The Killing Jar (24 page)

“Want some coffee?” I asked Blake, raising my mug. I'd always drunk it black, the sharpness of its taste almost like a daily punishment for my past mistakes, but now I was used to Hitomi's tea blends, and in comparison the coffee tasted too bitter. Or maybe it was just me who was bitter. I'd done time in paradise and come home to a dead forest, a dying sister, and a mom who felt like someone I'd never met.

But there was still Blake. Even though I knew he'd be better off without me in his life, I wanted him in
my
life. Like twins, we'd balanced each other out, finished each other. He was my light and I was his darkness. But in the end, maybe that just created more gray.

“No, thanks,” he said to my offer of coffee. He set the guitar case down on the porch. “Can we talk?” he asked, squinting in the sunlight. He'd forgotten his sunglasses, and I could see his eyes were bleary, red lidded. He looked like he hadn't slept. I hadn't either. Too many thoughts twisting and tangling inside my brain like fast-growing vines.

We sat on the porch, keeping several inches between us. So much for not reverting back to old patterns.

“I'm sorry about last night,” I said. “I didn't know what I was doing.”

He entwined his fingers, keeping his eyes on his knees. “No, I'm glad you stopped us. I mean, it's not like I don't want to … you know. But we didn't have protection, and it was muddy and raining and—” He shook his head. “It just wasn't how I imagined it should be with us. Not that I thought there'd be silk sheets and chocolate strawberries or anything, but … well, you know.”

Blotches of red appeared on his neck and he cleared his throat and adjusted his collar like it was too tight.

I stared at him, uncomprehending, until it hit me: he thought I was talking about sex. He had no idea that, when we were kissing, I had been a hair away from taking his anima. And if I'd started to do that, I had no idea if I could have stopped. Then I would have added one more dead person to the list of people I'd culled, only this time it would have been someone I loved.

“Blake,” I said, my stomach filling with acid. “I have to tell you something.”

*   *   *

I started with the truth: I killed a boy named Jason Dunn.

I ended with another truth: I almost killed Blake.

In between, I did my best to leave out no details. Rebekah would be furious if she found out what I'd told him, but I felt like I owed him an explanation. Besides, if there was one person in the world I trusted completely it was Blake, and it was time he understood who I really was. Then he could decide for himself whether he wanted someone like me in his life.

“So that's it,” I said after talking for over an hour with few interruptions from Blake. My coffee was cold now, and more bitter than ever. I finished it anyway and cringed, setting the mug aside. “I've never told anyone else.”

He looked at me, and the expression on his face made me want to sink into the ground. In his eyes, I saw what I always feared I would see if someone knew the truth: revulsion. It was fleeting, but I saw it in the downward turn of his mouth and the pinch of his eyes. Then Blake covered his face with his hands, dragging them down over his cheeks.

“You were just a kid,” he said. “You didn't know what you were doing.”

“I did know,” I insisted. “He was bad. He made my sister suffer, so I decided to make him pay for it. It was murder, Blake, and it was intentional. I might as well have put Jason in a killing jar of my own. I
am
a killing jar, Blake. A living, breathing killing jar, and I almost put you inside, too.”

Blake stared out at the crumbling, gray woods.

“You want to go back to Eclipse,” he said, speaking my thoughts for me in a voice that sounded weary and defeated.

“I don't know what I want.” After all those truths, I was starting with the lies again. I knew exactly what I wanted.

Blake stood and turned to me. His expression morphed from betrayal to heartbreak to loss, finally arriving at anger.

“You may not know what you want, but I do,” he said. “I want you here with me. When you decide that's where you belong, I'll be waiting.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked away, his shoulders hunched and his head bowed slightly. It was the posture of someone trying to protect himself, and that's why I didn't run after him or call him back. I'd hurt him too much already. I didn't want to hurt him anymore.

I didn't want to hurt anyone.

