There’s a sob from behind me, but I don’t stop.
“It actually worked. Got a lot of burnt fingers, but I made them believe it.” I scrub away the area around the rivet, revealing blue metal. “Took us six years to get out of here. We fought our way out. We were getting fucked before we knew what it meant, but when we killed, we knew what we were doing. Fucking bloodbath like you’ve never seen.”
Still I’m not looking at her. I keep my attention fixed on the dirty furnace box. I listen to the hum of traffic. A distant train blows its horn, long and low. She’s probably wanting to get the hell away from me right about now. Probably going to throw up just looking at me.
“We set this fire. We burned this place. Three men toasted to a nice crisp, but I can pretty much guarantee you, they were dead beforehand.” I sniff. “Whatdya know, folks? Turns out that when a boy touches his finger to a bolt on a furnace, it doesn’t actually suck out all the murderous fucking darkness.”
I’m breathing hard.
I meant to use the story as a club to beat her off, bring her down here to make it all more awful. Instead she’s diluting the darkness of it somehow.
She’s making the memories almost bearable.
I rub the dirt off the rivet. “Sometimes I would touch my finger there when my brothers weren’t looking. I knew it was bullshit. I mean, hello, I made it up myself, right? But it worked with them, and sometimes, when I was feeling like shit, I wanted it to work with me, too—to suck out the bad and burn it away. I wanted to believe my own stupid lie.” I lower my voice to a whisper. “I really wanted to. I almost sometimes could.”
I don’t know why I’m telling her. I’m supposed to be making myself scary, not pathetic. I turn, finally, because I have to.
Because she’s the one bright thing in my life, even if she’s not really in my life.
She’s there, straight and tall, brown eyes shining, but not with tears. She’s looking at me with admiration. “That’s the bravest thing I ever heard.”
I give her a cockeyed look. Like she made a joke. “You caught the bullshit about the rivet, right?”
“That’s my favorite part. You helped them when they needed it most. When you needed help as much as any of them, but you were the leader, weren’t you? You made it better for them.”
My heart thunders. I absorbed all the darkness. She’s not supposed to be making it into a good thing.
“How old were you when they…trapped you?”
I shrug. “Nine or ten. Most were younger. Grayson—the one in prison—he was like five.”
She sucks in a breath and comes to me, throws her arms around me, as if to shield me from the world. She puts her face to my shirt.
This is wrong. I should shake her off, get her out of here.
I don’t.
I rest a tentative hand on her back. “Shit, sweetheart,” I say softly. “I’m ruining you.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, a broken litany. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“For what?” My voice sounds remote to my ears. “A lot of bad shit happened in that basement. Which part are you sorry for?”
I feel her flinch. I unwrap her arms from me and step back. “You don’t even know.”
“Don’t,” she says.
“Are you sorry we missed out on hopscotch and multiplication tables or the class where they teach you to write in that curly way? Or that we got our souls ripped out our assholes? You really should try to be specific.”
“I’m sorry for all of it,” she says softly. “Mostly that part of you is still here.”
My heart thunders. I see what she’s doing. Trying to absorb the darkness. “We’re outta here.”
“You were brave. You saved those boys.”
I push her toward the steps, help her up. “You only say that because you haven’t met those boys.”
“You still know them? That’s cool that you stay in touch.”
Stay in touch.
“What do you think, like we send each other birthday cards or something? We’re fucking criminals. We’re like a pack of wolves roaming the goddamn city. We’re not even official people.”
“What about your parents? Didn’t you try to find them once you were out?”
“You don’t get it. They changed us into monsters down there.” I kick a rusted hinge with part of a shattered door still clinging to it. “None of our folks much wanted us before we went down there. You think they wanted us after? A few of my guys found that out the hard way. It can only be us guys. We’re each other’s family now.”
“You don’t imagine a future? Something you want to be?”
“We want to be the ones who slaughter the people who did this.”
She sucks in a breath. “That man you killed. The first night. Madsen.”
I hadn’t expected her to connect it so quickly. Hadn’t expected to hear absolution in her voice. “Don’t get the wrong idea, little bird. I’m not some kind of vigilante. This isn’t about justice. This is revenge, pure and simple.”
Her pretty brows lower. “What’s the difference?”
“The difference is, I don’t care if they swear never to hurt another boy. And hell, you want to know the truth? I don’t even care whether they knew what was happening. If they were involved, if they looked the other way, if they even did business with the assholes who ran this place, they’re going to die.”
A sad light in her eyes takes my breath away. “This is all you do? Track down the people connected with this and kill them?”
“What else should I do? Take up knitting? This is the only reason I made it out of the basement alive. The knowledge that I would make them suffer. There’s nothing else. There can’t be anything else. No distractions.”
She regards me solemnly, like she’s a hundred years old, ancient with patience and understanding, but so damn young it makes me want to punch the wall. Because she’s living proof that I let distractions interfere with my mission. Well, only one distraction. Her. Driving her around as if I’m the one taking her hostage, but really it’s the other way around. She’s the one who keeps me coming back, even knowing I shouldn’t.
We had to fight our way out of this basement, killing and yelling and half sure we’d end up in a shallow grave before breathing in free air. Yet it somehow feels harder to turn my back on her. To ascend the ruined stairs, get back into daylight.
All the times I came here, it was to remember. Now I have to leave to do the same thing.
She doesn’t follow right away, and I don’t rush her. Let her look her fill. Let her remember how cold it is, the stench of metal and stale sweat that never quite dissipates. It’s not like there’s any other way out of there.
This is the first time I ever noticed the fireflies in the yard. Were they always here, mindless witnesses to men coming and going? Were they here the night we escaped?
The stairs creak with her ascent, shaky even under her slight weight.
“I want to help.”
Her words hit me harder than a physical blow. There are a hundred things I might have expected to hear from her. Disgust or anger. Disappointment. “Why?”