I sat on the edge of the baptismal pool, cradling my head in my hands.
Behind me, Josiah and Harper raged at each other, their shouts filling the old chapel louder than the choirs that once crowded this room with joyful noise. I clasped my hands over my ears to muffle the commotion, but I couldn't drown out that one voice that screamed loudest of all. And the louder she screamed, the more I realised she sounded just like me, yet she couldn't be, could she?
The voice wanted Caelan dead and seethed because she had been cheated. The voice wanted a way out and she knew she'd just lost her one chance, all because Caelan had found a reason to live. The voice fumed at the utter injustice of it all. How could that be me? How could I have become so monstrous that I yearned for the death of another just to save myself?
Glancing up, I looked straight into the unwavering gaze of Lucius who sat opposite me, his knees drawn up into his chest and his arms wrapped tightly around them. His eyes buried deep inside and my cheeks reddened with shame and guilt. I wondered what he saw when he looked at me. Did he see the monster I had become?
A light touch to my head made me flinch and I wrenched my eyes away from Lucius' and looked up to find Harper there, his hand touching my hair close to where Caelan had almost ripped it from the roots. I hadn't even realised he and Josiah had stopped arguing, that voice in my head had been screaming so loud.
"You okay, angel?" he said and I could see he hadn't really calmed down at all. The fury lingered under the surface and this was just a momentary lull in the storm.
"N-no," I stammered, turning sharply to see Josiah not far away, watching us, looking every inch the boxer warily anticipating an attack and ready to defend himself. I struggled to my feet, my nose wrinkling in disgust. "Did you know?" I demanded of him. "Did you forsee all this, seer? Is this something you've been hiding in that twisted head of yours?"
Josiah growled in response. "I didn't see any of this. Do you actually think I wanted him anywhere near my sister? After everything he did to her? I told you I wanted him gone as soon as he woke up. I told you."
"And you expect me to believe that?" I spat, stepping towards him.
"I don't really care what you believe," he said scornfully. "But why on earth would I ever want her to set eyes on him again? Do you have any idea what she went through the last time she saw him?"
"You know, this is getting really fucking boring now," Harper drawled, rolling his eyes.
"Watch your mouth, assassin or you'll find yourself on the other side of the front door and she'll be here with me." Josiah jabbed a finger towards me.
"You'd have to put me out there first and although you might be able to look after yourself pretty well, I've got to be honest, I don't fancy your chances. But hey, go ahead, let's see who ends up on the other side of that door. Or six feet under. Either way is good for me."
The seer laughed. "You gonna kill me, Cain? Go on then. Do it. I'll even give you the blade to strike me with." He thumped his fist hard against his broad chest, over his heart. "Only, you and I both know that it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference to the deal between me and Megan. The contract is binding until she fulfils her end of the bargain."
"How can the contract still be binding when you're dead?" I sneered at him.
Josiah gave a sly smile. "Ask your boyfriend. He knows the score."
I glanced at Harper, who returned my questioning gaze with one of frustrated defeat. "Harper?"
"If the seer with whom you made the deal dies, then the ownership of the contract automatically transfers to the partner seer."
I blanched at his words. "I'd belong to Caelan? Are you bloody serious?"
"I'm afraid so."
I shrugged. "So? Then what if she dies too?" I shot Josiah a malicious smile, which soon faded when I saw how his eyes lit up with wicked amusement.
"Ah," he chuckled. "See, now that's the beauty of it. The death of a seer will never sever the contract. Call it a protection clause if you like. Nope, if fate happens to befall the second seer, then you'll be forever bound to the place where they die, so if something was to happen to both me and Caelan, you'll never set foot outside of this building again. Think about that. An eternity within these walls. And if you tried to leave...well..." He snapped his fingers. "You'd be dead too. But then again, at least you'd be free? The only death that will bring an end to our deal is yours, Megan. Do you want out that badly? I doubt it. In fact, I reckon you were just starting to like it here."
"You are so deluded."
"Am I? Strange. I thought we were coming to an understanding right before pretty boy here woke up. You like it here more than you want to admit."
Harper snorted. "Megan's right, you're really fucking deluded. She's here because she has no choice, not because she enjoys your less-than scintillating company. I'm starting to think insanity runs in your family. Maybe you're as crazy as that pathetic loon of a sister of yours."
I was right. The storm had never really abated and now it was stronger than ever, ready to decimate everything in its path. Not that Josiah seemed flustered though. In fact, he seemed to revel in Harper's anger.
"Oh Cain, wake up, man. I don't think you know your girl as well as you think you do. But I know her. I know her very well. We have a connection, Megan and I. I know things she would never dream of telling you. She would never admit to you that she was starting to get comfortable here anymore than she'd tell you how she managed to escape from the compound."
An immobilising chill crept into the pit of my stomach. I felt the temperature drop all around me, encasing me in ice that threatened to freeze me to the spot. Josiah's grin widened when he saw my horrified stare.
"It doesn't matter how she escaped," Harper said tersely. "The important thing is that she did."
