The Wicked We Have Done (6 page)

“It’s a little funny.”

Our eyes connect. His are vacant of the anger I’ve become used to.

“How did you think they’d kill you?”

To my surprise, he speaks with ease. “I thought it’d be a simulation. Maybe they’d show me images of what I’d done, or ask me questions. They’d try to figure out if I’d do it again. Then . . . I don’t know. Lethal injection. Something humane.”

I nod, but say nothing.

“What about you?”

I lick my chapped, bleeding lips, playing with the ends of my tangled hair. “I thought that the way they’d kill me would be as chaotic as my crime.”

He doesn’t question further, and we sit in the water together until the sun sets, leaving to change out of our wet, dirty clothes and fall asleep.

***

Even with the cold and the fear, it doesn’t take me long to drift off. I dream of Liam and the month before the shooting. It was his twenty-first birthday, and he wanted to spend it with me. I took him to a comedy club that smelled like cigar smoke and leather. We dressed up and drank too many glasses of scotch on the rocks because we were both oh-so-adult. And the tab we rang up—good God.

Then we went back to his apartment. I spent years with him and the sex only got better. I may have even cried that night, said something about how
blessed
I was. I’m such an obnoxious drunk.

I’m crying now, in this dream. Maybe I’m crying because I know it’s a dream. We’re in his bed, and I’m straddling him, dragging my hands up his chest. I lean forward until my dark waves are curtaining him, running my tongue along his jaw to his ear. Golden strands of his hair tickle my nose. “
Why are you sad?”
he asks.

“I’m not sad.”

Someone grunts, but it isn’t Liam.

I awaken, my arm draped over a warm body, nose buried in the crook of a neck. Casey’s jugular vein thrums against my lips. He stirs, and we simultaneously gape at one another.

“Fuck.”

We awkwardly wriggle away at the same time.

With my sweatshirt covering my hands, I rub my eyes with clothed fists. It only reminds me of how cold I am, and the absence of everything I’ve lost.

For a handful of seconds I allow myself to collapse, the sob escaping my mouth in nothing more than a hiccup. I pull myself together and wipe my cheeks, listening to Casey shuffle behind me, his footsteps in the sand as he heads toward the woods, probably to pee. I thought he was on the other side of Jace when we fell asleep. Did I crawl to him thinking he was Liam, or did he roll next to me in the middle of the night?

“Evie!”

I glance to the edge of the water, where Todd stands.

“Todd!” I jump to my feet.

He points, and I follow his finger to the center of the lake, where a large crate floats. My gaze returns to the beach, to question him, but he’s gone.

“Casey!”

He stumbles out of the woods, disheveled and confused as to why I’m screaming.

Jace sits up, clutching a blanket around her shoulders. “Did I just hear a little boy?”

I point to the lake.

“What is it?” Casey walks forward and squints.

“I don’t know. It could be anything. It could be food!”

“We’d have to swim to it,” he says. “Shit. It’s freezing.”

I unbutton my pants.

“Now? You’re going to swim out there
now
? Are you insane? At least wait until the sun comes up and we start to fry.”

“I can’t wait. I’m starving.”

“You always this impulsive or—”

“I’m always this much of a fat-ass, actually. Food before logic.” I kick my pants off and run toward the water before I can change my mind. The thought of food—of something finally making sense—recharges me.

Casey curses and starts taking off his pants.

I plunge into the water and scream a four-letter word, dipping my shoulders beneath the surface. My feet kick away from the silt and I arc one arm through the air, the other thrusting water behind me. I don’t wait for Casey, but before I know it, he’s caught up.

“W-worst idea ever,” he says. “C-can’t believe I followed you.”

I laugh and scissor my legs. “Don’t be . . . such a . . . pussy.”

Once we’re to the crate we’ll be fine. It’ll keep us afloat and I can catch my breath. The center of the lake isn’t as far as it appeared to be. Or maybe the box is floating toward us. I groan in relief when I grasp onto the wood paneling, heart pounding in my chest, lungs aching.

With the weight of me and Casey, the box submerges halfway. It’s about three feet tall and five feet wide, made to stay buoyant with weight. Made to float, and to be found.

“Ready?” Casey asks, clinging to the other side of the box.

