Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (17 page)

Even as I said it, I knew it was a lie. 

I wouldn’t do anything of the sort. 

“River was just looking out for me,” he answered. 

“It doesn’t justify what he did,” I said, kind of sharp. But then I put my hand on his thin shoulder. “What did he tell you, about his . . . about what he can do? What did he tell you about the glow?” 

Jack shrugged, his hair shaking around his ears as he did so. “Not much, just that he could do things, like make people see monsters. I don’t think it’s the whole story, though.”Jack looked me direct in the eyes.“River is a liar.” 

“Yeah,” I said. “I know.” 

Jack started to unpack his bag.He’d taken a lot of things, probably because he hoped to never go back. And I hoped that too.I helped him put away his stuff,and fetched him toothpaste and whatnot. When he got to the bottom of his bag,he reached in and pulled out a small,square painting, maybe nine inches tall. 

“It was my grandpa’s,” he said as he leaned it against the wall above the nightstand. “My dad sold the rest of his paintings off, because he wanted to be drunk all day instead of working. But I saved this one.” 

The painting was done in oils, and it was a self-portrait. The painter had painted himself, in front of a canvas, brush raised, while a blond-haired woman lounged on a couch off to his right. 

The painter looked like somebody. Somebody familiar. Maybe Daniel Leap, without the drunk in him. 

Or maybe not. 

And the lounging woman looked exactly like Freddie. 

I tucked Jack in,went down to the kitchen,and waited for River. 

L
uke came home first. 

“Daniel Leap,”
he said, and threw himself down on the 

couch beside me.Dust motes flew up and swirled around in the last bits of the day’s sunlight coming through the kitchen window. “
Damn.
And you saw the whole gory thing, out the damn pizzeria window. How are you doing, sis?” 

I just shook my head. Luke didn’t know the half of it. Luke sighed.“He’s been our town drunk for as long as I can remember. God, I hated the way he would scream at us . . . but still. He was almost an Echo landmark.”Luke slouched down into the couch and crossed him arms. “Wonder what finally pushed him over the edge?” “He was Jack’s pa,” I whispered. “Daniel Leap. That was his
father.
River and I met him this morning.” Luke rose out of his slouch.
“Fuck.”
 

“Exactly.” I paused. “I brought Jack home with me. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t just leave him in his house all alone, waiting for a government official to show up and toss him in some godforsaken facility. So I put him in the green guestroom.” 

Luke leaned over me suddenly, and gave me a hug. I didn’t know what to do at first. But eventually my arms floated up on their own and hugged him back. 

“Our father’s an ass,” he said, letting me go, “who ran off to Europe and never calls or even sends postcards.But at least he didn’t kill himself in the town square.”Luke let out another little sigh, and his shoulders slumped forward. I gave my brother a sad kind of smile. 

He smiled the same sad smile back, and it was so different from his usual arrogant grin that he barely seemed the same person. 

Luke got up, went to the fridge, pulled out the iced tea, and poured both of us a glass. Then he sat back down on the couch.“What’s going on with the world lately? Devils, kids in cemeteries, witch burnings, drunk men suiciding themselves in the town square. Are we living in the end times, sis? Is the apocalypse nigh?” 

Luke took a long drink of tea and shook his head. “Like I said last night, it all started when River got here. Which could be a coincidence, like most things in life. But what are the odds that a man kills himself in the center of town,
and
you have a front-row seat when he does it,
and
the suicider’s kid was hanging out with you in the attic the day before?
God
. I’m not going to get the image of his bloody shirt out of my head, not for
years
.” 

I shivered. The shiveriest sort of shiver, the kind that starts in your heart and spreads down your legs, all the way into your toes. 

What was making me shiver, though, wasn’t the image of Daniel Leap’s bloody shirt, or the gaping slit in his throat. It was River, looking eager as Daniel raised the razor to his neck. 

The last of the light slipped from the window. A blue twilight settled over the kitchen. 

“Jack has a painting,”I said.“I saw it when he unpacked. It’s of Freddie. He said it was his grandfather’s.” Luke’s eyebrows shot up. 

I nodded. “Yeah.” 

