22. Cane
He'd opted to get the train instead of borrowing a car. Making himself an easier target to follow was the whole point. She was supposed to follow him to confront him so he could finally learn what she was doing to him. They needed details to break the curse.
He picked the last seat in the long row, his back protected by the back of the train. Nobody could sneak up behind him, and he had the entire front of the train in his eyeline.
He sat with his back straight and his eyes glued to the head of a man sitting in front of him, but he was scanning the train constantly. He could feel eyes on him. It was a feeling he was well used to, but now it felt more solid. Real.
Every young woman who hopped on or off the train set his alarms off. He was looking for Sarah in each of them. Trying to find her tight curls, the sharpness of her nose or the subtle crook in her front teeth. When that didn't work he tried looking for her recognizable patterns of behavior. How she'd always had something in her fingers to stop herself from picking at her cuticles. How she'd flicked her hair off her forehead every few seconds, swearing she'd let her bangs grow but then never did. How she liked to look down on everyone else because she saw them as disposable. Insignificant.
He felt like he'd recognize it if he saw it, but nobody fit exactly right. Every single person he saw was missing something.
He drummed his fingers on his thighs before pulling out his phone and checking for any messages. There were none.
Nothing from PUMA, or Fix and Ash.
Nothing from Ares, who was following the train closely, making sure Arianna didn't have backup of her own.
But most importantly, there was still nothing from Hart.
Black had informed them he was back at the house after finding Hart's car abandoned in a parking lot with all the mirrors smashed and no sign of him anywhere. Cane grew more and more worried with each passing second, wishing Hart would just tell him he was somewhere safe. Wishing he'd never taken his eyes off him, so he'd know where he was.
Wishing he'd tell him Cane's presence hadn't ruined him completely. Because he'd be able to get through everything falling around him. He'd be okay with his kingdom crashing down again, as long as none of the damn rubble touched Hart.
He ran a hand over his face and tried to make himself wish he'd never pulled Hart into his mess in the first place.
There was that feral part of him that knew Hart belonged by his side. He belonged to Cane. From the moment they'd first seen each other in that dingy, dusty bar. From the first wild kiss and the first bruising night they'd spent together.
He'd never stopped being Cane's.
And he'd be a fucking fool if he didn't do everything in his power to make sure Hart was okay.
Cane took care of what was his.
The train whistled to a stop and Cane steeled himself for a second before getting up. He cast a look around the train before exiting. He wanted to be seen.
He descended the stairs from the train station and took the main road, meandering past small farmhouses and neat fields. It wasn't much, but it was about as green as Slatehollow could get, the farmers growing what could survive the pollution and lack of consistent sunlight.
He tried listening for steps behind him, for someone breathing down his neck. There was nothing but that ever-present feeling he always had.
Someone was there.
He left the farmhouses and fields behind him, stepping off the rough pathways and heading toward the very edge of Slatehollow. The end of the place that held most of his life in it.
It seemed fitting that he'd laid her to rest at the end of everything that held meaning to him. He walked between the few scattered trees, the grass coming up to his knees now that he was out of the range of people doing the upkeep.
He heard a rustle behind him.
He didn't turn around.
He continued to the last tree, spreading its roots into the little creek that marked the natural border between Slatehollow and Arcstead. The trunk was three times his width, knobby and crooked and slightly slanted toward the water like it wanted to fall into it. He stopped next to it, looking down at the bottom of it, catching sight of the faded little X he'd carved into it. So he wouldn't forget.
Not that he ever could.
She haunted him still, even without her daughter taking up the mantle of vengeance.
"Long time no see, Sarah," Cane said, making sure his voice was loud enough to carry. "I was kinda hoping it'd be forever, but here we are."
He bent down, leaning his hands on his knees to get his face closer to the ground, still alert. Still present and aware of his surroundings. She had taught him some things well, after all. "You always sucked at leaving things the fuck alone. Almighty Sarah, thinking she was better than everyone else. But you weren't, were you? At the end of the day you died just like you lived. Like a lying, two-faced bitch."
A branch cracked behind him. He straightened up.
"And you opted to be a bitch in the beyond too, huh?" he asked the air, the rustling behind him getting louder now. Less careful. "What story did you give her, huh? How much bullshit did you feed her to be doing this?"
"There was no bullshit."
Cane turned around slowly, finding himself eye to eye with a girl who looked way younger than her nineteen years. She was tall, waifish, fragile looking.
Nothing about her looked like Sarah. Cane wouldn't have picked her out of a fucking line-up if his life had depended on it.
And yet there she was. Standing in front of him after ruining his life. He supposed she'd look smug if it weren't for the deep blue shadows under her eyes and the gauntness of her cheeks. She looked exhausted. Like something had drained her of half her lifeforce.
