I have seen him every day since his return. And yet I’ve not managed to see this.

“No more talking. I’m tired of your tricks, and I won’t live a life where you wrangle your stupid secrets over my head.” He turns faintly seductive as he caresses the side of my cheek. “You never did learn to swim, did you, Jennie?” He smirks. “Don’t worry, love. When you’re closer to death, it won’t be as painful as you think. In fact, I believe it might be a bit like falling asleep.”

“No…you wouldn’t…”

“And then you can join them both. Your twin and your beloved.”

He will kill me. No doubt about it. He has killed before. And killed and killed. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“What I am doing,” he responds, dulcet as a choir boy, “is playing the part of your bereaved fiancé. Not a soul will argue that your suicide was caused by heartbreak…after all, you still love my poor, dead brother. You visited that preposterous spiritualist often enough everyone’s borne witness to your endless melancholia. Marrying would have gotten me the money. But so will your death, almost as easily. My father is your next of kin, after all, and he is not as young as he once was. I’ll inherit all the same. I’ll just have to wait a little longer for my fortune than I expected…or maybe I can speed that along as well.”

His grip is squeezing out my breath. My eyes float closed. I can’t bear to look into a face that has deceived me so utterly.

“You’ve figured out everything, haven’t you?”

“I’d never planned on loving you, Jennie. I never planned on a that. It made everything so complicated. And, yes, I do blame you for it. But your spell on me is over, my dear. I’ve decided I don’t want my brother’s used goods after all.”

Then Quinn dips forward and kisses me, licking the blood from my split lip down to my chin before he pushes me backward over the bridge with such brute intention that I hear the splintering, then the crunch and snap of wooden railing as I lose balance and fall.


29.