The Reckoning

by Alma Katsu

  “Help me, please,” I said, hoping to move him to pity.

  He continued to stare for a beat or two and then shook his head. “That man—he told me to untie your hands so you can clean up.” Of course, he didn’t need to explain who sent him: no one else would’ve dared. Mika came over and studied the cord but I’d struggled against it so furiously that the knot had seized tight. He drew out a little pocketknife and sawed at it until it fell away. “Tell me, who is this man who has come to see Birgit?” he asked as he worked. He was plainly rattled by jealousy. “Why is he here?”

  My instinct was to protect Mika from what was going on around him, thinking he was still a child. “He’s dangerous. Stay away from him. Don’t trust him.” I rubbed at abrasions on my wrists, knowing they would disappear soon enough, though in the unlit room this tiny miracle was sure to escape his notice.

  A faint smile turned up the corners of his mouth. “He said the same about you. He called you a siren and told me not to listen to your song.”

  “You’re practically an adult. You can decide for yourself which of us to trust.” You’d think it was plain enough whom he should believe, but I could tell by the distant expression on his face that he didn’t care who I was or what had happened to me. He lived in his own world and, at that moment, had only one thing on his mind.

  “Were they lovers?” he asked.

  I hesitated. “Look, there are things about your stepmother that you don’t know. . . .”

  “I know more about her than you might think,” he said almost proudly. He started to unbutton his shirt. I jerked back, thinking that he was going to take advantage of the situation and attack me, too, but that wasn’t the case. He slipped the shirt over his shoulder, revealing the pure white skin of his back—or almost pure, for it was covered in rows of small black hieroglyphics, a series of letters I’d never seen before, spelling words I couldn’t read. It was likely an ancient script and a long-forgotten language. Of course, I knew who had done this to him: from the chains of black pinpricks that formed the letters, I knew that the same hand had made the tattoo on my arm with a set of needles and a bottle of india ink hundreds of years ago. Tilde.

  He dropped the shirt completely from his back to show me that his body was covered with the tattooed writing: across both scrawny shoulder blades and up his neck to where a collar would rest, down both arms to where cuffs would ride. The letters marched over the knobs of his spine. They disappeared into his armpit. He wore the tattoos in secret under his clothes, and God only knew what she had written there, but I think I knew why she had done it: to mark him as hers and let him prove the lengths to which he’d go to please her. And, too, she was playacting, pretending to be Adair by mimicking his habits, and trying to create her own dynasty. But her men were not immortal, and no matter what she did to try to keep them with her, they were destined to fail her in the end.

  He looked at the writing on his right forearm, enchanted, as though a wild bird had settled there. “She says these are spells that bind me to her, and talismans to protect me,” he said, looking up at me, hopeful that I would confirm his illusions, but I could not. I knew she had no real magic. She was not Adair. These were nothing more than tattoos he’d carry with embarrassment for the rest of his life, proof of his youthful gullibility.

  “Yes, you are bound to her now.” True enough in its way, but I said it only to appease him, even though it sickened me.

  He smiled with a child’s satisfaction as he pulled the shirt back over his tattoos and buttoned it up. “That man who’s come to see her, he seems . . . twisted. There’s something wrong about him,” he admitted reluctantly. “Will these protect me from him, too?”

  Such hope in his face. He wanted to be Tilde’s youthful savior. “Listen to me,” I said, trying to break through his enchantment. “Nothing can protect you from Adair—nothing. You stay out of his reach, do you understand? Don’t be left alone with him under any circumstances, and for God’s sake, don’t pick a fight with him.”

  But he only smiled smugly, secure in his folly. “Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself.” And he probably thought in his naïveté that he was supremely capable—chosen, even. After all, he had seduced his stepmother; wasn’t that proof of how special he was? “Adair says you are to get cleaned up,” he said as he left the room. “I think he’s coming back for you soon.”