But I could see straight away that it did matter to him. His insistence back at the old Silvertown hideaway that he hadn't wanted to know what had happened between Brandon and me had never really rung true. Maybe he hadn't wanted to know, maybe he hadn't wanted to hear all the details, but of course that never meant that it didn't bother him and I'd been foolish to think it was a ghost he had laid to rest together with the others that haunted the Millennium Mills.
"Come on, Cain," taunted Josiah, his mocking laughter reverberating around the room. "You can't tell me that it hasn't crossed your mind how she managed to get out of there? I bet it has. In fact, I reckon you've thought about it quite a lot since she returned. She's a tough little thing, I'll give her that. Better than most even, but let's be honest here, how many vampires do you know who've managed to escape from a Varúlfur compound?"
"None." Harper's pursed his lips, his eyes unable to mask the doubt that he clearly harboured and my heart sank to see it.
"None," Josiah repeated with click of his tongue. "No, me neither. But then again, how many vampires do you know whose husband happens to be the Varúlfur head honcho?"
I looked back and forth between them, trying to supress the panic that was ballooning like some tumorous mass and I felt my muscles tensing to the point of pain, waiting for the balloon to burst. Silently I begged him to stop talking. I begged him with everything I had but the seer was having way too much fun toying with Harper to stop.
"Josiah..." I pleaded.
"Megan, you don't need to feel embarrassed, darling. You were married to the guy. Hell, you loved him. Those old feelings never really go away, do they? And Harper himself just said it didn't matter what you had to do to escape, you heard him – it doesn't matter. So tell him. Go on, tell him how you wore that dress for your husband, the same one you wore on your anniversary."
"He made me wear it. I didn't have a choice!"
"Now there's that word again. Choice. Isn't it funny how we're always quick to blame it on choices or lack of? You didn't choose to wear the dress. He made you. You didn't choose to tell him you would abandon your own kind as long as you and Lucius could be safe with him. He made you say it. Did he also make you want him when he bent you over that table? Did he force you to moan in ecstasy as he put his hand up your dress?"
My face burned for the second time, only this time it felt like a scar I would never rid myself of. He might as well have reached out and aimed a sucker punch straight to my gut. I couldn't speak. I couldn't breathe. He had winded me with his words and I was suffocating with the utter shame of it all.
It took me a moment to feel Harper brush past me, to realise that he was walking away. It wasn't until he reached the doors and pushed through them that I was able to will my feet to chase after him, ignoring the smug chuckle of Josiah as I fled the chapel.
"Harper?" I caught up with him, tugging on the back of his shirt to get him to stop. "Harper, please."
He turned quickly, pushing me against the wall, although not aggressively. Gently resting his forehead against mine, he ran his fingertips down my face, tracing them across my lips. With a deep exhausted sigh, he locked eyes with mine and there it was again. That flicker of hope sparking across the green. That flicker of hope I knew would crush us both.
"Tell me," he said imploringly. "Tell me it's not true and I will believe you."
I touched a trembling hand to his chest and swallowed hard. "It wasn't how he says."
He drew back, shaking his head and laughed coldly. "Right. Of course it's not."
Turning sharply on his heels, he walked the short distance to our room and I followed him inside, watching with dismay as he grabbed his jacket – the one I had spent hours scrubbing to rid it of the stench, dirt and blood of Oxleas – and put it on. I shrank back against the doorframe as he barrelled past me.
"Wait," I begged. "Where are you going?"
He stopped then and looked back, his cold gaze raking over me with sheer disdain. "I'm hungry," he sneered dismissively. "You weren't enough."
And with that he was gone, disappearing out into the dusk of the evening, leaving me to stare after him and wonder whether he would ever return.
******
I don't remember how I reached the top of the stairwell. I don't remember making that journey, walking that dark corridor or treading those precarious steps to the top of the tower. And yet there I was, standing outside the bedroom door, feeling numb and dazed as I listened to the sound of the gramophone playing within. I vaguely remembered the song from the jukebox in my dad's pub. P.P Arnold maybe. A shiver crept over my skin, like the feathery light touch of a hundred ghosts.
Stepping into the room, I could see Caelan's silhouette through the layers of crimson voile and hear her humming along to the song, her voice husky and low. I breathed in and out slowly, feeling the numbness inside me being replaced by something else, something that scratched about in the base of my gut like some feral animal, something that ignited my veins and made me want to scream out loud.
Reaching out, I touched one of the red layers, admiring the soft fabric before curling my fingers around the edge of the sheer curtain and tugging on it hard, ripping it down and watching as it drifted lightly to the floor. Caelan stopped humming. Behind the other layers of voile, her silhouette remained perfectly still, but only for a few seconds. Soon she was singing softly along to the music again as if I wasn't there. I reached out and pulled another voile to the floor and another. Still she kept on singing. Grasping the last one closest to the bed - the final thin membrane of fabric that stood between us - I pulled, smiling as I heard the rip of the material. It fell to the floor around my feet and I looked up to find Caelan crouched on the bed, like a bird on its perch, still humming along to the tune and examining each of her polished nails in turn.
