Water’s Edge (A Series of Sharp Edges #1)

28. Mattie

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

mattie

T rails of blood swirl down the drain as I scrub myself, trying to wash off my crime. A dull feeling sweeps through my body. I know what we did was wrong, but I can’t bring myself to care. Will I look like Ripp when I finally succumb to the darkness inside me? I shiver at the thought. My mind prickles as I try to remember exactly how he looked, but the picture in my head is hazy, like I’m looking at it through a dirty window.

I step out of the shower and stand naked in front of the mirror. One arm mindlessly makes its way up and cleans a circle in the fogged glass. My eyes stare into my reflection, and I don’t recognize the face looking back at me. Her eyes are pools of black, and the darkness swimming under her skin makes it look grey. The darkness pulses and swirls with a life of its own. The shadows in the vial around her neck swirl furiously. All signs of light inside it have been completely extinguished. I blink, but the image doesn’t disappear. I look down at my skin, and while it’s not as grey as my twin in the mirror, it doesn’t look like my own.

The image of the sheriff’s body sinking into Devil’s Pool until it’s no longer visible drifts through my mind. I can still feel his blood on my skin, even though I just furiously scrubbed it off, but instead of feeling anxious, I just feel annoyed. My eyes raise to the mirror again, and the alternate version of me is gone. My tired green eyes have replaced the black orbs, and the only darkness under my skin is the black circles below my eyes.

I robotically move through the motions of getting ready. Exhaustion weighs heavy in bones, making each limb feel like it weighs a hundred pounds. I mentally go through everything that needs to happen now. The feeling of emptiness begins to fill with subdued panic. I’ll need to burn my stained clothes, and I grumble about what it’ll cost to replace them. We need to triple-check our path through the woods. Maybe stage a bear attack? Fuck, I don’t know. I’m so fucked. While I doubt anyone, except maybe his drinking buddies, will actually miss the sheriff, people will notice he’s missing.

What worries me the most, though, is that these feelings of panic aren’t rooted in guilt for what I’ve just done. They’re based solely on self-preservation. That truth sits like a stone in my stomach as a tidal wave of nausea crashes over me.

Ripp sits in a chair in my room, eyeing me silently. I’m grateful for it, since right now, my mind is loud enough. Once I’m dressed, I sit at his feet, my legs no longer willing to hold me up. His hands softly run through my hair, and I lean back into his legs.

“What do you think he meant by it won’t end with his death?” I ask, not really expecting an answer. Ripp shifts behind me but continues rubbing small circles into my head.

“I don’t put much thought into the frantic words of men as they’re about to meet their death,” he says casually. “Humans will say anything that might save them in those final moments.”

He’s right. I’ve heard my share of pleas and confessions before the lives of my kills slipped away. I’ve never given them a second thought. Nothing they said would have changed my mind, but I can’t let go of the thought that there was something to Sheriff Danver’s final words.

“I can’t remember much from my childhood,” I admit. “I’ve read that our brains protect us from the memories, but our bodies still hold the feelings.”

“Humans are delicate.” I feel his arms tug up on my hair as he shrugs. “Though some of you can endure a surprising amount before you finally break.”

I huff, rolling my eyes. I close them, trying to dig through the storage boxes in my mind for any clue that might help any of this make more sense. The chasing through the woods. The night he set the hounds on me. My ma lying in a pool of her blood on the bed. Both of my folks fear of me interacting with anyone outside of us.

“Once both of my folks were gone, I packed all their things into boxes, everything that reminded me of them. Every last shred of evidence that they existed was banished to the attic. I should have burned or trashed it all.” The words spill out of me before I can stop them. “I was just so messed up from everything that happened, I couldn’t look at any of it anymore.” Heartbreak sears through me, like I’ve pulled open the sutures of a healing wound and poured in an entire shaker of salt.

“You think there’s something in them?” Ripp asks, but it’s less of a question and more like he’s trying to follow my frantic thoughts. His hands fall away, and he cradles my head between his knees.

“Maybe,” I sigh, looking up at him. “Or maybe there’s nothing up there but ghosts.” I rub my hands down my face. The thought of cracking open the carefully constructed dam around my memories is terrifying, but so is never knowing the truth.

“Will whatever’s in those boxes change the path you’re on now?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. “Or will it only make the path harder to walk down?” Fuck. I know better than to ask questions I don’t want to know the answer to. It’s like sticking your hand in the fire and expecting to not get burned.

“I…I don’t know.” I close my eyes and bite the corner of my lip. “But thinking about those boxes sitting up there and not knowing will eat me alive just the same.”

Ripp’s arms come down and thread through mine as he scoops me into his lap. I lean my head against his chest. Where his heartbeat should be, there’s only a gentle whooshing sound, like whatever essence keeping him going is swirling just beneath the surface. “Then we’ll go through them, little bug,” he whispers.

I nod into his chest, letting his words comfort me. We’ll go through them. Together.

Sweat rolls down my back, my skin already covered in it and a layer of dust. From the top of the pull-down ladder, I toss the last box from the attic to Ripp. The living room is covered in old, weathered boxes, each of them taunting me with the secrets they might hold. There are so many more than I remembered. I don’t know where to start.

Ripp nudges one with his foot, staring down at it with disgust. I raise an eyebrow at him questioningly. “Start with this one,” he grunts. I climb down the ladder and carefully make my way across the floor, sitting gently next to it. My body moves like it’s trying to keep a bomb in the package from going off.

“Why this one?” I say, tapping the top. There’s nothing about it that sticks out more than the others. Past me didn’t do future me any favors by not labeling the outsides. At the time, I didn’t care what was in them. I just wanted everything gone.

“It smells disgusting.” Ripp cringes and acts offended by a scent I can’t smell. I sniff the air over the box warily. Nothing but dust and mildew fills my nose. I open the top, expecting a monster to leap out of it, but again, nothing.

I take out the contents one by one, setting them on the floor—old documents, family photos, a small decorative box, a flannel shirt. It’s obvious when I packed this one, I was haphazardly tossing things in. The last item in the box is the strangest: a piece of silver antler. The ridges that trail through the bone look like they’re filled with black ink. It’s beautiful. Haunting.

Ripp slashes through the silence with a guttural snarl, causing me to almost leap straight out of my skin. The antler falls from my hand and skitters across the floor. Ripp leaps over me and snatches it up. My eyes go wide, watching him cradle it uncharacteristically in his arms. “This changes everything,” he growls, so low and deep, I feel his words vibrate in my bones.

The air shifts around him in violent swirls of shadow. Trembles wrench through my body hard enough for my teeth to chatter. My muscles beg me to run, but I’m frozen in place. A huge set of antlers pierces through the tornado of darkness in front of me as piercing eyes, like blue embers, open, and I swear, they sear straight through my soul. A torrent of demonic growls echoes around me, bouncing off every wall. Pressure builds behind my eyes, and I feel a sharp tug as they try to roll back. I strain against my eyelids, forcing them to stay open as I push to stay focused on the thing he has become.

My mouth hangs open, and I realize I’m screaming, the noise mixing seamlessly with his. “Ri-Ri-Ripp,” I sputter. “Please. Pl-ease. Stop.” As soon as I get the last word out, the shadows fall around him. His human form stands before me again, his chest heaving and his face stone. The black of his eyes fades back to normal, and his expression shifts as he takes in my face.

What the fuck just happened?