Page 34 of Bird on a Blade

It’s better for her to be dead.

“She was pretty,” Jaxon says. “I remember that.”

My face gets even hotter, and before I can stop myself I say, “She’s still pretty.”

Both of them go quiet. I run my thumb around the rim of my new beer can, wiping up the condensation.

Ambrose clears his throat. “You looked her up? You’ve been back two damn weeks, Sawyer.”

My head buzzes. I can feel my blood pumping furiouslythrough my body. The truth is I don’t want to keep her a secret. I want to tell them everything I can about her. I don’t have no one to talk to except my bones and they don’t talk back. And yeah, I know what Jaxon and Ambrose are gonna say. But god, it’s like a final breath building inside me, waiting to exhale.

“I didn’t look her up.” I peer up at him. “She’s here. She’s at the camp.”

Both of them stare at me from across the table. Jaxon’s the first one to speak.

“Did youbringher here?”

“No. She showed up a day or two after I woke up.”

They look at each other. Ambrose’s expression is dark, his brow furrowed. Jaxon laughs, though, and shakes his head a little.

“Well,” he says. “Then it’s gotta be fate, doesn’t it?”

“It absolutely is not fate,” Ambrose says. “It’s dangerous.”

But Jaxon keeps going on, looking right at me, his blue eyes burning. “The gods picked someone for you,” he says. “And you’re bound together.”

“Not this shit again,” Ambrose mutters.

Part of me agrees with Ambrose. This is Jaxon’s thing, that there are these gods in the swamp and they tell him who to kill and every murder scene he sets up is some kind of prayer to them. I don’t know, I don’t go in for religion much myself. But right now, with my perfect prey ten minutes away from me? Knowing she arrived at the same time I dragged myself out of the dirt?

I can see it, those connections, those lines of fate drawing us together like threads of blood.

“I’m serious,” Jaxon says, excitement building up in his voice. “You were chosen, man. The godschoseyou, and chose this girl.”

“We’ll see about that when she calls the cops on him,” Ambrose mutters. “Which will inevitably happen when she sees him skulking around the woods.”

My skin prickles. “She hasn’t called the cops.” It’s out before I can stop it.

Ambrose jerks his head up. “She knows you’re here?”

I nod silently, my heart thundering.

Ambrose narrows his eyes. “What else does she know?”

I glance at Jaxon, who’s watching this conversation with obvious interest, his eyes gleaming. I sigh. “More than you’d say she should.” More than I know she should.

Jaxon laughs with delight and says something in that made-up language he uses. Ambrose just keeps glaring at me.

“What,” he says, “does she know?” He shakes his head. “What did you do that night you got killed?”

I’m not telling them about everything I’ve done with her, about making her come and kissing her and all that. But I do tell them the story of the night fifteen years ago, how I did it for her and how sheknowsI did it for her. How I hugged her and she never told anybody, not even the cops. And how I killed for her again, last week, and she’s kept my secrets this whole time.

Jaxon’s thrilled by the story, the romantic that he is. “It’s the Unnamed,” he says confidently, which is what he calls one of the gods. “You’ve been marked.”

Ambrose rolls his eyes. But Jaxon pushes back from the table, brimming with excitement. “I need to mark the church with the Unnamed’s sigil,” he says. “It’s chosen you, Sawyer. It’s the least you can do.”

I know exactly how Jaxon plans to mark the church. He did the same thing to his own house: killed someone and then used their blood to draw sigils on the walls. I don’t want blood sigils on my church, though, not if I’m gonna bring Edie here. “Can you use paint?” I say, which makes Ambrose snicker and Jaxon scowl. “There’s a bunch of buckets of it in the storage closet.”

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