He couldn't even pretend to give a fuck. Maybe in another timeline, when she hadn't come for the person he cared about most, he could have found an ounce of sympathy. For now, he just hoped she'd stay on her feet long enough for him to get what he wanted.
"So you came after me because she told you the truth?" He sneered, and she returned the look as best as she could. A feral thing down to the bone.
"I came after you because you took her from me," she hissed. "My father told me. You came after her like a bloodhound and wouldn't stop until you ended her."
There wasn't a reply he could give, because yes. That was exactly what he'd done.
Another thing he had learned from her.
He'd been her bloodhound for years before he turned to bite the hand that had abused him.
"She had it coming." He shrugged faux-casually as he assessed her, glancing down to see her fists clenching, knuckles white.
She didn't have anything with her. No bag, nothing in her hands. Unless her pockets were stuffed with the shit needed to cast a curse, he figured he'd be safe from magic. And she was no match for him physically.
"FUCK YOU!" She spat at his feet, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "Is this where you dumped her? Is this what you thought she deserved? To be discarded like trash?"
"Pretty much," he said, pushing his venom into the cracks in her walls and hoping they'd disintegrate and weaken. She was a child. Impulsive. Reckless. He just needed to find that switch to get her to snap completely and give him what he wanted.
She stared at him for a long moment before releasing the ugliest laugh he'd ever heard in his entire life. It rang through the clearing, hitting him right in the gut and turning his stomach cold.
There it was.
Sarah.
"You fucking asshole," she said through her hysterical giggles. "You're not even sorry. You're not even ashamed of murdering someone."
"No, not really." He leaned against the trunk of the tree and crossed his legs. "Your mother did a lot of bad shit to me, kid."
"I'm not a kid!" she growled, eyes flashing.
"Yes, you are." He snorted. "And so was I when she left me bleeding in the dirt before calling the police and pinning all of the shit she'd done on me. I was the same age you are now."
"My mother made you, you ungrateful prick!"
"She did," he said. "And then she tried to unmake me. And I bought her bullshit because I was just as stupid as you are, thinking the sun shone out of her lying, conniving ass."
"Don't talk about her like that!" she screamed at him, and he lurched forward, getting right into her face.
"I'll talk about her however I fucking please, you got that?" he spat at her. "I knew your mother when she was nothing more than trash skulking around dark alleys. I stood by her and helped her claw her way out of the shit she was stuck in. I was the one helping. Doing her dirty work. Picking her up when she wanted to fuck it all up. Do not tell me how to talk about her when you didn't even know her."
"I'll ruin you!"
"You already did," he said. "You took my partners, my business, my reputation. You did what you intended to do. Just like your mother."
She looked him in the eyes, shaking her head slowly before stepping away from him and turning her back on him.
"Nah," she said. "It's not over yet."
The words sent a chill up his spine. "There is nothing left for you to take."
"You wouldn't have brought me here if the curse was done," she said. "You'd have been locked up somewhere. Out of your mind. Rocking back and forth in a dark corner like a ghost."
He kept quiet because this was it. This was what he wanted to hear.
"No," she continued. "The curse isn't back on you yet."
"Back on me?" he asked, squinting. She spun back around and looked at him, wide eyes dark and deranged looking. She was completely gone.
"You really are just as stupid as she said you were," she said. "Listening to everything she said. Yipping at her heel like a little lap dog. Pathetic."
He clenched his fists at the insults, forcing himself to think about kisses that tasted of cigarette smoke on his lips and floral pocket squares. Hart. He was doing this for Hart. His pride had no room here when Hart's safety depended on how Cane reacted.
"You were patient zero," Arianna said. "You were the one walking around like the disease you are, giving it to the people around you."
"Well I hate to tell you this, kid," Cane said, feigning stupidity, "but you fucked up somewhere. None of the people around me were cursed."
"YOU IDIOT!" she screamed again. "The curse moves! It changes people one by one until there is nothing left around you. And then it'll go back to you. To destroy YOU."
"Like I said, you fucked up," Cane said, spreading his arms and turning on the spot. "I don't know about you, kid, but I'm feeling very un-cursed. And seeing as I'm not locked up somewhere, rocking back and forth, the curse isn't really doing what you wanted it to, is it?"
She smiled slowly.
Straight teeth flashing at him.
"That means it's moved on to something more important."
Cane tensed, and she caught it immediately, eyes shining. She stepped to the side, then continued so she was half circling him. Dangerous. Predatory.
"Tell me, Cane, what's more important to you than your business?"
Cane kept her in his eyeline, not letting her out of his sight for a second. "Nothing."