  Once Mika had left, I took to the tiny shower in the maid’s bathroom and stood under the stinging stream of hot water, wishing it could wash away what Adair had done. The water could make me clean again but not whole, quiet me outwardly but not quiet my mind. I was frightened of Adair but there was nothing I could do to stop him. I was powerless to refuse him anything, as my life would now revolve around the ebb and flow of his moods. When he was peaceable toward me, life would be tolerable, but when he was of a vengeful mind or upset by another matter, it would be hell.

  I heard the door open while I was showering and wasn’t surprised to find Adair slumped on the bed, staring at the spot on the mattress where he’d pinned me down and raped me. When I opened the bathroom door, sending a cloud of steam into the room, he looked up at me standing damp and naked in the doorway. There was neither desire nor anger in his eyes. He seemed as unnerved as I by what had happened earlier.

  He pulled the crumpled sheet free of the mattress and tossed it to me. “I told that boy to bring towels,” he said. I wrapped the sheet around my body and kept my distance, though he seemed chastened and subdued, and not in the mood to attack me again. “Get dressed,” he said. “I want to talk to you, but not in here.” Both of us, it seemed, were uncomfortable remaining in that room, where his violence still hung in the air.

  I started for my discarded clothes, now ripped and stained, but he held out another article of clothing. “I brought something clean for you to wear,” he said. It was the banyan I’d seen hanging in Alejandro’s room in Barcelona, the one that had once been Adair’s. The ancient olive and gold striped silk was fragile from age and thin as mist, but when I slipped it on and cinched the waist, I remembered the times I’d worn it in Adair’s bedroom in the Boston house, fresh from lying in his arms.

  As we walked through the house, I noticed it seemed to be empty—none of Tilde’s family were in the great room, nor was there the murmur of voices drifting in from unseen quarters—and Adair led the way to a small private library, every wall of the small room lined with bookcases. He took the armchair and I sat on a love seat, perched at the farthest end from him. In threadbare silk and with wet hair, I was cold and shivering. His eyes scanned me up and down, and from those eyes and the set of his mouth and the crease of his brow I could tell there was something on his mind.

  “What happens next?” I asked, careful not to show how frightened I was by what his answer might be.

  He raised his eyebrows. “That is what I wish to discuss with you: what happens next. . . . You will come with me, of course.”

  I didn’t want to appear to acquiesce, so I said nothing.

  “We’ll find a place to live, and you will sleep in my bed and eat at my table,” he continued. “As long as you behave, do as you’re told, and don’t try to run away, I won’t lock you up. I’ll give you the run of the house as long as you live by my rules.”

  I wanted him to be plain about what he wanted from me, what was to be between us. Would it be as it had been in Boston? Would he expect me to act as though I adored him, and would I have to watch my every word? Or did he not care if I abhorred him, as long as I wasn’t openly rebellious? “I’m to be like Uzra, then? Am I to take her place?”

  “I hope it will be better between us than it had been with Uzra.”

  “And if I don’t do as you say?”

  He sighed, disappointed. “Perhaps it would be best if you didn’t pretend that you have a choice, Lanore.” He waited until I’d absorbed his advice before continuing. “We will leave soon—tomorrow, perhaps. Pendleton is locating a place for us to live for now. I wa
nt to get away from the others. I want it to be just the two of us, so as not to be watched and gossiped about constantly.” I wondered if that was a bad sign, if privacy meant he would feel less constrained in his actions. “And once we have resumed our life together, we can look for a place that suits you better. We can go anywhere you want: what do you say to that?”

  He was so subdued, he took me by surprise. And his desire to please me—again, it seemed like a trick. In the middle of all this, I was wondering, too, about Jonathan: if Adair had brought him, if he was somewhere in this house. However, I couldn’t think of a way to ask without running the risk of enraging Adair anew.

  “Now, there is one thing left that you must help me with,” he continued. “Your friend is here . . . the man you took up with . . . the doctor from Maine. He came looking for you.”

  Luke is here? Panic bloomed inside me. He’d done the most foolhardy thing possible by following me—and how did he find me, anyway? I hadn’t told him where I was going or whom I’d planned to meet. For one minute I was blinded by fear. But despite that, beyond common sense and words, I was grateful and amazed that Luke loved me enough to come after me.

