Page 49

I brush a few stray tears from my cheeks. Placing Stacy’s hand on her chest, I rise, heading to where he stands in the doorway.

I step so close to him I can feel his body heat.

“Why do you have to take the children?” I whisper hoarsely.

His hand falls to my shoulder, steering me out of the room. “You’d prefer a slow death for them, is that it?”

“I’d prefer for them not to die at all.”

“What do you think will happen, human, once their families die off? Once these kids are all alone? Think they can hunt for themselves? Forage for themselves?”

All my retorts are like rocks in my mouth, rolling over one another. In the end, I just glare at him.

“See,” he says, “you yourself know my words to be true, even if you despise them.”

“Why do you have to kill at all?” I say as he leads me down the hall.

“Why did you have to ruin the world?” the horseman retorts.

“Ididn’t.”

“You did. Just as I don’t have to touch each man to kill him, nor do you have to personally light the world on fire to be the reason it burns.”

I rub my eyes. Every time we talk, I feel like I’m banging my head against a wall, hurting myself and getting nowhere for all my effort.

“Why does it have to be so God-awful?” I whisper. “The lumps, the sores …”

“It’s plague. It’s not supposed to be enjoyable.”

He leads me outside where Trixie waits, the saddle bags laden with goods lifted from this house. Seeing all the odds and ends tucked away, I feel like a grave robber, looting from the dead. I know they no longer need food and jackets, but I still can’t shake the wrongness of it all.

Woodenly, I get on the horse, Pestilence joining me a moment later. And just like that, the two of us leave the house and its tragic former occupants behind.

We’ve barely gone a kilometer when the horseman fishes a wrapped sandwich from one of the saddlebags and hands it to me. “You haven’t eaten,” he explains.

I turn the item over and over in my hand. “Did you … make this for me?”

“I like the taste of jam. I thought you might as well.”

So, yes, he did make it for me. The same man that just delivered death made me a sandwich because he noticed I hadn’t eaten.

I pinch my eyes shut and draw in a long breath. Why does this have to be so complicated? Why can’t he just stay in the nice little box in my mind labeled “Evil” and that be that? These brief flashes where he’s considerate and tender, they’re slowly breaking me.

Opening my eyes, I peel away the sandwich’s packaging, and sure enough, between the two coarse loaves of homemade bread is a generous helping of jam. And only jam.

It’s not lost on me how very similar this is to a pie—two bready surfaces holding a sugary fruit filling. I bring it to my mouth and bite into it.

It’s not bad. I don’t know why I thought it would be. Maybe I assumed jam sandwiches ought to taste wrong. Maybe I thought that after the day I’ve had, anything would taste like dirt in my mouth.

Instead it tastes like an indulgence. As I eat it, I imagine Pestilence in that cluttered little kitchen we just left, making this for me right next to the refrigerator-turned-icebox that was scattered with stick-figure artwork and alphabet magnets. All while, down the hall, I watched a little girl draw her last.

The sugary-sweet taste of the sandwich sours in my mouth. I take a few deep breaths before I try another bite.

“I don’t like watching them die,” Pestilence admits behind me.

I lower the sandwich.

He’d been all but absent during those four days I stayed with the family. I thought perhaps there was some other reason for it.