He got up from the couch and stretched. “Well, add that mystery to the growing list. Look, I’m going to bed. Jack will probably be up early. And since it looks like he’s moved in, we’ll need to start taking caring of him.”
The right way,
his face said,
as in, not like our parents
. Luke walked out the kitchen door, and a minute later I heard his feet moving on the second floor above. He was probably going to check on Jack. 

I sat in the empty kitchen and drank my tea. It was dark now. Most of the room was in shadow. The windows were wide open, and suddenly I had the feeling that someone was watching me, looking in from outside, hidden by the darkness— 

The front door banged open. I heard footsteps cross the foyer, go past the marble staircase, through the formal dining room we never used, and stop at the doorway to the kitchen. 

I clanked the ice cubes at the bottom of my glass and looked up. 

River. 

I sat there and looked at him, and he looked at me. And I got an itch, looking at him, a
burning
itch, to shove him out the front door of Citizen Kane,into the dirt,and kick him in the face until he lost the lazy look in his eyes. Maybe River was right, about me and the toe-curling violence. 

“Remember the time we napped on this couch,Violet?” He sat down next to me. 

“I do, actually. It was Monday.” I turned and stared at the fat, mean butcher knife that was sitting on the kitchen table.Luke sliced bread with it,though I’d told him more than once to use the serrated bread knife instead. I thought about picking up that knife, about how it would feel in my hand as I shoved it into the soft part between River’s ribs. I let my mind linger on that feeling for a moment, let the toe-curling part of me sing out. 

“Monday? Monday was a lifetime ago.” 

I ignored him. “So. Tell me how you did it. And try not to lie, liar.” 

River stopped smiling, but his face was calm. “I made him think the razor was a silver pen.And then I made him draw a line across his throat with it.” River gave a sort of low, quiet laugh. 

Hearing River admit what he did, actually say it out loud and make it real and true, made my heart seize up tight, like someone was digging their fingernails into it. He had lied about not planning to use the glow again. Straight to my face. 

I hated him. 

Part of me hated him. 

The other part . . .That part didn’t really care. Which scared the hell out of me. 

River grabbed my hand and held it to his chest. I yanked it away,and he grabbed it back . . .and a heartbeat later my fury disappeared, fast, like cold water down the throat on a scorching hot day. 

“Just because you didn’t hold the weapon doesn’t mean it wasn’t murder, River.” 

He continued to hold my hand. I tried to pull it away, but it was halfhearted and he just held me tighter. I reached down inside myself. I tried to muster my previous anger.But there was nothing there.River’s hand was hot on mine and it felt good and I had nothing left. “Don’t worry,Vi.I’m not in danger.That’s the beauty of being able to do something no one else can. No one would believe it.There’s no way for me to get caught.” “
Damn it,
that’s not what I meant.” I threw his hand off of mine, and dragged myself into a standing position so I was hovering over him. “This isn’t about you getting caught. This is about you committing murder.
Murder
. Don’t you think there was anything wrong with what you did? At all? Daniel was a drunk,and he shouted insults at me, and he wasn’t taking care of his kid, but he was also pathetic, and lost, and sad. You don’t murder people like that,River.You don’t murder
anyone
. You show them compassion, for god’s sake.” 

Go ahead, Vi. Get mad. He deserves it. Even seems to
want
it. That lazy look . . . it’s a challenge, rise to it . . .
 

River shrugged. “Who has the time? Murder is pretty ambiguous, morally speaking. Be a little more philosophical, Vi. What kind of person would I be if I let Daniel Leap go on living? The way he talked to you, that day in the square—that was just wrong
.
And Jack’s life with him was miserable. You could argue that Daniel
wanted
to die. Why else would he get drunk so often? And here I could help him get what he wanted, as easy as a thought. Some people don’t deserve to live.And,to go a step further,some people
need
to die. Why was I born with this gift if not to make the world a better place? Sure, I do the monster stuff, for fun, and because I like to feel the glow in me. But Jack’s father—that wasn’t fun.I did that for Jack.And for you. Yes, it was a bit messy, and far from perfect. But hey,you’re both better off.”He put his hand to his mouth. And yawned.This conversation was boring him.“You can’t deny it,Vi.” 