  I edged closer to Adair. “Let him go. Please.”

  Adair ran a hand roughly through his hair. “That is exactly what I have been thinking but, judging from your reaction, perhaps I should reconsider? You seem to care a great deal for him. Having him around will come in handy, it seems.”

  “That’s not necessary. I’ll do anything you want, Adair, I promise, if you let him go.”

  He looked at me, sadly cynical.

  Cautiously, I placed a hand atop his. “What have you got to lose? You already have me, and this way you’ll have my gratitude, too. Adair, you hold all the cards, you can afford to be magnanimous. Please.”

  He cast a sly sideways glance at my hand. “You promise very prettily, Lanore, but you’ve promised in the past, and see where that got me. You love this man enough to give yourself away for his sake. First Jonathan, now him. Never me. So prove to me that you will give yourself to me. Prove that you are mine. Come, sit on my lap.”

  There was nothing else I could do, so I rose and crossed around to his chair and carefully lowered myself onto him. The banyan was sheer, so I might as well have been naked, every twitch of his thighs and his groin evident to me. Strength and want emanated from him, his desire alone strong enough to crush me even while his arms remained by his sides.

  “Okay,” he said throatily. “Kiss me, Lanore.”

  I was afraid to do this, afraid of what he might be able to detect from a kiss, but I obeyed. I held his face in my hands, his beard prickling my palms, my thumbs pressed to the hard ridge of his cheekbones. I brought my lips over his, and his warm breath was caught between us for a second. Then I kissed him with as much tenderness as I could muster. I was afraid that he would know all about me in that kiss—my fear of him, my concern for Luke, and worry for what had happened to Jonathan—and that, in anger and spite, he’d destroy the man to whom I owed so much. I had sealed Luke’s fate the day I selfishly asked him to help me escape from St. Andrew. I wouldn’t be able to live with that, so I kissed Adair deeply, too deeply not to feel something, God help me, a rumbling deep inside me like distant thunder.

  Appeased, he kissed me back fiercely, a kiss from the old days when he would pour himself into me without reserve. And then his mouth was everywhere: my cheek, my earlobe, down the length of my throat, the banyan pulled open to give him access, his leonine head buried between my breasts, his hands feeding them to his hungry mouth. From there it was only minutes until I was on my back on the love seat and he was on top of me and in me. Being with him again like this re-ignited my old desire for him, I admit, made it flame a bit around the edges, reminding me that it was not completely gone. But I felt a strange mix of emotions; I imagine it was like being mounted by a lion, pinned by crushing strength and furious passion . . . and, too, the possibility that like a wild animal he could kill me at any minute, his love switching to hatred in an instant. When he came, he collapsed on top of me, resting his head on my chest like a child, as though soothed by my heartbeat. I lay underneath him, wondering if I had performed well enough to deceive him, well enough so that he no longer felt threatened by Luke and would therefore set him free.

  When we’d descended from our frenzy, Adair helped me up from the love seat, adjusting his clothing as I smoothed and cinched the banyan once again. He took my hand and turned to me. “And so it is settled,” he said, pleased, choosing to believe it was different between us now. “We will go see this man Luke and you will send him on his way.”

  Adair took me to the garage, where he’d left Luke like a dog on the oil-stained floor in an empty bay, arms tied behind his back. I gasped at the sight of his face, which was bruised and cut up, one eye swollen shut and his lips fat and cracked, the corners crusty with blood. He’d likely have scars for the rest of his life, and his broken bones might repair poorly. He might never be the same again, and it was all my fault. I couldn’t cry out in alarm and had to smother the words that leapt to my mouth and stop my tears in their tracks.

  I cradled his head in my hands and he woke up, squinting at me in confusion. In my state, I was embarrassed to be before him, for surely he could smell Adair on me, and could tell that I was naked under the banyan. He’d know what I’d done. I would have to use it to my benefit.

  “Lanny?” he mumbled.

  “Luke, you shouldn’t have come after me.”