Ignoring me was all part of the act. It was a façade, just like this whole room was a façade with its pretty décor and pretty things. It was all a pretence, as thin and transparent as the protective layers of voile that Josiah had tried to hide his sister behind.
I watched her for a moment as she continued to check each fingertip, cursing under her breath when she found one chipped, no doubt from our earlier tussle. Every now and then, she would lift her head and cock it to one side as if she was listening for something, sometimes smiling in response, sometimes frowning and then she would go back to what she was doing, repeating the same thing over and over.
Walking over to the dresser, I studied the neatly arranged cosmetics, vanity case and brushes. My fingers wandered over each item, tracing the pattern on the silver brush and admiring the coloured glass of the vintage perfume bottles. I resisted the urge to smile when I realised that over on the bed, Caelan had stopped singing and was studying me intently, her head making jerky little bird-like movements as she watched my hands move over the neat arrangement of precious things. Tearing down the voile was one thing, but she was clearly struggling to see me ruin the perfect display Josiah had laid out for her on the dresser. I'd always assumed this was all down to Josiah, keeping his sister dressed up like a doll, in her doll's house room surrounded by all these pretty things, but seeing her reaction now, I wondered how much of this was her – keeping everything just perfect in order to combat the chaos raging inside her head.
"You must have loved him very much," I said finally, shooting her a brief smile. "To do what you did. I mean, I'm sure people just put it down to you being completely fucking crazy, but nobody should discount how you felt. You must have loved him, right?"
"Loved?" she replied, tilting her head as if she had misheard me. "Love. Loooooove." She dramatically enunciated the word, rolling it on her tongue. "A love like this never leaves you. It captures not only your heart but your soul too. It is forever binding."
"Hmmm," I pondered. "You seers seem to have a thing for being bound to people. Tell me, would you even know what it is like to live without these binds? Don't you ever wonder what it might be like to be free? To not be bound to one person? Or by the terms of yet another contract? It must be so....so suffocating."
"Silly girl," she scoffed. "Love is never suffocating."
"No?" I said, arching a brow. "You tried to kill yourself...for love. You're now locked in this room....all because of love. How is that not suffocating? From where I'm standing, love has made you a prisoner. Love has enslaved you. Love is killing you. And it will go on trying to kill you."
"What would you know about love? The woman who betrayed her husband."
She shifted on the bed, the chains jangling beside her.
"Oh," she pouted, her voice all sweet and girlish. "You think Josiah didn't tell me how you cheated on your devoted husband, how he cast you out? I know. I know what you did. Don't talk to me about love when you know nothing of it." She grinned, the smile slightly distorted on the scarred side of her face. "Tell me though. Was he worth it? This man you threw away your marriage for?"
I stared at her for a moment, before meeting her grin with one of my own.
"Good question," I said, folding my arms across my chest. "If you'd asked me that when it all happened, then I would have said no. I would have told you that he was an arrogant prick who gets off on hurting others. I would have told you that he was so wrapped up in the past that all he wanted to do was destroy the future. I would have told you that he was cruel and twisted." I sauntered slowly over to the gramophone and lifted the needle mid-track, enjoying the silence that swept through the room. "But now....."
"What?" Caelan raised her fingers to her lips and began biting anxiously at her nails, scraping her teeth over the polish. Little flakes of colour drifted down and settled on the cover by her bare feet.
"Now everything's different. The one person I thought I hated with every ounce of my being has become the only one I can rely on. He's become the one true thing in my life, maybe the only true thing I've ever had. So I might have known nothing about love once, but I do now. And I'll do anything to protect that, because without love, what hope is there? You might as well throw yourself to the sun and be done with it all, right?"
Her fingers were bleeding now as she nibbled harder, her hands trembling as she held them both to her mouth.
"It probably sounds crazy....although, who knows what sounds crazy to a crazy person? No offence of course."
I inched closer to the bed, noticing how she shuffled backwards, her hands leaving bloody smudges on the sheet.
"I get it. I really do. All of this." I gestured to the room and to her. "Admittedly, I didn't at first when I found out what you did. I couldn't understand why anyone would do this all for the sake of love. But now I understand. I mean, to love and not be loved back must be ...awful. But to love and be despised in return?" I shook my head. "I can't imagine how that feels. The emptiness. The self-loathing. Poor Caelan," I crooned. "Why would you want to go through that again? Why face the rejection? Haven't you had enough already?"
"It will be fine this time," she whispered, her eyes wide. "He's come back for me. It will be fine."
"No," I replied. "No it won't. Because he didn't come back for you." I reached out a hand and touched her head, stroking her hair gently. "He came back for me. He always comes back for me."
A single tear trailed down her scarred, twisted skin.
I walked away, wading through seas of red voile, stopping just by the door to look back at the weeping raven slumped on its perch, no longer the terrifying beast that knock-knocked at Poe's door.
Caelan Hope was no longer the stuff of nightmares. I was.