Page 10 of Playing with Fyre

“Every Saturday night,” the man says.

He looks past me, tilting his head up so he can stare into Charlotte’s window. My stomach twists. Acid shoots up my throat, and for a wild second, I’m convinced I’ll puke. But I breathe instead. Fight the physical response to a psychological reaction.

MyCharlotte.

I look up. Her light is off. The man pushes away from the wall he’d been leaning against and gives me another smile. Like we’re brothers, him and I. Sick, perverted kin lurking out here in the dark, spying on an innocent girl.

Mygirl.

“The fuck you say?” I growl at him.

He shrugs, laughs. Pulls a box of cigarettes from his pockets and has the fucking audacity to offer me one. “Never could resist jailbait. But that one up there, she’s special.”

My entire body tenses. Something is off. This isn’t some homeless man hunting out free entertainment for the evening. His clothes are well cut. He has an expensive haircut. And his fingers are manicured.

The man takes back his box of cigarettes and lights himself one with a platinum Zippo. “She knows I’m down here, watching.” When he speaks the smell of his freshly lit cigarette wafts to me. That and liquor, but not a drug-store make with a cheaply printed label. Something else, too, but I can’t define it. “That’s why she puts on a show for me every Saturday night. Stands right there in the window and flashes me her tight little body.”

It’s dark on this street, but even so, I should never have done what I did.

It’s a culmination of so many things. The man’s filthy mouth. The fact that he dared look at my Charlotte. That he called herjailbait.

Everything about him waswrong. I could smell putrid perversion coming off him in waves.

The first blow takes him by surprise, but he’s ready for the second. We struggle, and I push him until his back slams into a brick wall. A pool of darkness hides us from the world as he slams his fist into my midsection, winding me. But I’ve fought so many like him before, and I always go for the only thing they cherish on their foul, depraved bodies.

The man lets out a pained moan when I drive my knee into his testicles, and then folds up and drops to the side like a felled tree.

Blood sings its siren call in my ears, but I can’t end him. Not here, right outside Charlotte’s apartment. Too many eyes, come morning. Too many questions when those eyes report the crime. So I rob the man of his possessions and stalk back to my car wearing a grimace.

His phone is a dead weight in my pocket, his wallet feather-light in comparison. I don’t know why I took it, except it probably makes sense that I did. Thinking is too difficult right now—all I can smell is his blood.

Because once he was down, I didn’t stop. Only the thought that I might kill him, that Charlotte might somehow find out, that she wouldn’t understand I was protecting her…that stopped me.

When I climb into my car, I sit for a second and let the stink of blood suffuse the pocket of air inside the cab. Then I roll down a window and let the crisp wind chase it out.

I look up at my girl’s dark window.

I’ll always keep you safe, little Charlotte.

I have your file. I know what happened to you. No names, no faces, no dates—I’m not privy to that level of detail forsecurityreasons, but that doesn’t matter.

I know you.

I know what happened to you.

How itchangedyou.

Why you’re in my class in the first place.

Soon, Charlotte Ash, you’ll be back to your old self. With one important change, of course.

You’ll bemine.

I shift in my seat, grinding my teeth. The smell of blood is so intense, it’s making my mouth salivate. Which is when I realize I haven’t had enough.

Not by a long shot.

Chapter Six

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