Page 117 of The Blood we Crave

“I have tracking devices on all the guys’ cars.” He sighs. “If you can get ahold of my phone, it will show you where they all are.”

origin story

TWENTY-THREE

lyra

My mother’s home is a tomb.

A shell of what had once been a breathtaking Victorian-inspired manor now engorged with ivy, smothered by overgrown weeds, and in desperate need of repair.

It’s a corpse.

A beautiful, rotten, decaying corpse. The remains of my childhood linger, and if I tried hard enough, I could recall some of those memories: smuggling ladybugs in from the garden, breaking my arm trying to climb the tree in the front yard, trying to convince my mother to let me sleep on the front porch when it rained.

But as I walk through the desolate halls, the wood groaning beneath my shoes, I can’t help but feel like a stranger inside. As if all the good, all the happiness, was sucked dry the second Henry Pierson killed Phoebe Abbott.

It never resold. Remained empty for good reason. Who wants to move into a house where a murder occurred?

It’s now just a house. Four walls that caged a gruesome headline story. A roof that sheltered trauma and despair. It’s no longer home, no longer a place of solace or joyful remembrance.

I had stared at Silas’s phone for what felt like hours, thinking this couldn’t be right. There was no way Thatcher’s location was correct. But when I’d hesitantly approached my old home, I saw his car parked in the driveway.

It hadn’t been a figment of my imagination. He’s here. For how long? I’m not sure, but he is inside now. The place our story began. When he was an unfamiliar Jack Frost and I was a lonely little girl.

The strings of our fate are rooted here. They thrum and breathe—it’s the only reasoning behind my footsteps carrying me to my mother’s bedroom.

When I find the courage to open the door, that’s where I find him, leaning against the wall, staring out of the balcony windows into the meek backyard.

His suit is pristine. The dark blue fabric doesn’t have a single wrinkle. Everything about him feels too clean in this room. A dazzling glass ice sculpture laid out among the filth of history.

For a moment, I wish I would have dropped to my knees and prayed to a god I didn’t believe in for him to not be so…

Beautiful.

Maybe then it would be easier to detach myself from him. If I somehow could remove the rose-tinted glasses, see him the way everyone else does.

Calculating. Toxic. Unfeeling monster.

If craving for death that prowled beneath the surface was reflected on his outer image, would it have made a difference?

I tell myself yes.

But I know that’s not true.

Regardless of how he appears to the human eye, I would always see his soul. Would see his version of cold as Hawaii’s first snow. Something of wonder and beauty.

“Why are you here, Lyra?”

I don’t bother asking how he knew it was me. I just step farther into a room I hadn’t seen since a dead body occupied it. It’s empty. Furniture gone, paint chipped, completely vacant.

A cold wind blows in from the window, making me pull the sleeves of Thatcher’s black cardigan over my hands, curling my arms safely around myself as I stare at the back of his head.

“You disappeared after I found out you were getting death threats,” I say. I felt that answer was obvious. “You just vanished. Not a fucking word to me.”

He meets me with silence, continuing to stare out the window, an unmoving statue. I chew the inside of my cheek, squeezing my arm for comfort.

“And because—” I swallow. “Because lately, you’re the only place I don’t feel alone.”

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