I picked up my guitar case and went back inside the house with the intention of holing up in my room and practicing some of the Kalyptra songs I'd learned. I didn't want to forget them. It occurred to me that I hadn't written any new music since I'd gone to Eclipse, and that I didn't actually feel any need to. I only wanted their music now. My own was too dark, too mournful. I wanted the brightness and vivacity of Kalyptra rhythms, the bone-rattling throb of Kalyptra drum beats.

But my mom waited for me in the foyer. Her eyelids were red, so I guessed she'd been crying.

“We need a family meeting,” she said, her voice just raspy enough to confirm that, yes, she had definitely been crying.

I sighed, my body sagging. I felt so tired I could barely stay upright. I needed to take anima soon. At Eclipse, I was constantly sampling anima. I rarely went more than a few hours without it.

“Can it wait?” I asked.

She shook her head. She looked even more tired than I felt. “Now would be better. There are things we need to … resolve.”

Resigned, I set my guitar down in the foyer, and followed her to the dining room, where Erin was already seated at the table.

I sat across from my sister, who kept her eyes trained on the surface of the table, as though it were the most interesting thing she'd ever seen. I tried to get her to look at me, but she only drew more tightly into herself like a potato bug. Her rejection did more than sting: it crushed. It flattened me like roadkill.

And it pissed me off.

I had saved her. I'd healed her broken, useless, prison of a body, and this was how she treated me?

I folded my arms over my chest, clenching my fists and glaring at her so she would feel my anger, even if she didn't see it in my eyes.

“So.” Mom cleared her throat, glancing between the two of us. “Our family has been through hell. I think we can all agree on that. But I have a feeling the worst is behind us now, don't you, girls?”

Erin ignored her. I raised an eyebrow and waited for her to get this over with.

“As we move forward, we need to establish some guidelines,” she went on.

Mom launched into what was clearly a prepared speech. I tried to listen, but at some point I became fixated on her hands. I couldn't stop looking at them. They were identical to Rebekah's, the fingers long and slender. How could my mom have betrayed Rebekah the way she did? How could she abandon a mother who loved her so much that she built a new world for her? Rebekah had given her a freaking utopia, and she had shunned it. What was wrong with this woman?

“Kenna, are you listening?” Mom said.

I raised my eyes. “Yep. Keep Erin healthy, but don't cull animals, only plants. Keep what I am a secret. Never do what I do in public. I got it.”

“Do I even get a say in this?” Erin asked, finally looking up. Her chin thrust out defiantly. She looked beautiful and strong, and I hardly recognized her.

Mom's brow furrowed in confusion. “Erin … you understand that we don't really have a choice in all this. If you want to stay healthy, you have to let Kenna help you.”

“Then maybe I don't want to stay healthy. Maybe I wasn't meant to be healthy.”

“Honey,” Mom said, trying to maintain a reasonable tone, though I could tell she was panicking inside. “You don't mean that.”

“I don't? Tell me, why is it so important for Kenna to save me now? How long has she been able to do this … this
thing
she does? Her whole life? And only now you want her to start playing witch doctor to me?”

I raised my eyebrows at Erin. I had never heard her speak to our mom with such venom in her tone.

“She makes a good point,” I said. “I've been wondering the same thing myself.”

Mom looked helplessly from me to Erin, and then lowered her eyes. “I—I told you in the car, Kenna, I made a mistake, and I realize that now. I should have taken you to Eclipse a long time ago, but I was afraid.”

“Afraid of what?” Erin and I asked in unison.

Mom shook her head, her hair hanging around her face. I saw a tear drop from her eye and land on the table. “That you would turn out like me. That you would be too weak to control your gift.”

Cold fingers of dread traced my spine. “What did you do, Mom?”

She didn't answer, only shook her head, more tears dripping onto the table. I should have felt pity for her, but instead disgust writhed through me like a serpent.

I stood abruptly, my chair shrieking across the hardwood. “You don't even want me here. The only reason you sent Blake to pick me up was because Erin needed me. Otherwise you would have left me at Eclipse forever.”

