His hands went still, both of them. Then they went stiff.
“That is not something you should concern yourself about.”
It wasn’t a phrase unfamiliar to her ears, although it wasn’t usually brought to them as civilly. Rose decided, in that moment, that she disliked it, whether it was spoken civilly or not.
“If it concerns my person, then I do feel that it should concern me.”
“The truth is often an unpleasant, ugly thing. This is one of those instances, Rose. It would be best if you let the matter rest. If you ever believe a thing that comes out of my mouth, let it be that if I tell you this, you will never be happy again.” He kissed the top of her head, fretfully, almost dutifully, and Rose believed him. Her curiosity, however, burned hotter than ever before.
She untangled herself from him.
“I would still like to know.”
“Even if it is a truth that will bring you only pain?”
“Were you not the one who swore that pain is a thing I crave?” she asked, hoping it would lighten up the atmosphere, or at least stop him from looking so dour. It had the opposite effect. Although there wasn’t much of a visible change on his face, something about him clamped shut.
“You will not be able to forget this. It will follow you around in your waking hours, every day of the rest of your life.”
Rose swallowed.
“Is it a curse?”
“That would be a way to describe it,” he conceded. He waited, making it clear he was offering her the last chance she would have to state she didn’t want to hear it after all. When she remained silent and indicated him to proceed, he lowered his head into his hand. “I am not . . . indiscriminate in my killings. When looking in another’s eyes, I can see how great a lifespan I stand to gain if I take theirs. It does me no good to kill a man who would have lived only five years more if we hadn’t crossed paths. The time you have left . . . it was not enough to be worth killing you for.”
At first, she didn’t understand. Then all the right connections were made, and she was caught up, and he had been right. What she knew now could only hurt her, yet she was incapable of preventing herself from pressing onwards, ignoring the fact that many things within her were starting to crack and in danger of breaking.
“How long do I have? Twenty years? Ten?”
“As of now, you have a year.” He looked at her, all of him somber. “Give or take.”
A year.
A year.
A year.
“I would like you to leave, and never return,” she said, without taking her eyes off him. Her face felt like a loaf that hadn’t been in the oven long enough. Crisp and hard on the outside, a soppy mess within. A year. She had a year. One lousy year. It was one of those hurts that begged to be spread. “You swore you would if I asked and meant it. And I do. I do.”
“Are you certain?”
She was about to cry. No, wrong, wrong, she was about to bawl.
“Yes.”
“Very well. I will. ” He moved off the bed. “I will only come back if you wish me to.”
Rose nodded, dumbly, numbly, and kept her head down until she was sure he had disappeared.
Soon after, she woke up, truly this time, and with her face covered in tears.
It was a strange thing, to look at the world with the knowledge that she would be leaving it soon.
Rose expected it would all seem sharper, with common objects and locations gaining new, clear edges as it dawned on her how long she didn’t have to look at them. Instead, it was as if there was a greyness overlaying everything, starting with her mood.
She wasn’t sad. She was not, against all expectation, afraid. She didn’t think she was in denial either, even if that would be the easiest state to find herself in — the news of her imminent demise hadn’t, after all, come from what could be called a trustworthy source. Ignoring them or writing them off as an attempt to toy with her emotions wouldn’t be anything but reasonable.
However, it was turning out harder than she thought to make her head process reason, when every other instinct and emotion that made her up had decided to accept that she was done for.
It was the weekly house-cleaning day. House-cleaning day meant that Mrs. Cross would take one of the girls to work with her in the kitchen, while the other dusted and scrubbed the floors and did everything within her power to leave the building sparkling from top to bottom. It was hard work, but it was also soothing work, and Rose was glad to have it, since it made it unlikely that she’d be bothered throughout the day.
Millie wasn’t as much of a problem, but she didn’t feel like dealing with Mrs. Cross, who still hadn’t let go of the whole demon business. Now she spent her days trying to decide if Rose’s survival was due to her too being the devil’s creature, or because the Lord had put his touch on her and afforded her protection. Rose would frequently find the woman squinting at her, as if trying to divine which category she belonged in.
A rumor of voices came from the kitchen, rising in volume as more words were added.
Rose looked at the bucket in her hand and decided that it was probably a good time to start upstairs. Arguments weren’t a common happenstance at the bakery, since Mrs. Cross had trained both her charges to accept that her first word should also be her last. Their rarity made them frightening, and she didn’t want to be around in case there was any blowback.
Millie came up when she was almost done with the floors.
Rose had heard her boots thumping up the stairs and prepared some comforting words, but once she saw the other girl, she started to doubt that she would need them. Millie wasn’t crying. Her eyes were shiny and her face was flushed, but she didn’t seem upset. She was singing, even, which was grounds for punishment. Mrs. Cross didn’t hold with any singing that wasn’t shaped like hymns.
She stopped when she saw Rose looking at her.
“I’m leaving!” she announced. Rose boggled at her like a fish that had just discovered air.
“She threw you out?”
