Nick Jameson is a mean, mean man. He didn’t need a horseman to drop on his doorstep for that to be the case.
Our host’s one redeeming quality, as far as I can tell, is that he loves his family, though even this is a possessive, selfish sort of love. More than once I’ve seen the whites of his sons’ eyes as they dart quick glances at their father, and most of the time his wife keeps her head ducked and her gaze downcast.
All the next day, Nick watches me, his hate so clearly carved across his face, his lips pressed into a thin line. Pestilence might be the man responsible for spreading plague, but it’s clear who Nick Jameson blames.
I don’t see anything besides that hate until late in the afternoon. Nick’s wife—Amelia, I think her name is—finds me outside, standing just opposite their icebox, petting Trixie.
“Sara,” she calls, coming closer.
I pause, my hand resting against Trixie’s striking white coat.
“Yes?” My eyes reluctantly fall on her. Amelia’s face is flush with the first signs of fever. Like the rest of the family, the plague is already sinking its talons in her.
“How did you … how did you come to be in the horseman’s company?” she asks, coming to my side.
I turn back to Trixie, my hand moving over the horse’s neck once more. “I tried to kill him,” I say emotionlessly. “He doesn’t die,” I add, just in case Amelia or Nick were getting ideas.
Amelia sidles in closer. “How long ago was that?” she asks.
“Weeks.” It seems like lifetimes ago.
“How are you still alive?” she asks, almost wondrously.
My fingers dig into Trixie’s mane. “It’s his way of punishing me.”
After several seconds, she says, “So you tried to kill him?”
I can hear it in her voice, a plan forming.
I swivel fully to face Amelia. Her eyes are red and puffy, and her cheeks are so pink they look freshly slapped.
“It won’t work,” I say.
“What won’t—”
“Trying to get him to spare you or your family. If you think he’ll save you from death like he has me, I’m here to tell you he won’t. Since he took me, he’s killed everyone else who’s tried to end his life.”
Her eyes search mine, “why did he spare you?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
I mean, he keeps saying that I need to suffer, but it’s been a while since he’s actually made me suffer.
“So there’s no hope?” she presses. “There’s no way to help my family?”
“He doesn’t know mercy,” I tell her.
But does he? He feels hate and lust and longing, perhaps he’s felt merciful a time or two …
Amelia rubs her eyes. “I can’t watch my children die,” she says. “Don’t you understand? I gave them life. I held them inside me, then in my arms. All these years I’ve protected them—so if there’s a way to save them, any way at all, please tell me.”
Grief once again has me in its grip. I wonder when I’ll get over it; when I’ll be desensitized to all of the pain and suffering around me.
Her eyes search mine. “Was there something you did—a deal you made … ?”
I swallow. I think I know what she’s getting at.
“Amelia, if there was something that I could do, I would.” If giving my body over to the horseman would pay for life, I’d gladly do it. But it won’t.
A tear slips out from the corner of her eye.
I take her by the arm. “You need to get inside—”
“What does it matter?” she says, frustration now coating her words.
She has a point, though I don’t bother saying as much. Instead I escort her back to her bedroom.
“Rest,” I tell her, lingering in the doorway. Nick is nowhere to be seen. “I’ll get you and your boys a glass of water.”
The house is eerily silent as I wander back to the kitchen. If I didn’t know better, I’d say I was the only one inside the house. It’s only as I pass one of the sons’ bedrooms that I hear husky, masculine weeping behind the closed door. I know without peering inside that it’s Nick, broken by his grief.
Shortly after I enter the kitchen, I hear the front door open, and then the heavy footfalls of Pestilence, clad in his full regalia. My idiot heart speeds up at the sound. This slow burn I feel for the horseman is agony. Raw, exquisite agony.
As I grab glasses from the cupboard, Pestilence comes up behind me. Sweeping my hair out of the way, he brushes a tender kiss to the back of my neck, his lips lingering.
I forget myself for a minute. A long minute.
“You let him touch you?”
I startle, nearly dropping the glass cups at the sound of Nick’s voice. I swivel around, looking past the horseman.
Nick stands at the other end of the kitchen, his eyes bright with the beginnings of fever. There’s such disgust in his expression.
Unwillingly, my gaze moves to Pestilence, who for once doesn’t wear his usual, stoic expression. The horseman looks vulnerable and guileless and even a little unsure of himself.
He meets my eyes, and I see that he thinks he’s done something wrong.
That gets to me.
I touch his face.
It’s okay, I want to tell him.
“Un-fucking-believable.”
Now my eyes move back to Nick. He might be sick and weak, but he’s lucid enough, and there is such loathing in his eyes.
“I thought that maybe you were just fucking the freak,” he says, “which is bad enough—
Pestilence steps in front of me. “You walk a fine line, Nick,” he says, cutting the man off. “I hope you haven’t forgotten my earlier words.”
Nick gives me a look that lets me know this matter is far from settled, and then he retreats back down the hall.
I take a deep breath. I have to go back there to bring his wife and sons water, which means I’m going to have to interact with the man again.
“Every time you shake my belief in human wickedness, a man like that invariably reminds me just why I must eliminate your kind,” the horseman says.
I have several objections with that, but I voice none of them.
“We should go, Pestilence,” I say instead. “We don’t belong here.”
Not you don’t belong here, but we.
“No, Sara. We stay until the deed is done.”
He wants you to suffer, even now, after you’ve tended to him, held him, kissed him.
“So that’s how it is?” I say.
“You are my prisoner.”
What a fool you are, Burns, to care for someone who has so little regard for you.
What I feel for this man is agony. Terrible, crushing agony.
I rotate to face Pestilence. “If that’s the way things are, then keep your hands and your mouth to your fucking self.”
Pestilence is the enemy. I can never forget that.
Chapter 28
It’s two nights later when a burning hot hand presses over my mouth, rousing me from sleep.
“Not a word,” the gruff voice commands.
I blink my groggy eyes open.
What’s going on?
I squint into the darkness, half expecting to make out Pestilence’s striking features. But it’s another man who glares down at me, his face coarser, meatier, and frankly, uglier than the horseman’s.
I feel the cool bite of metal under my jaw.
“Get up,” Nick demands, his voice hushed.
My mind is furiously trying to catch up with what’s going on. Gun. Nick. Waking me up in the middle of the night.
Throwing off the ratty wool blanket, I carefully slip off of the futon.
He pushes me forward, across the living room and towards a door that leads to his backyard. “Out the door, quietly.”
Fear rattles through my bones, but the emotion is so very weak. I’ve lived through too many fires to be frightened of death. The only thing that keeps me moving towards the front door is the ridiculous worry that Nick’s sons or wife might get drawn into this—or they’ll have to bear witness to it.
Behind me, in one of the far off rooms, I hear a wet, rattling cough.
They have enough worries as it is.
I let Nick lead me outside, my bare feet going numb as I walk over fresh snow. More flakes of it drift down, kissing my face and tangling in my hair.