Page 115 of Call Off the Dark

She ripped the ax from the stump and ran back toward the front of the house, just as Wade flew out the door, his body carried at least twenty feet through the air. He slammed into the shed and collapsed to the ground, groaning.

Isaac stepped outside.

Helen raised the ax in the air above her head.

Isaac looked at her almost tenderly. “Oh, Helen.”

Chapter Forty-Eight

Helen knew it was pointless. She couldn’t fight the darkness with a steel blade. She lowered the ax to waist level but kept her grip on it firm.

“Isaac, please,” she pleaded.

“Please what? Please touch you? Please hurt him? Please don’t? Please do?” Isaac’s tone was crueler than she’d ever heard it, and yet it spoke to the hollow place deep inside her.

For a long time, they just stared at each other.

Finally, Helen asked, “Why are you haunting us?”

Isaac cocked his head, as if surprised that she didn’t know. “Because you asked me to.”

Her shoulders slumped and her grip on the ax loosened until it slid from her grasp and landed softly in the grass next to her.

He was right, and she was tired of pretending that Isaac had been entirely uninvited, that she’d been the lady in the carriage and he’d been the highwayman. She was a raider of the night too. In her grief, she’d kicked down doors that should have stayed closed.

Isaac smiled. “I made you something.”

“What?”

He walked to her and put his arm around her. “I’ll show you.”

The worst part was that she wondered what it was. She wanted to see.

As he guided her across the yard toward the garden, he gently placed a lit candlestick in her hand. He hadn’t been holding it a moment earlier, but there it was now.

“You can do anything, can’t you?” she said, staring at the candle.

“Maybe not anything.” His hand, featherlight on her shoulder, squeezed. “Or maybe I can. Does that excite you?”

She realized mutely that all of the visions she’d been having—they were Isaac’s creations.

As they got closer to their destination, Helen knew where he was taking her.

The grave.

She held up the burning candle as they both peered down into the hole. It was the perfect size to hold her body forever. It would be a premature burial.

“I can help you go there,” Isaac said.

Helen shook her head, but it wasn’t very convincing.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” She could hear a trace of amusement in his voice.

“No.”

“No?”

“I don’t know.”