Once again, I'd thought that I'd taken care of everything when I'd killed the Fire elemental, that I'd finally set myself free from her, but she just kept screwing with me, even from six feet under.
"It doesn't really matter who Mab left her fortune to," I finally said, rolling up the paper and sliding it back into the tube. "Just that we have the will and Clementine wants it. We can use it for leverage."
Owen shook his head. "She's not going to let the hostages go, if that's what you're thinking. You know that as well as I do. Not now, when everyone's seen her face and knows exactly who she is. She can't afford to let any of them live."
"That's what I thought at first too. But I think good ole Clem has a slightly different plan in mind."
I told Owen about the bombs I'd found on the bridge and under the bumper of the moving truck.
He frowned. "Okay, I understand about the destroying the bridge to help with their escape, but why would Clementine want to blow up the moving trucks?"
I shrugged. "I haven't quite figured that out yet. But it doesn't really matter, because the only way she's leaving this island is in a body bag."
Owen studied me in the moonlight. "Because of what she and Dixon did to Jillian?"
I didn't say anything, but he could see the answer in my cold, angry eyes - along with the guilt.
"That wasn't your fault, Gin," he said. "It was a mistake, her having on the same dress as you. Just a stupid, simple, cruel twist of fate." He hesitated. "She was a friend, but you don't have to avenge her for me, if that's what you're thinking. I wouldn't ask you to do that."
No, he wouldn't. Owen preferred to handle such things himself, just like I did. It was one of the many things I admired about him.
"I know you wouldn't ask me that," I said. "But I need to avenge Jillian for me. Because it should have been my face that got blown off, not hers."
"I'm not blaming you for Jillian's death, if that's what you're thinking."
"No," I replied, weariness creeping into my voice. "You just blame me for Salina."
His ex-fiancee's name hung in the air between us, writhing around and around like a poisonous snake. But I'd said the words, and there was no taking them back. Despite the danger we were in, the danger we were all in, Eva, Phillip, and the others were right: Owen and I needed to start talking, to start figuring out where we stood and what kind of future we might have together. If I was going to die tonight, if we both might die tonight, well, I wanted to clear the air between us - about this, anyway.
Owen grimaced. He reached out and touched one of the brown briars wrapped around the weeping willow, sliding his thumb over one of the thorns. It was several seconds before he finally spoke.
"I don't blame you for Salina's death. You did what you thought needed to be done."
"But you didn't agree with it then," I said. "And you still don't now."
He sighed, looking as sad and tired as I felt. "Like I told you before, everything's all mixed-up inside me right now. You, Salina, how I feel about her death and your part in it. I keep going over it again and again in my head, wondering if I could have done something different, if I could have changed things. But I can't see how I could have, other than waking up and realizing what Salina was really like when we were young. But I didn't see the real her, and now she's dead. I can't change any of that, and I haven't sorted any of it out. Not really."
It was a shortened version of the same speech Owen had given me at the Pork Pit a few weeks ago, when he'd told me that he needed some time to himself. I'd hoped that tonight's events, that the danger and emotions we'd shared, had meant that he'd come to terms with at least some of his issues. But he hadn't, and I didn't know if he ever would.
"Jillian was a friend," he continued. "But I wasn't one to her. Not really. Because I didn't even realize that she wasn't in the rotunda with the rest of us. When Clementine threw that body down, and I thought it was you . . . I couldn't think about anything else but you being dead. I always seem to let down the people I care about. Eva, Phillip, Cooper, you. I let you all down because of Salina. And tonight, I didn't even notice that Jillian was missing. Some friend that makes me, huh?"
Owen barked out a harsh laugh, his face twisting with guilt and misery.
"And that kiss you laid on me in the vault?" I asked.
He didn't look at me. Instead, he pressed his thumb into the thorn, drawing a bit of blood, pain etching lines in his sweaty, rugged, soot-streaked face. "I was just so glad that you were alive, Gin. I will always be glad for that, no matter what."
Despite the fact that I'd killed Salina. That's what it seemed like he really meant. But I couldn't blame him for his feelings. He'd loved her once, and I'd cut her throat even though he'd asked me not to. It wasn't exactly the kind of thing you got over easily, if ever.
Still, I'd hoped - I'd hoped that by saving Owen, I could save us too. Hope. Such a stupid, foolish emotion. One that could lift your heart to the heavens and then grind it into the ground in the very next instant. My emotions felt as tangled and twisted as the briars around us. And every move I made, everything I did to try to make things better, just stabbed another sharp, brittle thorn deep into the desolate wasteland of my heart.
"Gin?" Owen asked again, all sorts of questions in the soft, single syllable of my name.
Before I could answer him, bullets zipped in our direction.
Chapter 19
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Bullets zinged through the air. I started to throw myself forward onto Owen, but he shook his head and held up his finger, pointing at the tree branches above us, and I realized what he was getting at. Those shots had been far too high for someone to have seen us. So why was someone shooting? Why waste their ammunition like that?
Crack! Crack! Crack!
"Come out, come out, wherever you are," a mocking voice called out.
Owen and I looked at each other and reached for our weapons. I didn't know how many giants were waiting, but we'd fight our way through them just like we had all the others tonight -
A loud sigh sounded. "Quit messing around, Dave," a second voice, this one female, said. "We're supposed to be searching for the thieves. Do you want somebody to hear the noise and shoot us by mistake?"
"Please," Dave, the first giant, said. "Whoever set off that bomb is long gone. So I say we have a little fun before we go back inside. Besides, we're the only ones still out this far. Everyone else has headed back to the museum already, from what I've heard on the radio."