“Noooo. Well, yes, she did. But I’d told her I was leaving before she did, so I won’t count it. I’m getting married,” she added, veering towards the ladder that led to the attic and climbing up. Rose followed her, abandoning the bucket and the rag and all plans of getting the cleaning done in a timely manner. Millie went on, pleased as punch. “His name is Adam. He’s a sailor.”
Something about the way she said it convinced Rose that ‘sailor’ was a last minute replacement for some other, less respectable occupation, but she didn’t say anything about it. She wouldn’t have said anything even if she didn’t think that spending the night with a confirmed killer twice gave her no room to criticize. She had no idea what to say, period.
“Of course, now Mrs. Cross thinks that I’ve been dallying with him behind her back this whole time. And she’s quite right, too. I don’t know how I managed to stop myself from telling her how often and how hard we’ve been dallying.”
There was a wink, which Rose didn’t return. She was still speechless. Not because what she was hearing was at all surprising, but because Millie was leaving. Leaving! The revelation that she was slated to die hadn’t shaken the pillars of her life so badly.
“Still, I don’t see how I could come back here again without taking a pot of holy water to the head,” Millie went on. She stopped in front of the large wardrobe that they shared and threw it open, humming as she shifted through the sparse contents to sort out her own belongings. “So I think this’ll be our goodbye for a good while, Rosie. Maybe forever. Although I hope not,” she added, oblivious to how hard she’d just hit the mark.
“Is this wise?” Rose asked. Her own voice felt odd in her mouth. “How do you know that you can trust this man, this . . . Adam? He could very well be attempting to lure you out of a safe place to slit your throat and leave your body in a ditch.”
She stopped talking. Millie was staring at her, her hand frozen on her spare dress, which she was trying to w
rap the rest of her clothes in. Rose turned her gaze away, mortified, hoping the other girl wouldn’t notice that what she’d just said hadn’t been an attempt to lecture her, but rather a bout of unreasonably loud introspection.
“Adam loves me,” she said quietly. Rose sighed in relief. She hadn’t noticed, then. “And I know what you think, too. I just can’t stay here, I couldn’t even before I fessed up to Mrs. Cross. The way she’d like people to live isn’t life at all, or at least it’s living for nothing. Besides,” she added, her voice one part wistful, two parts sad. “I can’t pass up on the chance to be . . . well, more.”
I should be telling her off, Rose thought, watching as Millie bowed down to tuck away the last item inside her makeshift knapsack. Telling her that she’s getting ideas above her station, that of course this is life, this is all there is, she’s lucky she’s not worse off . . .
Two days ago, she would have told her all that, but now she felt less inclined. Now she had tasted pleasure and been shown places beautiful beyond belief, and learned that the world was filled with wonders, and so much bigger and stranger than the dry, grey corner of it that she’d been living in. Millie had figured that out too, at some point. And now she was headed somewhere else, because Millie was the kind of person who instead of wasting time dreaming, decided what she wanted her future to be shaped like and set out to make it happen.
Rose envied her too much for words.
She couldn’t go anywhere. A year, that was what all the life she had left. A year, and she would spend it in the bakery, going through the motions, because she’d never succeeded in developing a personality that included the words ‘brave’ and ‘resourceful’. A year, and then it would be over, and nothing of much value would be lost.
“Oh, Rosie, don’t cry!” She became aware that Millie was hugging her and making soothing noises at her, probably because she was under the impression that she was crying because she was leaving.
Rose didn’t try to correct her.
“I’m happy for you.” It wasn’t a lie. One could feel both happy and jealous at once.
“It’s better this way,” Millie said, letting her arms drop and stepping away to pick up her bundle. A thundering crash came from below stairs; the classical sound of Mrs. Cross flying into a rage. Rose winced. Millie just rolled her eyes. “For your sake, I hope you find someone too, someday. I can’t imagine you will enjoy being left alone with that.”
“How can you be so sure that you are in love?” she asked after her, as the other girl turned to go. Millie smiled. If was a soft smile, both pensive and hopeful.
“Adam and I have the same dreams.”
There was a small pause.
“And that is enough?”
Millie shrugged.
“What more could anyone ask for?” she mused, as if she truly couldn’t imagine anything else. Then she shook her head and turned to Rose one last time. “You have a good life, all right?”
If only she knew.
Rose didn’t dream about anything that night. In fact, she almost didn’t sleep. Instead she lay in bed, watching the moon shine in through the frosted glass, and thought.
She didn’t think about how she would die. She’d been told that death was unavoidable, so wondering about the reason why it would happen seemed useless. The thereafter, now that felt like a subject worthy of consideration. Once she was gone there would only be two ways: up and down. She didn’t believe she was headed up, but tallying the reasons why she possibly deserved Heaven was comforting in its own way.
She hadn’t been awful. She hadn’t ever harmed a fly. True, she’d been judgmental on occasion, and made a fair amount of resentful remarks over the years, and there had been that business with the glaze that she’d let Millie take the blame for. On the other hand, she had also been kind and polite, and she’d said her prayers every day, and been obedient and hardworking, and she had never stolen or embezzled or gambled or done much that was altogether damning.
But she hadn’t been able to keep her legs closed, and therefore she was going to Hell.