I’m about to respond when something slithers up my leg.
Just a weed
, I think, trying to kick it away. But whatever has me isn’t a plant. Cold and slippery, it coils around my thigh and squeezes.

Dragging me down.

I scream and cling to the box.

Casey swims to me. “
What?
” he yells. “What is it?”

I have just enough time to tell him before I’m choking on water.

“Hold on!” His hands explore me until he finds my leg. “It’s like a tentacle or something!”

A tentacle. Images of Erity flood my mind. Of Salem’s neck broken in half.

“I’m dead.”

“Hang on, Evalyn!”

All I can think is that maybe I should have prayed for forgiveness. Was there really any chance for me in here? I knew there wasn’t. I knew there wasn’t the second I was sentenced.

I start to tell Casey to say good-bye to Jace for me, but it’s too late.

I’m dragged beneath the surface of the lake.

April 14, Last Year

Campus Parking Lot

My phone rang when I was walking to my car. It was Mom. I put in my earpiece and hit the green button.

“Evie?”

“Hey, Todd. What’s up?”

Mom never let Todd call anyone. She must have not been watching him carefully.

“Hi, Evie.”

“Hi, Todd.”

“Why don’t you ever come home?”

The four-year-old had a way of making me feel like shit. “Baby, I’m in school. You know that.”

“But you used to come home on Saturday and now you don’t.” Smart kid.

It wasn’t like I didn’t miss him. I thought about him every day, which is why I couldn’t come home anymore. The only reason why I came home was
for
Todd. Not Mom. And I didn’t do a good job of hiding that fact.

Before I could respond, Todd whined, “Noooo.”

“Ev?” Mom said.

“Hi.”

“What are you doing?”

“Todd called me.”

She made an audible sigh. Mom hated Todd’s attachment to me. Wasn’t my fault. The pregnancy was unplanned from a man she’d been dating, and since she had a full-time and lucrative career, she couldn’t take care of Todd the way she’d taken care of me. I ended up mothering him in high school as she provided for our family.

And Todd fell in love with me.

Not my fault.

“Well, now that I have you, you coming home Saturday?”

“Meghan and I have plans.”

“You and Meghan always have plans. I have a business trip.”

She wanted a free babysitter.

“Sorry, Mom.”

“For crying out loud, Evalyn. I’m paying for your school, for you to get the degree
you
want. The least you could do is come home and help out on the weekends.”

It was her favorite card, especially with the extra emphasis on you. What she really wanted to say was, “the
useless
degree you want.” Every time she brought up that she was paying for my art degree and I shouldn’t act like an ungrateful bitch, the burning in my chest grew a little hotter. “I have class. Tell Todd I love him.”

I hung up.

Nick was waiting for me by my car, leaning on it like he fucking owned the thing.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey, yourself.”

Nick was handsome in his own unique way. Bright eyes, dark hair, and a slight curve to his nose. Meghan thought he was gorgeous. But he wanted her too badly, and wanted too much from her too soon.

It put a bad taste in my mouth.

“Meghan said you had a spare key to your apartment.”

I halted. His grin was flat, as if he knew I’d be skeptical immediately.

“What of it?”

“I was wondering if I could borrow it.”

I narrowed my eyes.

He quickly continued. “Just for the night! I wanted to surprise her tomorrow morning. You know, the whole coffee-and-donuts-in-bed thing. She keeps hinting at it.”

“Hinting that she’s a fat-ass?”

His mouth hung open until I said, “Kidding.” He needed to develop a sense of humor if he planned on staying with Meghan.

I thought about it. I hated the idea of giving keys to someone who’d been dating Meghan for only a month.

“I’ll leave it on the counter in the morning.” He was practically pleading.

If I denied him, he’d tell Meghan and she’d play hurt puppy with me. It was only a day.

And maybe I could steal a donut.

“Fine.” I reached for my bag.

“Meghan also said you were gonna go to the store. I can pick stuff up for you since I’ll be out anyway.”

He seemed sincere. “It’s fine,” I said.

“I insist. You have a list?”

“Can I text it to you?”

“It’ll probably be easier if you write it down really fast.”

I sighed and fished a piece of paper out of my wallet, along with the key. I didn’t know why I was so hesitant. I was poor and should have been taking advantage of the fact that he was about to buy me frozen chicken and paper towels.

