Wrongful Ends

Malin

“Malin.” I look up as Uncle Voss comes around the corner and into my office. “Come here. I think I found her.”

At first, I have no idea what he’s talking about. That doesn’t stop me from getting to my feet and following him. I shut my laptop on the way by.

Voss’ office is down the hall. The triplets are already in his office with Gracen, Jalon, Myro, and Azlan. Azlan scares me. There’s something chilling about that man.

Voss shuts the door and guides me around his desk so I’m sitting in his chair. Then he plays a clip. It’s a court hearing. At first, I have no idea what I’m looking at. Even as the camera pans to the woman in cuffs as she’s led to the stands.

“Veronica Smith,” the judge says.

The woman glances up at him without answering. When the camera has her dead center, my breath rushes out of my lungs, and I hit the space bar on the keyboard to pause the video.

Her face is in frame. I’m looking at her straight on. For a long time, I study her face. My fingers touch the screen. That’s her.

“Emily,” I whisper.

“You recognize her,” Voss says.

I nod. “Yes. That’s Emily, the little girl that Jonathan Clark hurt all the time.”

“You’re sure?” Jalon asks.

I nod more adamantly this time. “Positive. See that scar? I was there when she got it. One of the other disciples slapped her for yelling at them when she fought against going to her cleansing. They hit her so hard that she was thrown off her feet and landed on the floor, hitting her head on the edge of the podium. She probably needed stitches, but that meant bringing her to the hospital, where she could report her abuse.”

Jalon inclines his head.

“Where is she? Why is she in the courtroom in handcuffs?”

“She’s been put in jail for murdering a man.”

“I—that’s not fair.”

“Now that you’ve confirmed her identity, we’ll get her out,” Imry says. “We just needed you to tell us we found the right woman.”

Woman. She’s not a little girl anymore. “That’s her. I’m sure.”

“We’ll work on it,” Ellory tells me.

“Hurry. She doesn’t belong in jail.”

***

It takes almost four months to overturn Emily’s verdict, proving that she did, in fact, act in self-defense. In reality, the evidence of her beating was documented with hospital reports and a corroborating police report that showed her injuries by the man in question.

However, the man was a politician from a very nasty state who would love to see women dehumanized to little better than the rights they held in the 1930s. She had no chance of a fair trial.

Imry is now gathering mountains of wrongfully sentenced women in the state and bringing a class action lawsuit against the men who put them there. They’re trembling in their big marble offices at having to face the full force of Van Doren Law.

As much as I want to see what happens, I’m more anxious to see Emily again. She was released into Jalon’s care, the court still insisting that she’s dangerous.

He’s bringing her here. I have no idea what to expect. It’s been more than ten years since I’ve seen her. She was an angry kid, fighting to have control over her life when Ryan took me away to the island.

The records of Emily show she was given a name change at thirteen and sent into foster care, where she met endless trouble. Always acting out. Countless suspensions from school. No less than seven foster homes in five years. In and out of juvie until she landed herself in jail at twenty-three, where she’s been ever since.

I’m sitting on the steps of the big house, waiting for Jalon to pull down the driveway. The triplets are inside. Gracen is too. Voss is close. Almost all my uncles are. So are some of the kids.

I know they’re all here for me. This is the first thing I’ve done that’s important to me. Killing the cult members is important, yes. Important to me, even. I want them all to die painfully. Even though that’s not going to restore cosmic balance or bring their victims peace, they deserve death. They deserve to suffer for the lives they ruined.

But this is for me. This is because I remembered her, and I wanted to rescue her. Just as I somehow made an impact on Ellory when he saw me on the island, Emily did with me all those years ago.

Jalon’s big SUV comes down the drive, and I jump to my feet. Everyone warned me she might not recognize me, and even if she does, this probably won’t be a happy meeting. She’s an angry person. She has a lot of reasons to be angry. It’s unlikely she’s going to embrace me with open arms. She’s probably not going to let me in.

But I have something in my pocket that might set her at peace. Just a little bit.

I hover at the bottom of the stairs as Jalon pulls up. The passenger door opens as soon as the engine is off. I’m holding my breath.

Her hair is still the same shade of blond as it’s always been. It’s short, almost like a boy’s, with the middle up in a very small ponytail. Her eyes are trained on me as she steps away from the SUV.

She’s angry. I can see her anger. Her fury. Her hatred of the world that dealt her such a shitty hand in life.

Jalon leaves the car where it is as he heads for the front door. His hand wraps reassuringly around my arm on the way by, and I smile.

Emily watches him go.

They told me they weren’t going to tell her anything. They weren’t even going to tell her that they knew her birth name. They were retrieving her from prison and bringing her here. Then it was all up to me.

She crosses her arms over her chest and waits. There’s no recognition on her face, but there is a mile-thick wall surrounding her.

I’ve thought about what to say since Imry told me they’d won and she’s going to be released from prison. I thought I’d settled on the right words. My brain is empty, though. I don’t know what to say.

Instead, I reach into my pocket and pull out the few pictures there, beginning with the picture of Jonathan Clark tied to the chair with me standing over him. Alive. Recognizable. There are four pictures. The middle two are me killing him. The fourth is how he looked when I was finished and me covered in blood, on my knees in front of his body.

I don’t get closer to Emily, but I hold them out for her to take.

“Who are you?” she asks, voice harsh.

