Page 21 of Serial Killer Games

“I was just trying to push you off.”

“Fair,” she breathes. “Iwastrying to strangle you.”

It’s a terrible idea to let anyone in, but it’s reassuring, the way she looks at me—even in moments like these—like she can barely stand me.

I’m someone else when I take her face in my hands and kissher. At that moment a brisk wind blows in from the harbor, swirling her loose hair around us, but her lips are warm against mine. I imagine what we must look like—red dress, dark coats, a shaft of light from the streetlamp catching reflections in her chaotic hair—but then I stop all thinking, because after a moment’s hesitation, she kisses me back. She doesn’t kiss me like she thinks I’m boring, and dull, and forgettable. And when she parts her lips against mine, smooth and wet, a terrible idea forms.

We could end this evening on a kiss—or start it.

“Come out with me tonight,” I say when I pull away.

Her expression is perfectly blank, a masterful poker face.

“To do what?”

I glance between her eyes, back and forth. Dark brown, with scalpel-sharp eyeliner. My hand is still cupping the side of her face, and the black of my glove makes her skin look pale.

“Serial killer stuff?” she asks. “Or a cozy night at home in your footie pajamas dismembering Barbies?”

And when she says that, it’s all decided for me. She’s every bit as twisted and morbid as me. She’s been signaling this whole time, putting out feelers, testing me, and I’ve been doing it right back. Are we birds of a feather? Do we have matching stripes under our clothes? I want to outdo whatever expectations of crazy she has.

It’s impossible not to feel a spasm of nerves. It’s that moment before revealing a secret, or executing a prank, or delivering the punchline of a risqué joke. The moment of uncertainty, the fear that this person willnotget it, after all. It’s that moment right before she opened the little green package I left on her keyboard.Do we laugh at the world in the same way?

“Yes,” I say.

She’s silent. “Yes to which?”

“I have a job to do.”

“A job? How boring.”

I’m not boring.

“I need to dispose of a body.”

It’s like someone tosses a pebble into the blank surface of her face. Her expression ripples, then settles back into blankness. Fear? Surely not.Amusement.Then, one eyebrow, elegantly arched. I’ve hooked her again. She’s mine for the time being.

“So youarea murderer? You keep getting more interesting, Jacob.”

10

Meat Cute

Dolores

Today of all days. Akiss on a roof, a truce with a gloved strangler, an introduction to his family to announce our pending nuptials, and now, finally, a first date.

I’mjustthat level of drunk, the level that feels euphoric and consequence-free, the level where I completely forget everything else, where all I want is to get naked and bite a man’s shoulder and make terrible choices. It’s incredible, because it’s been years—years—since I felt this way. He brushes my lips with his gloved thumb, and it all comes roaring back like a half-dead ember bursting to flame on a bit of dry tinder. Real life recedes. It’s just this moment. I angle my face to his for another kiss.

And he abruptly turns and walks away. I stare after him stupidly.

The shit-heel.

I shiver and wobble a little in my heels. I’m going to walk away too. Fucker. But before I do, Jake walks into a storefrontwithout looking back.OPEN UNTIL MIDNIGHT, says a sign in the window of an old-fashioned mom-and-pop hardware store.

I smile. Even serial killers get their meet-cute.

Inside I trail after him, up and down the aisles under the sickly green fluorescents. We must look like two night insects caught in the beam of a flashlight. We’re not meant to be seen in such bright light. We’re meant to be heard scuttling around in the dark.

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