“Cool,” he said when I handed the key and the list over. “I’ll see you tonight.”

It was my fault. My fault, because I forgot about the key, and Nick kept it. It was my fault that I gave him that list—a slip of paper that ended up dooming me. I guess he could have found other ways to commit his crime, but that thought wasn’t comforting.

Nick killed Meghan.

But so did I.

4

Casey doesn’t let go.

There is nothing left for me to do but cling to his arm and kick at the thing around my leg—the thing that feels like steel encased in supple flesh. It drags me downward so quickly that the current tickles me. Casey’s fingernails dig into my arm as he refuses to admit that I’m a goner.

If he doesn’t swim to the surface soon, he will be one too.

I dare to open my eyes to darkness. The pressure in my lungs builds. They say it isn’t painful, drowning. You go numb from the cold, your insides fill with water, and you stop existing.

Just like that.

The tentacle unravels. I hear Casey’s muffled voice, urging me to swim upward. I let go and kick my legs as fast as I can, but I won’t be able to hold my breath for much longer, not for the amount of time it’ll take to reach the surface. We’ve been dragged down too far.

But I try. I kick the darkness as my chest threatens to explode. There are no ripples of light. No signs that we are even close.

And then I emerge, coughing and gasping, my arms flailing in the air.

The air, the black air.

My cry of relief echoes, and when I’ve calmed down I realize how dank and heavy this air is.

“Casey.” His name rings through empty space.

He coughs somewhere in front of me. “Here.” Our hands connect, fingers entwining.

“There’s a ledge.” He guides me to the rock. With what feels like all the energy I have left, I lift myself out of the water and collapse. My heart calms as I inhale breath after beautiful deep breath, my body trembling.

Casey flips me over. I can’t see him—can’t see anything. We must be in a cave of some sort. Since we swam up from beneath, the only exit must be the same way. If we want to live, we’ll have to swim. And we have limited oxygen down here.

I curl my hand into a fist and hit him as hard as I can in the chest. “You stupid fucking idiot.”

There’s a long pause before he says, “
Excuse
me?”

“What the
fuck
did you think you would gain by holding on to me? Your damn hero complex could have killed you!”

“First of all, I didn’t die. Second, calm your shit. You wanna cause a cave-in with your petty yelling?” I make to punch him again, but he snatches my wrist. “Didn’t they teach you in prison that hitting isn’t nice?” he asks lowly. “And why do you care whether I die or not?”

“I can’t watch you die,” I hiss.

I try to relax and force my anger down. His fingers uncoil, but he doesn’t budge from his position over me. I can feel his body heat.

“I don’t know why I held on to you. Probably shouldn’t have. If they want to kill you, then they will do it, I guess. Doesn’t matter if I try and save you or not.”

I flinch, even though he can’t see it. “Even if you could potentially save me, I don’t see why you would. A few days ago you had me pinned to the wall by my neck—”

“That doesn’t mean I want you dead.”

“That’s not what I remember from the train.”

He pauses, but only for a moment before he sputters, “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why? Because back then you didn’t know you’d be stuck with me? Remember, Casey, I know your secret. I know that violence for the sake of violence makes you break. So don’t try to tell me that every fiber of your being doesn’t want to go Captain America on my ass.”

“That’s not what I—”

“Save it. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

“Fine! Fine. I think—I think we might actually be at the opening of a tunnel here.”

Even after insulting him, he still helps me to my feet. Slowly, I place one foot in front of the other, holding my hand out until my fingers connect with jagged rock. “Found a wall.” Keeping the rock to my left and Casey to my right, I mouth a prayer that there aren’t any fifty-foot pits, or this isn’t the lair of the thing that dragged us to the bottom of the lake.

“Damn.”

“What?”

“This is probably the lair of the thing that dragged us to the bottom of the lake.”

“Don’t be such a pessimist.” He can’t mask the fear in his voice.

A loud click rings through the cavern.

“The hell,” Casey says.

The noise is so familiar. I freeze, waiting to see if it sounds again. A dull greenish glow floods the space we’re in, so faint that I don’t even recognize it as light until I can suddenly see Casey.

I know what that noise is. I heard it the morning of my crime. It’s the noise of the switch being thrown for a set of powerful fluorescents, like those in a gymnasium. The kind of lights that cast an eerie weak glow before they heat up to full power.