“I’ll tell you, but I want you to see these first.”

Her eyes drop to them, but she doesn’t move. “Why?”

“Because you’ll understand if you look at them.”

There’s a very obvious struggle as she looks at the pictures in my hand. She can’t see them. I’m not holding them at an angle for her to see from where she’s standing. Eventually, her curiosity gets the better of her, and she comes just close enough to reach for them.

As soon as they’re in her hands and she catches a glimpse of the first one, her breath rushes from her and she drops them, staggering backwards a few feet.

Her chest heaves. Fear fills her entire body.

“Is he here? Is that why you brought me here?”

“Look at them closer, Emily.”

Her head snaps up, and she stares at me with wide, terrified eyes.

“Look at them,” I say gently. “Please. You need to.”

With shaking hands, she crouches down. They’re scattered, slightly overlapping each other, but all four are visible. It’s difficult to read her expression from this angle with her face pointed down.

“He’s dead,” she murmurs. Her fingers, still trembling, touch the one where I’m shoving the blade into his collarbone. Her eyes meet mine. “You killed him.”

“I did.”

“How did you know my name?”

“Do you recognize me?”

Emily stares for a long time. Slowly, she gets to her feet, still staring. “William.” Her voice is low, quiet. Almost awed.

I nod. “Yes. I was William.”

“Was,” she repeats.

“The Van Dorens set the island that Ryan took the congregation to on fire, and Ryan, with his disciples, was killed. They took me home with them. They rescued me, though it took me ten years to finally break free of the demon that clung to me. I’m Malin now. Malin Van Doren.”

Emily swallows. Her eyes flicker down to the pictures again.

“They bring me disciples of the temple, and I kill them. Just as they allowed someone to hurt me, just as they hurt countless others like me, I get to hurt them.”

“How?” she whispers. “How are you not all in jail?”

“Jalon is the king,” I say, shrugging.

She snorts. Laughter bubbles out of her, and she covers her face with her hands.

“You’ve had a shitty life,” I say. “I can’t erase that. I can’t make it magically better. I still struggle all the time, so I can promise you that there’s no real fix for what we’ve been through. But this family—my family—are good people. We can help you start over.”

“Can I kill them too?” she whispers.

“Yes,” I promise, without asking anyone.

“Without going back to jail?”

“Yes,” I swear.

“No one will ever touch me again,” she warns, eyes hard when she meets mine.

“Never again. I promise. Your body. Your rules.”

She very visibly shivers. “Really?” Now, her voice sounds so small. She’s once again that little girl. Afraid. Needing safety and reassurance.

“Really.”

Emily chews her lip, staring at the pictures at her feet. “Just like that. I’m…”

“Free,” I supply.

“I thought I was going to die in jail,” she says quietly. “I wanted to die. I’m so tired, William.”

“Malin,” I correct. “William doesn’t exist anymore.”

She nods. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“Emily doesn’t exist either. She couldn’t protect herself. Neither could Veronica.”

“I know that feeling. You get a new ending now. You can be whoever you want to be. You can start over with whatever life you want to build. We’ll help you. I’ll help you.”

She nods and wipes a tear away. “I want to kill them, too. I want them to hurt like I hurt.”

“Okay. You can do that.”

The girl, who is no longer Emily or Veronica, nods. She meets my eyes after a minute. “It’s because of you that they let me out of jail, isn’t it?”

“Well… not in any way that matters. I remembered you when Jonathan was presented to me, and I asked my family to find you. He said you vanished shortly after we left for the island. It took a while, but they found your court hearing. I recognized your eyes. Your scar. And your anger.”

She smiles, bowing her head.

“It’s time to start over. You can heal and find peace here. You can be happy.”

“Are you happy, Malin Van Doren?”

I smile, and it feels good. “For the first time in my life, I’m happy.”

She nods. Her smile is tentative. Not quite trusting but open. Willing. “Thank you for rescuing me.”

“We all need rescuing sometimes.”

“What about the others? Have you rescued them, too?”

I shake my head. “Ryan haunted me right up until eleven months ago.”

“Like… an actual ghost?”

“Yeah.” I shrug. “I didn’t know that…” I shake my head. “I was so… I don’t know. Lost inside his yelling that I barely registered anything around me. You were the first person I actually remembered when they put Jonathan in front of me. Since I banished his ghost, I’ve focused on finding myself while my family looked for you.”

“A real ghost,” she muses and glances around.

“Do you have a ghost, too?”

Her smile is crooked as she shakes her head. “No, but now I’m wondering how many linger around us.”

I glance at my side, but the place where Ryan had always been is empty. “Dunno. He was the only one I saw.”

“So now? Now what do you do?”

“Now I spend time with my family. With my boyfriend. I kill the cultists when they find them. I guess… I don’t really have a mission in life.”

“Maybe you do now. Maybe I do now,” she says. “Maybe we can find them together.”

We share a smile. “Okay. Want to come inside and meet my family? I promise, no one will ever touch you unless you want them to.”

She glances down at the pictures. “Yeah, okay.” The girl who’s not Emily or Veronica crouches down to pick them up. “I don’t want these, though.”

“That’s okay. Ellory will burn them for me. We can even make a ritual out of it. And you can think of a name. One that will be your new life.”

She sighs as she steps next to me, handing me the pictures. “A new life. No more wrongful endings.”

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