Dark and Shallow Lies(89)

Something heavy.

He struggles with it in the water, and I think he’ll probably drown. But he doesn’t.

I watch as he hauls it up on to a bit of muddy high ground near the bald cypress tree, and I know what it is even before I see it.

The missing black trunk.

I cling to the boardwalk piling, shaking, as Hart opens it up. I half expect a grand flourish and a ta-da, like he used to do when we were little kids. Back when he was magic.

But there’s only beating rain.

And crushing wind.

The emergency generator keeps shining. False moonlight on dark hair.

Hart’s curls plastered to his forehead.

Elora’s.

Spilling over the lip of the trunk.

And I know now why my mind couldn’t show me this part. Why it kept this part hidden. Didn’t let me peek.

I thought I was empty, but I lean forward and vomit into the water and the wind.

Over and over and over. I vomit until I’ve turned myself inside out.

“Greycie?” Hart sounds far away. Not distance far. Time far. He sounds five again. Terrified. Confused. Like when he came knocking on my window.

The first time.

And the second.

Only this time, I can’t open the window and let him in.

Because he’s the rougarou. Finally come to rip me to shreds.

“Why?” It’s the only thing I can get out. “Why did you kill her, Hart?” I’m choking again. On the rain. And the words.

“I didn’t!” he shouts. “I didn’t, Greycie! I swear to God!” He sinks to his knees in the mud, surrounded by a half-dozen cypress knees poking up out of the earth like witnesses. “You have to believe me! I didn’t kill her!”

I can’t stop staring at Elora’s dark hair spilling out of the trunk. I can’t see that. I have to get away.

I have to be away.

From that.

I pull myself up to my feet, then I let go of the boardwalk piling and throw myself headlong into the wind. It knocks me sideways. I skitter and claw at the boards to keep from ending up in the water, but I manage to right myself and keep plowing forward.

And I don’t take time to look over my shoulder.

I’m hurdling gaps in the boardwalk. Hungry-looking holes that nip at my ankles with splintered teeth. I kick at the grabbing vines.

If I can just make it home . . . maybe.

Maybe this hurricane won’t be as bad as they think.

Maybe the house won’t blow down.

Maybe it won’t wash away.

Maybe I won’t drown.

Maybe Zale will come for me.

Elora is dead.

Hart killed her and dumped her in the gator pond.

But maybe he won’t kill me.

Maybe I’ll live.

I look toward the dock, but there’s no boat. Upriver I can barely make out the lights of something big. A huge commercial supply boat. Churning north. Slow and steady. Trying to get ahead of the storm. Evie isn’t anywhere to be seen. And I tell myself she made it.

She had to have made it.

I run into the bookstore and slam the front door behind me. The electricity is off, but the flashlight in my pocket still works. I flip the dead bolt and hurry to the back door to do the same. Then I stand in the middle of the floor, dripping and sucking in great gulps of oxygen. Grateful to be breathing air again instead of water.

Until I look around.

In the kitchen, the apple wallpaper peels like the skin of a snake. It’s grey. Stained. Molting away from the walls. Rain drips through cracks that spread across the ceiling like spiderwebs. And in the corners, thick vines push up through the linoleum floor and stretch out toward the plywood-covered windows.

I shut my eyes against this haunted-house version of home.

But when I open them again, nothing has changed.

I back out of the kitchen and start up the stairs, toward Honey’s bedroom. When the storm surge comes, that’s where I’ll need to be. But a horrible creaking, groaning noise stops me in my tracks.

The wind is trying to take the roof.

The Mystic Rose shudders and sways under the attack.

I freeze for a second, listening to the house do battle with the hurricane. There’s a cracking, splintering noise from up above, and I back slowly down the stairs.

I head toward my little bedroom and lock the door. I try to ignore the water stains that cover the sagging ceiling. And how the walls are fuzzy with mold. The way the floor feels spongy and rotten under my feet.

I just sit in the middle of the empty room. In the dark. And I wait.

For Hart.

Or for Elizabeth.

And I wonder which one will get me first.

The storm sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard in my life. I feel the walls shake. The roar of the rain is deafening. I cover my ears. Tell myself this is the worst of it.

Even though I know it isn’t.

I close my eyes and think about Zale. The electricity in his kiss.

The power in his touch.

How he makes me feel.

How he said he’d be here if I needed him.

There’s another groaning sound. Splintering wood. I shine my flashlight toward the window. Elizabeth is pulling at the plywood. Ripping it away from the glass. One last sharp crack and the job is done. The wind takes the plywood and I scream.

But then there’s a face outside.

In the dark.