We stand in the middle of a long and tall chamber of stone. My gaze falls on the only thing within this place other than us. A school desk with a chunk taken out of the red plastic chair. A plywood tabletop, the wood texture torn on the corner.

The desk Meghan sat in.

Nick holding the chamber to her forehead. Blonde curls plastered in sweat. Tears.

Gunshots spraying the air.

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.” My heart trembles in tiny hummingbird beats.

“Evalyn?”

I spin toward him. “You have to find a way out. Now. Go back through the water, Casey.” A sob rises and there is no stopping it. I have to power through this.
This is your fate, Evalyn. What did you expect?

In the cold mint light, his eyes widen. “What? Why?”

Why do I care what he sees? It isn’t that he doesn’t deserve to be visually tortured. But something inside of me screams that he cannot be put through this.

He steps forward and grips my shoulders. “Evalyn!”

Face the music.

“You’re going to watch me die if you don’t.”

He takes my hand and pulls me around the desk and through the chamber. We race through the never-ending hall, into shadow.

The cavern forks. The right path is almost tangible with darkness. Another click and the left is flooded with a crisp white beam. A spotlight, illuminating a sprawled figure on the ground.

“This way!” Casey cries, yanking me to the right.

Blonde hair matted with blood. Purple hemp bracelet on the left wrist, a bracelet that matches mine.

“No, no, no,” I dig my heels into the ground, ripping my hand away from his. “I can’t. I have to stay here.”

“Are you
fucking insane
?”

I can’t run from her. Not from Meghan.

I slow when I enter the halo of light. Her eyes are hollow, gaping wounds in both of her temples, one where the bullet entered and the other where it left. The puddle of blood beneath her is curdled with brain matter and yet she still breathes—rattled, wet gasps.

“Evie.” Her trembling lips smile, and I break.

“Jesus.” I place my hands on either side of her head, smearing her blood on my palms. I need to put her back together. My tears splash on her forehead, her cheeks, rolling as if they were her own. “I miss you so much.”

Her eyelashes flutter like insect wings. I’m losing her.

“Meghan, Meghan!”

Rumbling billows behind me. Casey screams my name.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know, baby.” Her skeletal fingers find my wrist.

“I’m coming with you now. I’ll be there soon.” I choke on my sob and wipe my nose with the back of my hand.

Casey grasps beneath my shoulders and hauls me to my feet. “The cavern is flooding!”

The rumbling water crashes into the back of mine and Casey’s legs and rolls over Meghan, the ends of her blonde locks the last thing I see of her as they float atop the tide.

I fight to see her one more time. Casey picks me up like a child and carries me to the dark tunnel, until another wave of arctic black knocks him forward and I fall into the water.

The current, with a cryptic mind of its own, forces me one way and him the other.

A third wave extinguishes the light. The fourth floods my last breath of air.

***

“Holy shit,” someone says.

I inhale, coughing, sputtering.

Breathing.

Breathing.

“Evalyn? Evalyn!”

It’s Casey.

The world slides into focus. Valerie laughs.

“Damn. Pound on her chest enough times and whaddaya know.”

The sun shines bright behind the canopies above their heads. Grass tickles the back of my ears. And I’m alive.

“What happened?” I roll to my side and spit leftover cave grit onto the grass.

“I don’t know, you tell me. Thought it was strange that I had the urge to make camp next to a dark abyss in the middle of a fucking creek. It was intriguing, though. Good thing I did, because the two of you shot right out of it.”

Casey breathes heavily next to me. Water still drips from his nose.

I sit up even though Casey says I shouldn’t, and Valerie tromps around—her version of pacing, I guess—chewing on her thumbnail. Her eyes flit to the right, toward the noise of water, and I crane my neck to see the roaring current of the stream rushing down off the mountain. By our bank, the current is languid, spiraling into a midnight whirlpool.

Funneling into a chasm.

“That’s where you came from,” Valerie says. “Geysered straight up out of it, you and Casey. You were floating on your belly—thought you were a goner.”

“Is this the outflow?”

“Outflow?” she asks.

“Of the lake.”

“Don’t know about a lake. Been camped out here for the past two days.” She nods a bit upstream to an old shack several yards from the water, where rows of vegetables stem from the doorstep like crooked fingers.

