Page 101 of Serial Killer Games

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

She bites her lip. “I’m not a very nice person.”

I’ve always respected that about her. There are so many other more important qualities. Integrity. Bravery. Kindness—which is completely different from being nice. And it’s dangerous for a woman to be nice to the wrong man. I knew that even before listening to her murder podcasts.

“The thing is,” she continues, tilting her head to one side in that way she does, her voice dropping to a whisper, “you’ve always scared the shit out of me.”

It’s a dark little secret she’s been clutching tight. This is Dodi finally lying down and exposing her belly to me.

“My serial killer vibes.”

“Sure. The serial killer vibes.” There are twin flames in her eyes from the fireplace. Her voice is soft. “You’re not afraid of me, though.”

Not even a little. The thing about Dodi’s hardness is it’s brittle. Her sharpness is from all the jagged edges left from every time she’s been bumped and dropped and knocked around, when each trauma sprouted protective shards, pokingout like spines. Glass-like, glittering, cold as ice, or diamonds, or some substance that will cut and freeze you at the same time, the softness inside protected from thin-skinned idiots who make a clumsy grab for it. But I’ve never been afraid of her sharp edges. When I lean into them, my own jagged edges line up with hers. I give way where she needs me to, and the gaps missing from her contour draw me out into my own authentic shape, too.

“Am I still on that list?” she asks, leaning in close.

I shake my head, and my voice is a whisper. “I took you off ages ago.”

“I’m glad,” Dodi says, her breath on my lips.

She kisses me, while the clock on the mantel ticks sedately past four in the morning and the fire crackles, Bill snores in the sitting room next to the kitchen, Laura sleeps upstairs in the room next to Cat’s, and the house is as still as a tomb. With the sort of confidence I wish I could summon at will, Dodi rests her head on my shoulder and takes my hand in hers, and it’s settled: I’m not moving an inch until my flesh peels from my skeleton and my bones turn to dust. We fall asleep.

43

Christmas Spirit

Dodi

I wake slowly to aheartbeat ticking under my ear. When I peel my face from Jake’s shirt front, he blinks blearily and rubs his eyes, leaving his glasses askew on his nose, and I have the stupidest, half-asleep instinct to reach up and straighten them, to touch his stubbly cheek, to scritch my fingernails against his scalp as I smooth his hair. Snow still falls outside, although it’s early morning now. The last embers smolder in the grate, and the tree twinkles.

I start when I realize we’re not alone. Jake’s aunt stands in the doorway to a grand old dining room, decked out in outrageous Christmas pajamas, an old-fashioned silver coffee service in her hands and a huge, sunny smile on her face. In the doorway opposite stoops an old man I don’t recognize, with tufty white hair and a ratty robe. He gazes dumbfounded at the scene before him, like he was a recipient of Jake’s Christmas surprise too. Jake and I shuffle upright on the old velvet sofa, bones cracking, sensation shooting painfully back intoour numb limbs, and then there’s a creak on the stairs. We all turn to look.

Cat drifts down in her odd Victorian nightgown, dragging her fingers along the carved wood banister, singing a weird, dirgelike tune, and I’m not certain, but I think I can make out the words to “Frosty the Snowman.” She’s always been my weird little Wednesday Addams, and I love her that way, Ido, but in this moment, I just want her to be the sort of happy Christmas child that claps her hands in wonder at the tree. I tried my absolute hardest for her, failed catastrophically, swallowed my pride, accepted help, tried again—and I just want to know I did it right. Ineverknow if I’m doing it right.

She glides into the room and mutely takes in the tree, the holiday homeware aisle exploded all over the room, the smattering of Halloween interspersed throughout, the grown-ups she knows and the two she doesn’t, and gazes at all of us with that solemn wise-child expression that always sets off all my alarm bells when we’re out trying to pass for a normal mother and daughter, and says, “This house is haunted.”

I shrivel for one second, but then Jake’s aunt sighs like that’s the sweetest thing she ever heard, and the old man, who has apparently already adapted to the upside-down world he woke up in, says with a twinkle, “Anyone can see that.” She does look like a little ghost or spirit in that gown. He directs a crinkly old smile at Cat, and Jake’s aunt beams at her too, like they both already had little Cat-shaped holes in their hearts and she’s popped right into place.

We settle down to unwrap the presents under the tree. Most of the gifts are addressed to people who aren’t here. Cat unwraps each one and passes it to whichever adult claims it. Bill makes a bid for a luxurious bathrobe. Laura helps herselfto a wool blanket she’d apparently bought for her sister-in-law. I take a black Chanel handbag—thisseason’s—and bundle it back up in its tissue paper and cradle it in my lap like a little baby while Jake gives me a look. I’m a materialistic monster. And there’s more, so much more. Cat takes a Barbie mansion and a dozen more gifts besides—two of everything, for some reason—but she seems happy enough about it. Throughout it all, we drink coffee and chitchat and joke, like this isn’t strange at all. No one asks for an explanation for the sudden appearance of Christmas, or for waking up in a strange house, or for the relationships linking us together. We all just narrowly escaped a dreadful Christmas by the skin of our teeth.

“It’s a lovely old place,” Jake’s aunt—Laura—says to Jake’s grandfather—Bill. “It would make a lovely funeral home.”

I get the feeling this is Laura’s highest praise.

Bill scratches his hairy ear with a skeptical look and points at the grunting mass of straggly white fur on the rug in front of him. “I pulled something like that from my shower drain once. You’re not supposed to name it and feed it.”

“She’s mine now,” Cat says rapturously, tugging the dog into her lap. The old bichon frisé whines in ecstasy as she pulls a freshly unwrapped baby onesie over his head.

I jump in quickly. “It’s not our dog.”

“Oh, a family dog is everyone’s dog!” Laura says. “We can share him.”

This is quickly getting out of hand. I glance at Jake, but he just watches me, inscrutable. Amused?

“But you said we would get a dog,” Cat reminds me. “We have a dog roof.”

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