It was a strangely freeing notion. It shouldn’t be, since it was, well, Hell, but if she was bound there already - since she saw no way of redeeming herself from the things she’d let the killer do to her, not in the time she had left - wasn’t it true that her actions didn’t matter anymore? Protecting her own virtue was an irrelevant concern, as there were no punishments worse than the one she was set to receive. She could do whatever she wanted.
Well, not whatever. Mrs. Cross would take issue with her behavior, and between the Almighty and Mrs. Cross, Rose had to admit she had always feared the wrath of the latter more. Still, the old woman was not, despite her best efforts, omniscient, and couldn’t know what went on inside her head.
Anything that happened in there should be safe.
She didn’t dream about anything the night after that either, although she did catch some sleep that time. Or the night that followed.
By the fifth, Rose began to grow restless. She entertained the idea that something had happened to the killer during his daytime prowls - perhaps he’d been caught! Brought to trial! Hanged! - but had to admit that it would be an unlikely outcome, considering his powers. Would a length of rope even work on him?
One week later he had yet to return to her, and by then her restlessness had morphed into annoyance. It was as if the Almighty had seen her careless disregard for the threat of Hell, and decided to take revenge upon her in a more immediate way. Either that, or it was the most unpleasant, inconvenient coincidence imaginable that as soon as she admitted that she would like to sin and nothing was about to stop her, she would get hampered by a terminal lack of anyone to sin with.
Two weeks later there was still no sign of him, and she was desperate.
He had to know what was happening to her, hadn’t he? True, he’d said that he wouldn’t come back to her unless she asked, but she couldn’t bring herself to believe that he’d been serious. Whatever else he was, the man was a killer, and he had shown a spectacular disregard for her boundaries. He couldn’t have started respecting her that hard in the space of two nights.
Three weeks later, Rose decided that it was past time to take matters into her own hands.
It had snowed the day before. Not the regular snow the town got every three years or so, which fell overnight in one single downy layer, got trampled until it went brown and melted the next day, leaving everything covered with slippery muck. That year’s snow came in violent, ceaseless spurts that buried the whole street. Not content with that, it decided to become a hailstorm, and spent the morning and afternoon happily pelting the world with balls of ice the size of hen eggs.
There wasn’t much business that day. Mrs. Cross, who firmly believed that idleness rotted the soul, had done her best to keep Rose occupied, but eventually ran out of things to make her do. It was a rare thing to see Mrs. Cross out of sorts, so Rose made a point of appreciating the woman’s expression as she told her, slowly, stalling her words as if she expected that another assignment would materialize itself in the time it took to say them, that she could go up and stay in the attic until she was called back.
Rose did, and spent her break plotting a way to reconnect with the architect of her doom.
She padded through the attic, around her perfectly made bed and Millie’s empty one, studying the cracks on the floor and thinking to herself. She didn't have many doubts about what she needed to do, given that the killer had been kind enough to explain how one could meddle with another's dreams.
The how was the issue. At the time she'd thought it simple, and the process itself still didn't seem all that complicated. Gathering the needed ingredients, however . . . that could prove difficult. The herbs he'd mentioned were common enough, and so were lead and wood and wax, but gold? Gold wasn't something easily found in bakeries. Why, the only time she ever caught a glimpse of it was whenever Mrs. Cross wagged her finger at her, and . . .
Rose stopped wal
king.
Mrs. Cross’ wedding ring! The one she refused to take off even though her husband had been down in the ground for a decade, and baking wasn't a profession conducive to wearing jewelry. It was gold, or at least she'd always claimed it was, and it was both right there and woefully inaccessible, as there was no conceivable scenario where the woman would consent to part with it.
Still, she needed to get her hands on it, the sooner the better.
Before dinnertime arrived, she had already hatched a plan. It was a dangerous plan. One that would never have occurred to her before, while she lived in fear of so much, but didn't seem nearly as unfathomable now that her mind had been opened by the knowledge that everything she dreaded would happen no matter what.
Mrs. Cross had her own little room downstairs, but during the winter she preferred to sleep in a chair in front of the fireplace. Since there still wasn't much else to do she'd decided to tuck in early, and told Rose to do the same after she was done cleaning the kitchen. Rose waited until the loud, drug-induced snoring reached her ears, put on a wool coat, grabbed a basket full of bread and slid out through the back.
Her first stop was Mrs. Sutton's, who owned what for the town's standards was a well-furnished herb garden. She exchanged two loaves for the ones she needed. The green sprouts were withered and sad-looking — she was told to blame the cold for that — but the killer hadn't mentioned the condition they needed to be in, so they'd have to do. The rest of the items were equally easy to find and exchange by knocking on a few doors. The gold was fated to be the hardest acquisition.
She returned to the bakery, almost frozen to the bone, and worked herself up for the next step.
Mrs. Cross was still asleep. Rose could hear her even from the other side of the building, but that didn't prevent her from crossing the distance between them as quietly as she could make herself be. She slipped inside the room, making as little contact with the ground as she could. There was no light but the glow of the embers in the fireplace, and she was afraid of tripping on something and causing a racket.
The Darker Side of Love (A Dark Erotica Boxed Set) Page 49
