Death in the water.
Just like Mackey said about Elora.
What does it matter if the water swirls and bubbles up from below or if it falls from the sky?
Water is water.
And dead is dead.
And when I’m dead, then what?
Will Hart leave me here for the gators?
Toss me in the river like trash?
Will they find me floating facedown in the drowning pool?
Like Ember and Orli?
Or maybe he has something even worse in mind.
Maybe, right here at the very end, I’ll finally find out exactly what he did with Elora.
Hart carries me all the way back to La Cachette. Then he sets me down gently. On the edge of the boardwalk. Right above the gator pond.
In the middle of a hurricane.
“Hang on!” he yells at me. And I wrap my arms tight around the piling. He squats down next to me. And I know exactly what he’s going to say. “Don’t run, Greycie!” he shouts. “There’s no point!”
He ducks and sprints for the front porch. And all I can do is watch him. I squint against the rain as he messes with the gas generator. It takes him a few minutes to get it going, but eventually the huge floodlight on the side of the house comes on. I blink and hide my eyes. It’s like the sun coming up in the middle of the night.
Hart races back in my direction. “What did you do with her?” I shout. “Just tell me where she is!” I think I’m crying again. And maybe he is, too. The rain makes it impossible to say. “That’s all I want to know!”
But he doesn’t answer.
He just kicks off his boots. Then he rips off his soaked T-shirt. And his jeans. The wind picks up his discarded clothes like they’re made of tissue paper. It whisks them away into the dark. And Hart stands there for a second. Almost naked. With the rain coming down in solid sheets and the wind tearing at his bare skin.
Then he starts to climb down into the gator pond. The water is already high. Over the bottom few rungs of the ladder. Water hyacinth clogs the surface. But Hart ignores the weeds and the muck and dives into that muddy pit. I try to scream his name, but the wind snatches the word and shoves it back into my mouth so I choke on it.
This is all new. I never saw this part. So I have no idea what’s going on.
Or what happens next.
I watch Hart’s head disappear beneath the surface of the water, and I imagine Willie Nelson’s jaws clamping down on his chest.
Teeth.
Nothing but teeth.
Teeth piercing skin. Then muscle. Then bone.
Hart comes up to take a breath and dives back down again. He’s down there a really long time. And I figure Willie Nelson really did get him. But then his head breaks the surface, and this time he’s pulling something toward the edge of the pond.
Something heavy.
He struggles with it in the water, and I think he’ll probably drown. But he doesn’t.
I watch as he hauls it up on to a bit of muddy high ground near the bald cypress tree, and I know what it is even before I see it.
The missing black trunk.
I cling to the boardwalk piling, shaking, as Hart opens it up. I half expect a grand flourish and a ta-da, like he used to do when we were little kids. Back when he was magic.
But there’s only beating rain.
And crushing wind.
The emergency generator keeps shining. False moonlight on dark hair.
Hart’s curls plastered to his forehead.
Elora’s.
Spilling over the lip of the trunk.
And I know now why my mind couldn’t show me this part. Why it kept this part hidden. Didn’t let me peek.
I thought I was empty, but I lean forward and vomit into the water and the wind.
Over and over and over. I vomit until I’ve turned myself inside out.
“Greycie?” Hart sounds far away. Not distance far. Time far. He sounds five again. Terrified. Confused. Like when he came knocking on my window.
The first time.
And the second.
Only this time, I can’t open the window and let him in.
Because he’s the rougarou. Finally come to rip me to shreds.
“Why?” It’s the only thing I can get out. “Why did you kill her, Hart?” I’m choking again. On the rain. And the words.
“I didn’t!” he shouts. “I didn’t, Greycie! I swear to God!” He sinks to his knees in the mud, surrounded by a half-dozen cypress knees poking up out of the earth like witnesses. “You have to believe me! I didn’t kill her!”
I can’t stop staring at Elora’s dark hair spilling out of the trunk. I can’t see that. I have to get away.
I have to be away.