Shaw knows.
The look of triumph on his face was unbearable.
He had no idea she was still alive.
He’s been out wilding the last few weeks, not paying attention to me, his work, our mutual acquaintances, or anything else that should have tipped him off.
That’s what happens when he goes on a frenzy: he disappears from the art world until the madness passes. Until he’s ready to act sane again.
He killed two girls. That means there’s one more to go.
He’s never satiated until he takes the third. Then he goes quiet—sometimes for months at a time.
That’s his cycle. I’ve watched it happen.
He’s predictable. I’m afraid I can predict exactly what he’ll do next:
He’ll try to take Mara as his last kill.
He would love the symmetry of that—he was the one who gave her to me, and he could take her away.
He might do it just to see how I’d react. To see if he could truly make me snap.
I don’t know how the fuck to stop it from happening. Even I can’t watch Mara every minute, every hour. If Shaw is determined to hunt her, how the fuck can I keep her safe?
Especially when she’s reckless and stubborn, determined to get herself killed. I saw the look in her eye—ordering her to stay away from Shaw only makes her want to defy me.
So I terrified her on purpose.
She thinks she isn’t scared of monsters? I’ll show her a fucking demon out of hell.
And it worked. She didn’t come to the studio yesterday, or today either. I know how scared she must be if she stayed home when she’s aching to work on her painting.
She’s home, but not actually alone. I’m watching her right now through the telescope. Watching her lay in bed, reading.
She finished Dracula. Now she’s started The Butterfly Garden. I’m not familiar with that one, but if it interests Mara, I want to read it. I want to know everything in her head.
I’ve been following her continually. It won’t be enough.
Alastor won’t give up that easy.
I could kill him.
That eventuality has always loomed between us.
He knows too much about me, and me about him.
I’ve been tempted to do it many times before.
I almost followed through after he deposited Mara in my dumping ground. I should have done it then.
I’m not afraid of Shaw. But I’ve put myself at a disadvantage: it’s not just me versus him. I have to protect Mara, too—if I want to keep her safe for myself, for my own use.
I’m spread thin. Covering too much ground.
This is exactly why I always avoided these kinds of entanglements. Mara complicates my life in a hundred different ways.
Yet here I am neglecting my own work so I can watch her.
It’s addicting. All-consuming. It has a literal physical effect on me when I’m not near her, when I can’t see her. My muscles twitch like I’ve had too much caffeine. The craving builds and builds until I can’t think about anything else. I lose all my powers of focus because my mind is pulled away after her.
Watching her creates the opposite effect. The drug courses through my veins and I’m soothed, relaxed, purposeful once more.
Several hours pass. It’s late now—past midnight. I should go home and sleep in my own bed.
I stay because of the nagging sensation that she’s not safe, not even asleep in her room.
Shaw is going to do something, I know it. He saw us at the party together, and now he’s going to take some action, leave some sign to let me know that I didn’t fool him for a second.
He must be over the fucking moon right now. His plan worked better than he ever could have dreamed.
All he wanted was to entice me into killing Mara. He never imagined that I might form an attachment to her.
And, as difficult as it is for me to admit . . . that’s exactly what I’ve done. I’m fixated on her. Obsessed with her, even.
Which gives Shaw all the power he could desire and more. I’ve put my attachment onto something fragile, something impossible to keep safe and under my control.
It’s exhausting. This level of focus is draining.
Also, I’m starting to realize that what entices me about Mara is the contact high I get when I’m near her. She feels things so intensely that it makes me feel them too.
I have no control over that effect. I can’t choose what to feel and what not to feel, not anymore. Mara infects me against my will.
Right now, she’s so sleepy that she can barely keep her eyes open. Her head keeps nodding forward and then jerking up again, while she sits propped up on the pillows in her bed, trying to sneak in a few more pages of her paperback.
Watching her lashes flutter and the slow sway of her head is making me sleepy too. I’m leaning against the windowsill. Nearly drifting off . . .
Until a shadow moves under the trees behind Mara’s house.
I jerk upright, pressing my eye against the telescope, swiveling the lens to look down instead of across.
I only catch a brief glimpse of the figure disappearing around the side of her house, but I know it’s Shaw. Only he possesses that bulk, that heavy tread.
And only he would be lurking on her street, staring up at her window.
I push aside the telescope and slip my arms into my coat.
I don’t like playing defense.
I’d rather be hunting than waiting.
Shaw exposes himself, coming out alone at night.
I’ve got a knife with me, and my garrote too.
I can end this right now.
I descend the stairs of the Georgian in the dark, leaving all the lights turned off. I slip through the front door, closing it behind me, the soft snick of the lock settling into place silent as a sigh.