Food.

Between us and the garden is a smoking fire pit and a nylon tent big enough to sleep several people snugly. The flap is unzipped, a liberal pile of blankets peeking out. Even pillows.

“The shack’s a pantry—lots of canned meat, vacuumed cheese, pots, pans, utensils, you name it. Found the tent and blankets in there too.”

“How’d you find it?” Casey asks.

The brightness in her eyes falters. “I was with Jace and Erity when we ran from the lodge. When I lost them in the woods, I wandered.”

Jace. “She’s at the lake all by herself. We didn’t mean to leave her there. She probably thinks we’re dead.”

“What happened? I mean, you two came out of the fucking
ground
.”

The darkness is coming back—Meghan’s brains on the cave floor. The water, the cold.

My violent shivers won’t stop. Valerie hands me a folded blanket from the tent, and I stare at it until she huffs, shakes it out, and drapes it over my shoulders.

Casey explains it all, from the moment we ran from the house. Erity and the demon, Jace’s stab wound, the dissolving blade, the hunger, the crate. The tentacle, the cave.

The entire time Valerie sits cross-legged, expressionless. As if she’s not surprised by any of this. When Casey’s finished, she says, “Found Blaise’s body.”

My mouth hangs open. If the news is a shock to me, it’s completely unbelievable to Casey.

“No,” he whispers. “That’s impossible.”

“Bullet hole through the temple.” Valerie shakes her head. “Why so impossible?”

Casey sits back in thought. He wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “I roomed with him back at the lodge. He . . . well, first, he tried to bring me to Jesus.”

“Not all Christians are saints, but okay,” says Valerie.

“It wasn’t just that. He . . . He seemed so sorry for what he’d done. That it was a mistake. I mean, he was blackout drunk when he killed those guys.”

“I don’t know, Casey.” Valerie runs her fingers through her hair. “People lie. And I’m sure they lie here to try and make themselves seem more innocent than they are.”

It’s my turn to speak up. “Tanner seemed to think the same of Blaise. He was pretty sure that Blaise was going to make it out of here.” Another thought comes to me. “How did Blaise kill those people?”

“He was at a house party, got wasted, and found a loaded pistol in the master bedroom, I think,” explains Valerie. “Meaning that he died by the hand of his own crime.”

“Like Erity and Salem.”

“You know what this means, though, don’t you?” Valerie’s eyes flicker to mine. “You’re the only one to survive it.”

She’s right. I should have died in that cave. When I saw the desk I told Casey to leave because I knew that my crime was going to re-create itself in some form, and it was going to kill me.

But it didn’t. It doesn’t make any sense.

“Maybe it was supposed to and somehow I beat it. Somehow I escaped.”

“I can’t see that happening,” says Valerie. “This mode of justice is supposed to be pretty bulletproof. If it weren’t, then it wouldn’t have been approved to be used. They would have let all of us rot in prison.” She holds up two fingers. “I think there are two possible reasons why you’re still alive. One: they didn’t get an accurate enough reading and let you go—for now. Two: you aren’t as evil as everyone says you are, Ibarra.”

I shake my head. It can’t be the latter.

“Welp.” She stands. “You two simmer on that. I’m gonna follow this stream a bit and hopefully rescue Jace.” She pauses and glances over at her spoils, realizing that she’s leaving us alone with everything she needs to survive.

“We’ll be here when you get back. Alliance, remember?”

Valerie narrows her eyes. “Alliances are for idiots.”

“You know what that makes me, then.”

With swagger, she walks backward. “Whatever. They’ll probably kill us all anyway, right? You guys look like shit. Might as well rest and eat. Hey, maybe that’ll earn me some brownie points—being virtuous and all. I might get to live an extra day.” Without another word, she spins around and follows the stream to the lake.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Casey mutters. But Valerie’s too far away to hear.

I blink, my eyes dry and stinging. I’m exhausted, my brain too traumatized to process that there’s food now. And fire, and blankets.

Why am I still so damn cold?

Casey gets up first. He pulls off his soaked T-shirt so he’s only in his boxers, grabs a blanket from the tent, and drapes it over himself. He inspects the garden, the shack. I manage to stand although my knees shake terribly, remove my shirt, and drape it over the tent while I keep my blanket pinned under my armpits.