  “Couldn’t let you face . . . on your own. . . .”

  “How did you find me, anyway?”

  He squinted in confusion at my question for a moment. “Your cell phone. . . . Remember that program we downloaded, the one with the maps of Paris that would show you my GPS location in case I ever got lost? Well, it shows me where you are, too. I used it to follow you. . . .”

  “Luke . . . listen.” I pressed a finger to his lips to stop him from speaking. “I’m afraid you don’t understand. I came here voluntarily.”

  He shook his head, disbelieving.

  “And I’m so lucky. Adair’s forgiven me. He’s willing to take me back.”

  Luke closed his eyes and swallowed hard.

  “So, you see, I won’t be going back with you. I’m with Adair now.”

  “You’re trying to protect me, but it won’t work. You can’t send me away as though I’m a child,” he said without hesitation.

  I looked over my shoulder and saw Adair standing a few paces off, arms crossed, watching us with a peculiar look on his face, one of hurt and sadness, and—though it didn’t seem possible—terrible vulnerability, too. And then, like a cloud passing over the sun, it was gone, replaced by something as unreadable as stone.

  I crouched over Luke. “I’m not protecting you, Luke: I’m finally telling you the truth. You see, I made a mistake thinking I could settle down with you. That night in St. Andrew when we met, I only wanted to get away from the police. I took one look at you and I knew I could get you to help me. You’re such a Boy Scout, Luke. A good guy. It’s written all over your face. I figured I could trick you into helping me get over the border into Canada and then I’d give you the slip and that would be that.”

  He wheezed with pain. “You’re making this up. . . . I don’t believe you. . . .”

  “No, this is the truth. My head was a mess after what I did to Jonathan. I was sick of my life and afraid of being on my own. I thought I was ready to change; I wanted things to be different. And I thought you—I mean, you’re so straight and honest, I thought you would make it happen.

  “You’re a good man, Luke, you were so good to me. You really tried; I can’t fault you at all. . . . But you could try from here to kingdom come and it wouldn’t do any good. You’re not right for me. I can’t make myself love you the way . . . I should.”

  Luke bit his lower lip and shook his head involuntarily, but his hand went heavy and limp in mine. He no longer squeezed back.

&nbs
p; I kept speaking, hoping he was listening. “I didn’t intend to fool you. I didn’t think I’d ever go back to Adair, not in a hundred years. I didn’t think he’d ever forgive me. But being around my own kind again has reminded me how my life could be. How it should be. We understand each other. It’s not a constant game of protecting your feelings, always reassuring you that it doesn’t matter that you’re getting older, slower, weaker.” He winced. It hurt me, too, terribly, but I had to poison his thoughts of me so he would never look back with doubt. So he would break with me forever. And apparently something about my deceit rang true, because in his eyes there was the shadow of a doubt.

  “Come on, Luke,” I continued as evenly as I could, “I don’t have an ordinary life and I shouldn’t pretend that I do. I’m not meant to raise somebody’s children. Can you see me being happy in your little house in St. Andrew, doing mountains of laundry, waiting for the girls to come home from school to bake cookies?”

  He strained at the cord tying his hands. “I know it’s not true,” he muttered. “You’d never go with him. You’re afraid of him.”

  “I don’t expect you to understand. Being with him again, I came to see that . . . I missed being with him. I missed the wildness of giving in to my darkest impulses. I forgot what it was like.” I stood up, leaning over him. “It isn’t easy to tell you this, Luke. We could’ve just left you here, and you’d never know. But I thought you should know the truth. So you can go back to your daughters and forget about me.”

  I waited, looking for an indication that he knew I was lying to him. Had he seen a waver in my gaze, a split second of regret that I was causing him pain? No, I was a good liar. I’d fooled Adair once, hadn’t I? It was easy to fool someone as guileless and honest, as trusting and honorable, as Luke.

  Adair chimed in then. “Did you hear that, little man? She has chosen me. She does not want you anymore.”

  Luke looked over at his tormentor. “Fuck you.”