Page 83 of The Blood we Crave: Part Two

He smiles, grim and without showing his teeth, before he takes a seat in the small wooden chair in the corner. The orange jumpsuit swishes as he moves.

“Of course not,” he chides, waving me off. “Why don’t we talk about what you’ve been up to? Have you started in the family business yet?”

Killed anyone recently?

I straighten my cufflinks, grinning. Of course he wants to know. Talk shop, fuel his fantasies with grim retellings of all I’ve done without him. But I won’t give him that satisfaction. Let him wither away with his memories.

“You have a copycat.” I lick the front of my teeth.

Crossing his ankle over his knee, he rests his hands on top of his thighs. A smirk is etched on his features, and I try not to shiver. We look so alike sometimes, with so many similar habits.

He is so painfully normal like this with his mask on.

“How flattering,” he coos, clapping his hands together, eyes curious. “Leaving limbs and all?”

I nod, feeding his curiosity enough to grab his attention. “Notes carved into the skin, and no full bodies recovered.”

He hums, rolling his lips together. “I love the attention to detail.”

“There is one thing different though.” I observe him, the way he reacts to my next words. “He leaves roses with the body parts.”

As if he senses my suspicion, he schools his facial features, giving me a bland response.

“All serial killers have a calling card, even those inspired by me.”

“The roses were left for me, a gift from you.” I run my fingers along the spines of his books, plucking one from the shelf. “Who is he, Henry?”

“You think I know?” I don’t need to look at him to know he’s got the perfect image of confusion mapped across his face. “How could I? I haven’t had visitors in years. It could just be your subconscious missing your father.”

I drag my fingers through the pages, looking up from the book to find him poised, smirking, proud of himself for getting me here. He thinks he’s got me in this cat-and-mouse game, trapped me in, and he’s ready to toy with me.

Except he’s forgetting that he doesn’t know how I work.

Henry has shown me all his cards from the moment I was born. I know how he operates, the way his brain works, his next move, how to read him. He’s shown me everything, and I learned.

No one knows the abuser like the abused.

But he is forgetting that he showed me everything he knows. I know everything about how he works, how he operates. He knows nothing about me, only what he thinks he made me into.

“Huh.” I furrow my eyebrows, snapping the book closed. “That’s a shame. I thought…” A little chuckle leaves my lips. “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter what I thought.”

I set the book down, moving towards the cell door to knock and let the guard know I’m ready to leave, when he shifts abruptly, holding his hands up.

“Wait, what did you think?”

“Well, his work is…” I lick my bottom lip, making a show of it. “Excellent. I didn’t know anyone other than you that was capable of something so…elusive. I thought you had to be helping him, but I suppose even the greatest can be recreated.”

I shrug, lifting my hand to the door.

The best way to attack a narcissist is to stroke their ego. He needed a platform to brag about his work, to own what he’d done. Forcing it out of him would do no good for me here.

“Nothing can beat the original. He is, at the end of the day, only a copycat.” His voice is sharper, the void in his eyes becoming more evident.

The fog of humanity is clearing on his features, and I can see the arrival of the man who raised me creeping to the surface. His charm is fizzling away, and the mask of empathy drops.

“Oh, I don’t know about that. You should see what they say about him in the papers. They can’t stop raving about it. He’s practically rewriting history, a prolific killer so renowned they won’t even remember the man he was imitating.”

The chains securing him rattle as he stands, his chest brushing against my shoulder, our bodies close enough that I can feel the heat pushing off him in waves.

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