She giggled. "You can lie to me, but you can't lie to the curse. It knows your deepest secrets. It digs into your heart and makes sure it finds exactly what you love so it can destroy it in front of your eyes."
Cane's breathing picked up, though he tried to school it. Was that what was happening to Hart? Was the curse destroying him in front of Cane, all because…because…
"Who do you love, Cane?" she asked conversationally, linking her hands behind her back like some demented schoolgirl.
"Myself."
"But the curse isn't on you. So let's run through the list, shall we? I've been watching you for a while, you see. I wanted to be there at the end." She paced back the other way, almost skipping. "Now there's those sad little twins, and that hulking dimwit you have by your side, but the curse already passed through them, didn't it? Then there's the cursebreaker…"
She already knew. She was playing with him.
"The one you moved into your apartment. The one who moved you into his house. Seems a little overkill for a business relationship to me." She giggled again, an echo of Sarah's laugh in it. "But this is fantastic! I really didn't anticipate this when I made the curse, you know. I didn't think a monster like you could actually love anyone."
"Why the fuck does it matter?" he snapped.
"Because the more you love something, the more the curse ravages it, of course. It feeds off of it. The depth of your emotion is the strength of the curse," she said. "So really, whatever is happening to you is your fault. You feed it. You strengthen it. Whatever is happening to your cursebreaker is because you love him so much. You love him so fucking much you managed to get him cursed when it should have been impossible."
"You're fucking insane!" Cane shouted, finally losing his cool.
She sneered, all teeth and curled-back lips. "How does that make you feel, Cane? To have everything you love stripped away from you. To be left alone in the world, knowing your love destroyed everything."
"You act so high and fucking mighty, little girl, but you're just like me," Cane spat at her.
"You're a monster!"
"Look in a fucking mirror!" Cane shouted. "What do you think I was thinking of every night I was in prison after your mom took everything from me? She was my monster, and I wanted to ruin her, so badly. So I planned it out, step by step. How to maximize the pain. How to make it hurt so she would regret what she did."
"This is different!" Arianna screamed. "You're the monster, not me! You killed her! You killed her and we lost everything. My dad couldn't even cope with it, he wasted away slowly and died too and it's your fault!"
"Blame me all you want, but we're the same, you and I. Exactly the fucking same."
She screamed at him, her voice hoarse and broken with how loud and enraged she was. She reached into her pockets and pulled out a handful of sulfur-like powder, the neon yellow staining her fingertips, a handful of what looked like bloody gore in the other.
Cane reached behind his back to pull his gun just as she held the powder and blood to her lips to mutter into. Her eyes sparked with blue arcs of electricity, and she blew before he could draw. The sulfur turned into a jet of electric blue flame, and Cane barely managed to duck out of the way, dropping his gun.
The tree behind him got blasted, the cursed flames engulfing the trunk and spreading like they would have done had they caught an inch of Cane's skin.
Cane landed awkwardly on his hands and knees, his fractured ribs and busted arm protesting the fall. He tried to breathe through the pain as she approached him, more of that powder and blood dripping from her fingertips.
And then there were more footsteps, swarming from all angles.
Arianna broke from her murderous haze and looked around herself. "No… No, no, no!"
She tried to run and got caught immediately, two PUMA enforcers grasping her by the arms and locking rune-engraved cuffs on her. A few others ran to the tree to try and contain and cordon off the area so the cursed flames wouldn't spread.
"HE'S THE MURDERER!" Arianna screeched, kicking out and twisting, hair falling into her face and mouth. "ARREST HIM! HE KILLED MY MOTHER! SHE'S BURIED RIGHT THERE!"
Cyrus walked over to Cane amid the chaos and looked down at him.
"Took you fucking long enough," Cane groaned.
"Interesting accusations," Cyrus said casually. "What am I gonna find if I dig this place up?"
Cane cradled his ribs and got back to his feet. "Dirt. Maybe a slate or two."
Cyrus raised a brow. "Oh really. She seems pretty convinced."
"I don't know what she's talking about," Cane said simply.
Fix walked over then, looking anxious and drawn. "Did you get what we need?"
"Yes."
"Let's go," Fix said.
"You're not going anywhere," Cyrus said, narrowing his eyes. "I have a cursed tree, two criminals, and a million fucking questions."
"We don't have fucking time for this," Cane growled.
"You go back to the house. I'll meet you there as soon as I can after I help with this," Fix said.
"You don't make the rules here," Cyrus snapped.
"I do when we're dealing with a curse case and you have no active warrant to detain him," Fix said. "Cane has vital information. You can question him later. You have your hands full right now anyway."
The two of them locked eyes in a battle of wills.
Cane couldn't be fucked and just walked off.
Let someone try and stop him.