At the far end of the street, Shaw’s hulking frame is just turning the corner.
I trail him from a distance, knowing that I’ll have to stalk him with much greater care than usual. Shaw may be impulsive, but he’s not stupid.
Shaw likes to think we’re the same species—lions hunting gazelles.
He’s an animal, but I’m no fucking lion.
I’m me. Myself. The only one like me.
Our only commonality is that we’re both predators. And all predators share certain characteristics. Our senses are heightened. We physically overpower. We kill and consume.
It will be hard to trail him unseen. To sneak up on him. To take him down without suffering serious injury or death. It benefits me nothing to kill Shaw if I bleed out right next to him.
So I follow with the appropriate level of respect.
Shaw walks rapidly, head down, hands in his pockets. He’s dressed in dark sweats, hood up, like he was out for a nighttime jog. Really he’s concealing his most memorable features, including that shock of sun-streaked hair.
He weaves, crossing over several streets, cutting through alleyways, jumping a chain-link fence at one point. I can’t tell if this is his usual mode of travel, the most direct route wherever the fuck he’s going, or if he suspects that I’m following him.
I know he hasn’t actually seen me, but he came to Mara’s house on purpose. He knows damn well I could have been watching.
He could be luring me somewhere right now.
The question is . . . do I want to be lured?
Plenty of women thought they were ensnaring Shaw when they flirted with him, when they enticed him back to their apartments. They ended up beheaded on the beach.
Predator and prey, hunter and hunted . . . it’s not always obvious which one is which.
The puff adder puts out its tongue, mimicking the movement of an insect. A toad that believes it is hunting soon becomes the snake’s dinner.
This intuition solidifies as Shaw leads me into the grittier part of the Mission District—where every window is covered in iron bars and nailed-up plywood, where the graffiti scrawls cover not only the walls but also the doorways and awnings. Where half the buildings seem perpetually under construction, propped up by scaffolding, under the shadow of which squatters congregate and petty drug dealers run their businesses.
I have no fear walking through an area like this. Criminals know who they can rob and who they should avoid at all costs. Only the young and foolish would approach a man with Shaw’s bulk.
I’m something else entirely: a dark figure that repels even a curious glance. Gliding along like death, like famine, like a plague in their midst.
Shaw pauses outside a ramshackle building, one of several in a row. They might have been apartments once—now they’re all condemned, their doors chained and locked.
After glancing to both sides, Shaw takes a key from his pocket, opens the padlock, and slips through the door.
I hesitate on the opposite corner, pondering my options.
He might be waiting inside for me. Hoping to attack me in this isolated place.
If that’s his plan, I’m not averse. I want to end this thing between him and me. I want it over, one way or another.
Or he might truly be unaware that I’m following him. In which case, I’m curious what he keeps inside that building.
It feels like a trap. But also like an opportunity.
Stay or go? I’ve never been so torn.
If I go home, then tomorrow I’ll be right back where I was, staked out by Mara’s house, wracked by the paranoia of when and where Shaw will attack.
That’s what pushes me to cross the road, to follow Shaw inside the crumbling tenement.
Inside is black as pitch, so damp that I can hear water dripping down from the upper levels. The stairs are crumbling, with large gaps between risers. The stench of moldering boards and stale urine assails my nostrils. Beneath that, the unmistakable smell of putrefaction. It could be rats that died in the walls. Or something else . . .
I stand perfectly still, listening for Shaw.
All I hear is that drip, drip, drip of water, and further up, wind groaning through open rafters.
I let my eyes adjust until I can make out enough detail to walk without tripping over the piles of old construction materials and the mounds of shredded tarp and old blankets where addicts have slept.
Shaw isn’t on the main level. Which means I’ll have to climb the stairs.
I make my way up slowly, careful not to dislodge a single pebble. Any sound will echo in this desolate space.
I’m not afraid. But I am aware that I could be walking to my death, or his. The next few minutes may be the most crucial of my life.
I see a light at the head of the stairs—dim and slightly purplish.
That is what assures me that Shaw has laid a trap. He’s mimicking the light at the Halloween party. Taunting me with references to Mara.
Still, I keep climbing. I’m committed to this course. We both intend to see this through.
I step into the space at the top of the stairs. It’s one, vast open cavern, all the walls knocked down.
In the center, I see a figure, suspended in space.
Not Shaw.
It’s a girl, strung up in the air like an insect in a web. Her arms and legs are outstretched, pulled to their furthest limit. Even her long hair has been bound at the ends and pulled all around her head in a dark corona.
She was alive when he tied her into the web—I can tell from the welts around her wrists and ankles where she pulled and struggled. She even tore out some of her hair.
