This obsession with Mara consumes me.
It’s all I think about. It directs every action I take.
I’ve never felt so out of control—which upsets me.
My fantasies have always been a stage spread below me, on which I arrange the actors like a director. I indulge them at will.
Now I find myself fantasizing about Mara, with no intent or control. Without even realizing I’m about to slip into another daydream more real than the world around me.
I see every element of her face, her body . . .
When I first laid eyes on her, I barely found her tolerable. In fact, her bitten nails and air of obvious neglect disgusted me.
But now, some bizarre alchemy is working itself upon me. Every element of her person becomes increasingly attractive to me. The slimness of her figure and the dreamy way it moves when she’s lost in thought. Those elegant hands that seem to enact the most clever impulses of her brain with no barrier in between. The mix of innocence and wildness in her face—and that expression of rebellion that creases her eyebrows, that raises her upper lip, baring her teeth.
She’s determined to defy me at every turn, even though it’s obvious I’m infinitely more powerful than her. She’s stubborn. Self-destructive, even. And yet she’s not some pathetic, broken victim. Her will to live, to thrive, to never, ever, ever give up in her relentless pursuit of her goals . . .
I’ve never seen myself in another person before.
Much as Shaw desperately wants to believe that we are one and the same, I’ve never felt a kinship with him. Very much the opposite.
There is only one god in my world. I was alone in the universe.
And now I see . . . a spark.
A spark that interests me.
I want to hold it in my hands. Manipulate it. Examine it.
Mara has a kind of power separate from my own. I want to know if I can harness it. Or consume it.
I visit her studio regularly. I don’t knock—she knows I’m watching her through the camera mounted above her door. There is no appearance of privacy.
I walk into the studio I own, that I supply to her, and I see the rebellious ways she’s altered the space—how she’s somehow managed to throw open the high upper windows, how she’s scattered her clothes and books around, and used an injudicious amount of her grant money to fill the space with plants—leafy tropicals, vine-like hanging baskets, and potted trees to supplement the ornamental lemons already in place. She’s taken my carefully curated English garden and turned it into a jungle.
Mara’s appearance ranges from homeless to deranged—torn overalls, bare feet, paint-streaked face and hands, brushes thrust into her hair for safekeeping.
And yet her painting glows like the pietà. Illuminated from the inside.
I examine every millimeter of it.
“The hands need work,” I say.
“I know,” Mara says. “The nails . . .”
“This edge could be sharpened.” I point the handle of a paintbrush toward the figure’s left shoulder. “Here.”
I take the palette from its resting place and dip the brush, intending to darken the edge myself.
“NO!” Mara snaps, as I raise the brush toward the canvas. “I’ll do it.”
I set the palette down, narrowing my eyes at her. “You should be so fucking lucky as to have it known I touched my brush to your work.”
“Yes,” she says. “I’m aware of your many talents. You can paint rings around me. I don’t give a shit—nobody touches this canvas but me.”
She faces me down, physically blocking me from the canvas, eyes wild, paintbrush gripped like she wants to shank me.
She’s so passionate about everything.
“You look like you want to stab me,” I say. “Have you ever hurt anyone, Mara? Or only imagined it . . .”
Her fist trembles, clenched around the brush.
That’s not a tremble of fear.
It’s rage.
At who, Mara? Me? Alastor Shaw? The mother, the stepfather? Or the whole fucking world . . .
“I’ve never hurt anyone,” she says. “And I don’t want to.”
“You don’t wish anyone ill?”
“No.”
“What about the man who kidnapped you?” I’ve stepped close to her now, looking down at her. “What about him?”
Her chest rises and falls, faster and faster, yet she refuses to take a step back.
“You must want revenge. He tied you up. Pierced your nipples.”
I look down at her chest. Mara never wears a bra. Her small breasts and pert little nipples are regularly visible beneath the thin material of her crop tops and dresses. All the more so because of the silver rings through those nipples that she has yet to remove.
“Why haven’t you taken those out, Mara? I think I know why . . .”
She looks up at me, those wide, wild eyes on either side of that impudent nose and vicious little mouth . . .
“Why?” she demands.
“As a reminder. You don’t want to forget. Which means you don’t want to forgive.”
Her pupils expand like a drop of oil spreading on water.
I’m speaking the thoughts right out of her brain.
“He cut your wrists. Left you for dead. No . . . worse than that. Left you as a mockery. A fucking joke. He didn’t even finish killing you, that’s how little you meant to him. He didn’t even stay to watch you die.”
The truth is that Alastor didn’t linger because he knew he couldn’t conceal himself from me.
But I’m telling Mara what she knows to be true . . . the man who attacked her sees her as less than garbage. Less than dirt. An insect, struggling and dying on the windowsill, not even worthy of his notice.
“You would hurt him, Mara. You want to hurt him. He deserves it. If no one stops him, he’ll keep hurting people. It would be more than justice . . . it would be good.”
Mara faces me, eyes blazing, face flushed.
A righteous angel in the face of a demon.
“Evil men always want to justify what they do,” she says. “And it’s not by telling you all their reasons. No . . . they want to push you, and bend you, and break you until you snap. Until you do something you thought you’d never do. Until you can’t even recognize yourself. Until you’re as bad as they are. That’s how they justify themselves . . . by trying to make you the same as them.”
There’s no space between us now. My face is inches from hers, our bodies so close that her heat and mine radiates in one continuous loop, feeding the inferno between us.
“You wouldn’t kill him? If he was here, now, as helpless as you were that night?”
She meets my gaze, unflinching. “No.”
“What if he wasn’t helpless? What if it was him, or you?”
She stares into my eyes. “Then I would tell him . . . you’re not going to sneak up on me this time. We’re face-to-face now.”
She still thinks it might have been me.
She thinks I did that to her.
And yet she’s here, now, alone in this room with me, inches apart, her lips as swollen and flushed as mine . . .
She’s more twisted than I ever dared dream.
