My eyes went to the injury on her arm, and ice filled my veins. I’d retrieved my shuriken, but that cut was short and razor-thin…like something a throwing star would leave. “My fingerprints are all over this. ”
Tom spat in the sand, looking thoughtful. “Not for long. ”
“What?” I didn’t understand what he was saying to me.
“You”—he waved at Mei-Ling’s instrument—“play that thing again. ”
She pulled it out, and just holding it seemed to give her comfort. She began to play, and it wasn’t just the Draug who were affected.
My mind lulled, as though my brain got heavy, and those snapshot memories flickered on the edges of my consciousness again. She made me feel nostalgia.
Could she make me feel happy, too? Might her music have the power to make me no longer Acari? To make me, for just once, simply a teenager?
He shooed at me, startling me from my thoughts, and waved me away. “My boys got this. You don’t want to watch. ”
He was right—I really, really didn’t.
For once, the sea called me, and I headed to the water, walking in the breakers, away from the body of the girl I’d killed. She’d washed onto shore, and the waves rolled over her, pushing her a little higher on the sand with each ebb and flow of the tide. I walked away, walked deeper, longing to feel the waves pound my legs. Maybe they would cleanse me.
I walked until the crash of the surf filled my head more loudly than the hideous gurgle and snarl of the Draug as they consumed the bodies.
When I returned, Tom was spattered with gore, looking like some sort of macabre butcher. Draug still crouched, sniffing around where Masha’s body had been. Through their huddled bodies, I spotted bones, tufts of black hair. I looked away, sickened to my soul.
“Nobody can pin this on you now,” Tom said.
I nodded, tried to say the words “Thank you. ”
Mei looked as shaken as I felt, and I went to her, linking my arm in hers.
Tom began to walk up the beach, farther away from campus, beckoning us to follow. Even though it meant missing class, going way too much farther from the path and surely sealing some grim punishment for ourselves, we followed.
I dared not refuse him. I owed him.
I turned and looked back at the Draug. “What about them?”
He waved it off. “They’re more scared of this island than you are. They
’ll go back to their pens now. They like it familiar. ”
Apparently, at its heart, a Draug was no more than a frightened, feral child. The concept astounded me.
We walked for some time, and I guessed I was committed now. Far away and in deep—too far from the dungeons to help Carden. And now I wasn’t even sure if I’d be able to help my own self, either.
To take my mind off my nerves, I asked, “Why’d you help us?”
“Help comes to them who help themselves. ”
I frowned at him. The way he spoke in riddles confused me, and my patience was flagging as quickly as my courage. “What does that mean?”
“Maybe it’s that you’ve got a heart. Maybe I’m bored. Maybe you’re different. ” He cackled and shook his head. “Or maybe I just helped because I like the look of you two. ”
We grew quiet as the beach grew rockier and harder to traverse. Eventually we came to a small cove I’d never seen before.
Tom hiked away from the water toward the cliff wall and disappeared into a sea cave. “Come on then,” he shouted from inside. “Don’t got all day. ”
We followed him in, and the stench was overpowering. I hid my nose in the crook of my elbow to dull the acrid tang of urine stinging my nostrils. I smelled dung, too, and over it all was the cloying sweet smell of hay. “What, is this like your barn annex or something?”
My eyes adjusted to the dimness, and I saw there was a boat pulled up onto the rocks. Bits of hay were strewn all along the cave floor. “Wait,” I said. “It smells like a barn because it is like a barn. ”