But she’s dead now. Shaw cut her wrists and her throat, letting her bleed out. The dark blood lays in a gleaming puddle beneath her, like a hole through the floor.
Because Shaw has never been subtle, he’s woven snakes all through his web. Actual snakes, as dead as the girl. He wrapped several around her limbs, stuffed them in the gash in her throat, and even twined them in her hair.
The message is clear.
What’s not clear is where the fuck Shaw went. He must have gone out another way . . .
Before I can even begin to look, I’m jolted by the last sound I want to hear: the crackle of a police radio.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, FUCK!
It’s too late to go down the stairs—they’re already inside the building. I can hear them swarming in, trying to be quiet, but failing miserably because cops are fucking awful at stakeouts.
Shaw called them. He trapped me in here with his latest kill. And I walked right into it, in the stupidest mistake I’ve ever made.
If I can’t go down, there’s only one way out.
Shucking off my coat, I wrap it around my arm and punch through the window. The cops hear the noise. They come thundering up the stairs at full speed, shouting to each other.
I’m already climbing out, scaling the rusty drainpipe running up the side of the building. The metal is eaten through like lace, crumbling under my hands, the screws pulling out and the whole pipe coming away from the wall. I barely have time to seize the gutter in one hand before I’m swinging out into open air.
I haul myself up one-handed, palms cut and god knows what strain of tetanus now coursing through my blood.
The rooftop is hardly any better. It’s nothing but flat concrete, nowhere to hide, not so much as a chimney.
The closest building is fifteen feet away. The gap between plunges down twelve stories to a bare concrete alley. Not even a fucking dumpster waits below to break my fall.
Fifteen feet.
If it were ten, I could jump it.
Fifteen is dicey.
The next building over is slightly lower—that could help.
Through the broken window, I hear the cops ascending to the room. Discovering the body of the girl. Fanning out, searching for me.
I’ve got seconds at most.
I back up to the far side of the building and then I sprint toward the ledge. I run as hard and as fast as I can, launching myself into space.
I fall forward and down, arms stretched out in front of me. When my feet hit, I tuck into a roll and tumble across the roof, coming to a stop flat on my back.
Not fucking far enough. I hear sirens, cop cars pulling up on both sides. They’ll be spread across the area in moments.
No time for strategy or planning. I leap to my feet and sprint again, running for the next building in the row.
Run, run, run, run . . . JUMP!
The third building is lower still, by two stories.
I crash down hard, my right ankle buckling beneath me. It twists and I hear an awful popping sound. Hot, electric pain shoots up the outside of my leg.
Forcing myself up anyway, I hobble to the edge of the building. This one has a fire escape still in place, running from roof to ground level. Using the railings as a crutch, I limp down as fast as I can, cursing my ankle, cursing that I’ve put myself in this fucking ludicrous position.
Outsmarted by Shaw . . . what a fucking humiliation. I should let the cops put me out of my misery.
Hitting the ground, I limp through the sickening pain, driven on by pure rage, by the desire to live through this so I can wreak my revenge on Shaw, so I can make him pay for this.
This is his fault.
His and Mara’s.
It takes over two hours to shake off the cops and return to Seacliff. Some of that time is me hiding in a filthy alleyway, crouching under a pile of moldering trash bags, ankle too swollen to run another step.
The ignominy of this is almost too much to bear.
I spend every second imagining how I’m going to peel the skin off Shaw’s flesh, inch by inch. Death will be a mercy for which he will beg, hour after hour.
I’ve never been so relieved to walk through my own front door.
The next hour is me standing under a boiling shower spray, scrubbing my own skin as if I, too, should be flayed.
After that, the thinking begins.
I’ll kill Shaw, that much is certain.
But how the FUCK am I going to do that when I’m already injured? Even at my peak, Shaw is more than a physical match for me. I’m smarter, but he’s bigger.
He knows I’m coming, too. He’ll be watching for me. Waiting.
In the meantime, Mara remains a constant point of vulnerability.
Shaw’s primary goal will be to kill her.
He’s jealous of me. Fixated on me. He knows I want her—which means he wants her more.
Taking her from me will be a greater triumph than putting a knife in my heart.
I can’t possibly keep her safe. Not for any significant length of time.
Mara weakens me. It was chasing after Shaw on impulse, believing I had to act quickly to protect her, that put me in this position. Now my ankle is puffed up like a snakebite and I can barely stand.
Worse, she weakens my mind. My decision-making. She warps my goals and values, making me think I care about things I never gave a fuck about before.
I can’t protect her. Her death is inevitable.
But I’ll be damned if Shaw is the one to do it.
Mara belongs to me.
I’m the only one who gets to kill her.
