gasp as water came flooding in? Did she see the same haze seeping into her vision—her intoxication fading as terror clawed up her spine?

She might have survived the fall. But even then, Alex didn’t know how to swim.

I twist in Ellis’s arms to press my face against her shoulder, and she lets me cry, patting my head and murmuring soft, meaningless phrases as my tears and snot dampen her starched shirt collar.

“Why did you do that?” I ask when I’ve finally gotten my breathing back under control. I withdraw enough to look at her, wiping my wet nose with the back of one hand. “You didn’t have to…to do that.”

“We were practicing,” Ellis says, with a faintly confused tilt to her tone.

“Right, we were practicing, not…not…You could have killed me!”

Something complicated passes over Ellis’s face, and she lurches forward, grasping my shoulders with both hands. Her fingertips dig in hard enough it nearly hurts. “I would never kill you,” she vows, her eyes gone wide. “Felicity, I swear to you, I’ll never let anything happen to you. I’d rather die.”

I blink against a fresh wave of tears. Ellis’s thumb skirts up to brush one of them away; her touch lingers on my cheek afterward, her skin cool where mine now feels feverishly hot.