The Storm King(88)

There were bodies here too, some silent and skewered by broken windows and others wretchedly loud as they thrashed on the ground. Part of the boardwalk railing had given way, and the shouts of those who’d fallen into the cold water rose through the planks like the damned.

This was hell, and June was its architect.

She found May crumpled against the south railing. Her neck was turned in an impossible direction. She was examining a region of her back that should have required a mirror to see.

June didn’t remember walking to May, but then there she was. She stepped outside her body as it curled against that of her twin. From above, the two of them looked as she imagined they had in the womb. Nested into each other like two halves of a single perfect thing.

“Dearest.” June sobbed into May’s forehead. She put her hands on either side of May’s head, willing the pulse in her wrists into her sister’s temples. In one of the Lake’s stories, there would have been enough life left for May to utter a last sentence. One last word that June could dip in gold and carry around like a locket. But May’s eyes were empty. Her twin was gone.



For the first time, June was alone.

June once believed that she could do anything, but in her first moment of solitude, she knew that she couldn’t do this.

May was June’s heart. No one can live without their heart.

She didn’t think. The time for plots and schemes was over. These were relics of an era as dead as the sister she lay beside. With May gone, there was nothing left to plan for. There was only one last thing to do.

When the crowd had broken through the back windows, they’d taken a set of drapes with them. Many of the curtains from the other windows burned and charred, but these were still velvet and crimson as deep as blood. June found their cord and tied one end around her ankle and the other around a wrought iron bench that sat not far from the boardwalk’s broken railing.

June was not physically strong, but she could summon the energy to push the iron bench through the gap in the railing. She could find the strength to do this one final thing.

“I’d do it all differently if I could.” June kissed May on the forehead for the last time. She savored the jasmine scent of her sister’s hair and the slender arch of her nose. June didn’t know if there were worlds beyond this one. If there were, it seemed unlikely that their paths would lead to the same clearing. This was goodbye.

Behind June, a woman gasped. “Your sister.” She knelt in front of May and rested two fingers against her neck and then concentrated with an intensity June found transfixing. This was the same lady who’d been helping the stricken people inside.

June had walked through the same room, cluttered with her own victims, and barely spared them a glance. May never would have done such a thing. No person with an ounce of humanity would. The first of the sirens sounded in the distance.

I’d do it all differently if I could.

“I’m so sorry. Such a gentle girl.” She removed her fingers from May’s neck.

June’s vision cleared enough to realize that she knew this woman. She was married to the owner of the pub in town, Union Points. Mrs. McHale. She was a severe-looking one. Yankee stock. A spine of steel and chips of glass for eyes. June had seen her at the grocery and at the docks. She’d never scorned the twins like most of the others in town. If they met, she’d nod and give them a polite “Good day,” as if they were anyone else.



“I killed her.” June realized she was sobbing again. Only an hour ago, such a display would have disgusted her, but that life was over. May was gone, and June would soon be fast on her heels. “I killed them all. It was an accident, but it was my fault. If I could do it all again, I’d do it better. I’d be better. I wouldn’t hurt anyone. I’d be like May.” She was aware of the woman’s gaze trailing along the artery of curtain cord that fastened June’s ankle to the leg of the wrought iron bench.

“So much loss tonight,” Mrs. McHale said. “Little sense in adding to it.”

“I can’t.” June moved closer to the bench. Like a wounded beast protecting her injury, June would defend the braid of velvet that tethered her to the future for which she’d set her sails. “I can’t live without May.”

June and Mrs. McHale gazed across the waters to the prelapsarian festivities at the Wharf. Concoctions were drunk by the gallon there, too, but they weren’t laced with antifreeze. Their hangover would not consist of riots and fires and death.

The two of them were about the same age, June realized. But Mrs. McHale was a wife and mother. June was nothing. She wasn’t Strong’s right hand. She wasn’t queen of the Night Ship. She wasn’t even a sister anymore. The Night Ship Girls were gone.

They were quiet like that for long, still moments. There was sanctuary in this. The peace before the plunge.

“June can’t live without May.” Mrs. McHale spoke deliberately. Like each word was its own sentence. “But can May live without June?”

June didn’t understand the woman. “She was everything.”



“She wouldn’t want you to die.”

The sirens were louder now.

“The police will come for me. They’ll lock me in a cell and there’ll be no way out.”

“They’d never put you in jail, dear. Everyone knows May wouldn’t hurt a fly.”