Page 80 of Twice as Twisted

I pull up to her aunt’s place and flip down the visor. I smile at myself in the mirror, practicing one and then another, trying to find the one that might convince her.

That one,the demon says, my lips stretching into an affable, aw-shucks sort of grin, like I’m just a goofy guy who made a mistake. She can trust me, give me her niece’s friend’s name. I wouldn’t hurt anyone. Surely it wasn’t me the other night. It must have been a mistake, a joke I took too far. Maybe we were even flirting—I’m certainly flirting now, and she can’t help but respond. Maybe that’s what happened the other day. I’m a good-looking guy, after all. What divorcee wouldn’t respond to my advances?

I get out of the car and pause. The sliver of moon is overhead now, bright white and sharp as a dagger. I know I’ll never look at a crescent moon again without thinking of Jane. Little clouds hurtle over it and away, driven by the same wind that sings in the pines, its lonesome howl mourning her end. I’ll never hear that sound without thinking of her, either.

I can’t let that distract me, though. Even if I can’t see what’s important until it’s too late and I’ve fucked it all up, Baron can. That’s why I need him here to guide me, to tell me, so I don’t let people like Jane plant doubts in my head. This time, I won’t fuck up. I know what’s important. Mabel is endgame for both of us, the Harley Quinn to my JokerandBaron’s Batman. We don’t have to follow someone else’s story. We get to write our own ending, one in which we’re all happy, all together, all exactly what both the others need. Once we had Mabel, everything was supposed to be good again. So I need to make sure we still have her, that she didn’t take herself out of play like she tried to do before.

With that thought in mind, I head inside. The door isn’t locked. I’ll have to talk to her about that. She can’t just leave the door open when there’s a dead body being stored here.

When I walk in, though, I find Mabel sitting at the round kitchen table, a glass of soda in front of her, bubbles clinging to the square ice cubes filling it.

“Shouldn’t you be hiding?” I ask, stopping in the doorway and surveying her suspiciously. I check for a knife on the table, for blood, for any sign she’s been cutting again, but I find nothing.

“Why would I?” she asks. “Baron found me once. He’ll find me again.”

“More than once.”

“We have a problem.”

“You and me both,” I say, crossing the space and pulling out a chair. “We both failed our tests tonight.”

She nods, picking up her glass and sipping from the edge. It’s so full of ice that the brown liquid nearly spills over.

“Cherry Coke?” I ask, nodding at it.

She just looks at me.

“I remember,” I say, shrugging like it doesn’t matter. We watch each other across the table. I wonder if she remembers those little things about me, but I’m too proud to ask.

“My aunt’s not here,” she says after a minute.

“You think I came for your aunt?”

“You are at her house.”

“And? You think I fucked her once, and I’m so pathetic that now I’m attached, so I came back for more? For all you know, I came to apologize.”

“Did you?”

“No,” I say, scowling at her. “Obviously I came for you.”

“She already left,” Mabel says. “And I can’t find the body.”

“What?” I demand.

“That’s the problem,” she says.

“Fuck,” I say, jumping up. “Do you think she took it to the police?”

“No,” Mabel says, sipping her drink. “I think Baron took it. But if you don’t believe me, we can look.”

“Is this a trap?”

Now it’s her turn to scowl, but she doesn’t fool me. She’s not harmless. She’s a black widow, a panther slinking through the night, invisible but lethal.

She’s so much more than we ever gave her credit for.

“We can look together.”

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