My mom looked at me like I'd slapped her, raising her head and blinking in stunned surprise. “That's not true. I—I only wanted to give you time. You know why I couldn't stay there with you, why it was dangerous for me to bring you home.”

“I also know how easy it is for you to turn your back on family. You did it to your own mother. You were the only real family she had, and you just abandoned her. The same way you abandoned me.”

“You think that was easy?” She stood to face me, but when she spoke her voice was trembling. “Nothing about what I did back then was easy, Kenna, so don't accuse me of things you don't understand. I left because I wanted a real life, a decent life, and I want the same thing for you.”

“No,” I said. “You want me to be something I'm not. You want me to be normal and safe and mundane. But guess what? I'm never going to be, but lucky for you I can keep Erin alive and healthy, so you can have a normal daughter after all.”

I hated myself for the things I was saying, but I couldn't stop. So many unsaid words had built up inside me, and now it was all pouring out like lava, consuming everyone in its path.

Erin stood, too, glaring at me as though I were the lowest thing on the planet. A worm. A fungus. A virus.

“And whose fault is it that I was born defective, Kenna?” she said. “Is it a coincidence that I shared a womb with you and came out sick? Is it a coincidence that Mom almost died before she could bring us to term? Or does it all revolve around
you
?”

“Erin, don't,” Mom said. “Please, just stop.”

“No,” Erin said sharply. “Kenna needs to know what she did to us.”

My mouth opened, but all of my harsh words had dried up and blown away. My heart, too, seemed to have shriveled in my chest. Illia had told me Kalyptra didn't have children because if they did, they lost their gift. The only reason Rebekah had been able to have my mom was because she'd given birth before she became Kalyptra. But she hadn't said anything about this. Was it true? Had I nearly killed my mom and Erin simply by existing?

My sister, my twin, fixed her eyes on mine. “You ruined me,” she said. “So don't act like you're doing me any favors by saving me now. If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have needed saving. If it weren't for you—” She hesitated, but only for a moment. “We'd all be better off.”

My brain went numb. My skin felt as cold as a corpse's and I started to shake.

I didn't argue with Erin because I didn't disagree. Instead I nodded, turned my back on my family, and walked out.

I grabbed my guitar case in the foyer and headed toward my bedroom, wanting to be alone, but then I found myself standing at the foot of the stairs that led down into our unfinished basement. I hadn't been down there since this whole nightmare began. I'd told myself I would never go into the basement again, but my feet had different ideas. They moved me forward and down, into the darkness.

*   *   *

It's not easy to get blood out of cement. Cement is porous. It absorbs. It stains. It keeps.

Someone had tried to clean the blood from the storage room in our basement where Thomas Dunn had killed my family. The blood itself was gone, but the stain remained, a permanent shadow cast by that night's events. A permanent bruise on our lives.

I stepped into the room and set my guitar case down. It smelled metallic, like pennies. All of the boxes and odd bits of furniture that had been stored inside were gone. It was just an empty, tainted room now.

I moved to the one corner of the little room where blood hadn't reached and sat down with my guitar case laid on my legs. My fingers traced the lyrics I'd scrawled on the case in silver pen.

Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind
. The Doors.

I love you. I'm not gonna crack.
Nirvana.

There's someone in my head but it's not me.
Pink Floyd.

Why had I chosen these scraps of lyrics? They had spoken to me, but that had been another version of me. These words were so hopeless, so dark. I wished I could wash them away and start with new lyrics, bits of the Kalyptra's songs, which were the kind of optimistic poetry I had never before imagined myself writing.

And no wonder I had been depressed. Not only had I murdered a kid, but by simply existing I had destroyed my twin's body and nearly killed my own mother.

I unsnapped the brass clasps on the case and opened it, revealing my acoustic guitar. I lifted it out, cradled it in my arms like a sleeping child. For the last seven years, when I'd been unable to touch anyone, I had held on to this guitar. When I was so lonely I could barely stand it anymore, I had my music.