I stood there, silent. “Yes. I can,” I said, at last. But River was . . .River was starting to make sense.At least,what he said
sounded
logical. Some part of me, some sharp, noticing part, didn’t buy it. Not entirely. Something about it felt . . . wrong. 

Didn’t it? 

River reached forward, put his hands on my waist, and pulled me to him. “I have no regrets. The only thing I wish is that it wasn’t getting more and more difficult to predict the results of my glow. I was really good at it, even just a few months ago. But lately, I can’t seem to stop using it, and then when I do, it doesn’t go how I plan.” 

“Wait . . .
what
? You can’t predict the results? What the hell does that mean?”I squirmed in River’s grasp, but my heart wasn’t in it and he ignored me. 

“Oh, it’s nothing. I just seem to be losing a little bit of my control. Kind of surprising, is all. It seems to have taken on a mind of its own, almost as if it’s controlling me, rather than the other way around. I’m sure it’s not a big deal, though.” 

I stopped squirming. I was starting to feel better. River was right. Some people
did
deserve to die. An uncontrollable glow
wasn’t
a big deal. 

“You know, Violet, when I’m right next to you, I can pick up small drops of all the Violet things going on in your big brain.For example,I can tell that you hate beets. The idea of beets has an ugly brown haze around it,in your head. I saw it when I held them up at the grocery store. Needless to say, I put them back. Unlike tomatoes. Tomatoes have a nice rosy Violet halo around them.” 

I put my hands on my head, instinctively, as if I could block River from reading the bits that were leaking through. But then I felt stupid and lowered them. “What else can you tell?” I asked. 

“I can tell that you like me, despite yourself.” River smiled, and part of me melted at the smile, like chocolate in the mouth and ice in the sun. 

But the other part wished I had a brick in my hand, so I could hit him, right in the middle of his lovely, crooked mouth,until his blood flowed and flowed and covered his shirt, like it had Daniel Leap’s. 

“Vi, you should have seen the black cloud surrounding Daniel Leap in your head this morning. Wow. And I thought you hated beets. You had the bastard in a black hole. An
abyss
.” 

“There’s a world of difference between wishing someone was dead and making them so, River.” 

A thought occurred to me then, a black, evil, oozing thought.What if for River,there wasn’t any difference? Is that what he meant by not being able to predict the results of his glow? Was all his talk about moral ambiguity just a way to justify something he couldn’t control? 

And then I remembered what Gianni said, about the poor red-haired woman. The witch. I had forgotten, with all the horror that came afterward, I had forgotten— “River, where did you go that day you were gone?” He shrugged. He lifted the edge of my shirt with one hand and began to kiss my stomach. His hands were covered in dried paint. 

“Did you . . . did you go to Jerusalem Rock?”
Focus. If you let him smooth away your anger, if you feel no anger, then you’re no better than him.
 

River kept nuzzling my torso. “Where is Jerusalem Rock?” 

“It’s the town Gianni was talking about, where they burned that woman. It was you, wasn’t it.” I felt nothing, saying this.Only River’s soft kisses on my skin,like a cool breeze on a hot day. 

“I.” Kiss. “Have.” Kiss. “No idea what you are talking about.” Kiss, kiss, kiss. 

“So you didn’t go to Jerusalem Rock?” It was getting really hard to concentrate. River’s kisses . . . I was feeling so good, so dreamy, so happy, suddenly. “Where did you go, then?” 

“Somewhere else. I just had to get away for a while. I drove south. I don’t really remember where I went.” “That sounds like a lie, River. You’re so mysterious, always mysterious, I like it, I do, but I want . . . I want to know if . . .”
Focus.
“But have you . . . have you ever . . .”
Damn it.
“Have you ever killed anyone else? I mean,have you made anyone else kill themselves,beside Daniel Leap?” “Yes,” River mumbled into my skin. 

“How many?” 

River turned me around in his hands, and began to kiss my lower back.“A lot,Vi.” 

My eyes closed.“How many is a lot?” 

“I don’t know.As many as needed to die.Maybe twelve, I guess. Maybe a whole lot more. I’d have to think about it. I’ve had the glow for four years, you know.” 

“So . . .so you don’t even know,off the top of your head, how many people you’ve murdered?”