Page 30 of Begging for Mercy
She waves her hand dismissively. “Oh, you know how it is. Always up in the clouds.”
Okay, Granny is a dead end.
Pushing my chair out, I stub my cigarette on the table, drain the rest of my glass, and set it in the farmhouse sink. “I’ll wait for Mercy upstairs.” But first, a self-guided tour of their home. The walls are exposed wood, dark from age and repeated finishings. In fact, I’d say this house was originally a log cabin that has been redesigned a few times over the decades. Pictures dating back centuries line the hallways, from grainy black and white images to clear as day modern ones. I look between the photos and pinpoint where Mercy gets her looks from; all of the women in the family have the same haunting beauty. Thick, dark locks, pale complexions, and vibrant eyes like autumn bonfires. Mercy’s mother, in fact, is an absolute knockout. Her smiles are full of life and laughter, especially in candid shots with her husband. The two are head over heels for each other.
After placing a camera along the edge of one frame, I move into the den and immediately sneeze from the stale air. Dust covers most surfaces and the curtains are drawn shut, castingthe room in an eerie gloom. For a couple so in love, their home is staggeringly devoid of warmth. I flick on the overhead light and peruse the built-in shelves. They’re as cluttered as the kitchen cabinets—all except for one. Not a single speck of dust covers its surface, and a familiar wooden box with a golden lock sits in the center. Mercy’s mother is smiling at me from a framed photograph sitting beside it.
Mrs. Morningstar is dead.
From the looks of things, she’s been gone for years. Did the son succumb to depression and disappear? Attempt suicide? I consider the idea that he’s also deceased, but I’ll have to look for an obituary to be sure. Granny says he’s in the clouds—so he very well could be dead.
Maybe Mercy’s doorstep has been graced by more tragedy than I realized.
I merely glance inside Mercy’s father’s bedroom, unwilling to step inside his grief, and don’t bother with Granny’s. When I make it around to the front of the house again, Granny is sitting in a rocking chair near the front door.
“She won’t be home for a few hours,” the old woman mutters, fanning herself with a paper fan. “Mercy likes to linger elsewhere.” She holds out her hand to offer me the three tarot cards from earlier. “You mustn’t forget. Under your pillow.” Placing them in my palm, she pats the back of my hand.
“Sure, Granny.” I slip the cards into my back pocket. “I’ll do that.”
As if.
I follow her gaze out the window and find nothing of interest. The graves I cleared earlier appear brighter in the morning light than their dingy counterparts, and a sense of accomplishment stirs inside my chest. “Thanks for the tea,” I tell Granny, but she doesn’t seem to hear me. Her brow pinches as she stares out the window, suddenly focused on thin air. I pat her shoulder beforemoving up the stairs, carefully setting a bug and a camera at the top. I put another pair in the upstairs bathroom once it becomes clear that Mercy’s the only one living on the second floor. Her brother’s room is covered in nearly as much dust as the den, with various athletic trophies and memorabilia left to tarnish. A newspaper clipping of his mother’s obituary, however, catches my eye.
Ingrid Morningstar was only forty when she died.
Doing the math, that puts Mercy at… fifteen or so when she lost her mother. I try to empathize for the briefest possible moment, but nothing stirs inside my heart. Not unexpected, but perhaps unfortunate. I find myself scowling at her mother’s obituary, but I’m not sure what I was expecting. To suddenly burst into tears at someone’s sob story? To feel bad for the young girl and her family for losing a true light in their lives?
People die all the time, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
I ignore the flicker of emotion that comes when I think of one day losing Kane, knowing that if I travel down that path, the dam I keep locked up tight will burst. It’s better to feel nothing at all than give in to the flood beyond the gates.
For good measure, I place one camera in Malachi’s room before retreating to Mercy’s bedroom and closing the door behind me. In the daylight, her room appears messier than it did the other night. Art supplies are scattered across the floor in what resembles organized chaos, with various brushes, paint types, and drawing pencils lying in piles. Easels and sketchbooks are a dime a dozen in here; most are open, and I flip through the closest ones before moving to the sketchbook laid out on her desk. This one is filled from front to back with only a few blank pages remaining. Loose sheets of paper with various stages of design linger outside the sketchbook, like she wasn’t sure what she was drawing at first and didn’t want to commit it to thepermanence of her sketchbook. My eyes linger on the topmost page where a man’s face, featureless, stares blankly up at me.
Heat licks a nasty path up my arms and legs, burning deep enough that I feel like a dragon about to spit fire. I quickly turn away from her desk and get to work rigging the room with cameras, putting most of them here rather than scattering them around the house. If Mercy can’t sleep, I’ll know. If she dreams in fits and screams, I’ll hear her. And if she brings anyone to her bed at night, I’ll be watching.
Kane knows of my video feeds and usually leaves them alone, but if he finds out that I’ve rigged Mercy’s bedroom this extensively, he’ll demand access to the footage. This needs to be kept a secret or he’ll fall for her faster and harder than he already is. I drag my bottom lip through my teeth and slump into Mercy’s desk chair. The candle on her windowsill has been replaced after I knocked it over the other night, and I light it with the matches set beside it. The flame flickers but can’t compete with the natural light pouring through the curtainless window. Even at night, I bet it fights against the silvery moonlight, desperate to keep the viewer’s attention. But a single candle can only do so much. It would have to grow into an inferno to have a chance at beating something as powerful and compelling as the moon.
Sometimes, I wonder why I even try.
As I wait for Mercy to return home, I idle away the hours flipping through the thickest sketchbook on her desk—the one that’s nearly filled. Every single drawing is done in unforgiving charcoal, the thick, black lines a testament to either her confidence or her stupidity. The passage of time within those pages is evident only by her wandering focus. She’ll start sketching a flower that eventually wilts a few pages down, or the tree overlooking a grave will lose its leaves as a wintry snow blankets the page. Sometimes she’ll start sketching a figure andthen cross it out with angry slashes. A few torn edges cling to the book’s spine, but their contents are lost, undoubtedly crumpled in the trash heap.
Grabbing the edges of the sketchbook, I lean back and prop my feet up on her desk, grabbing the closest charcoal pencil and flipping to the final page in her sketchbook. What no one knows is that while Kane paints, I draw. Messy sketches, full of scratchy lines and wacky shading, but it’s drawing nonetheless. I picture Kane at first, but he’s quickly joined by Mercy, the two of them holding hands as they lean into each other and threaten to kiss right in front of me. I draw what I see in my mind’s eye, keeping Kane’s hair a light gray and Mercy’s the darkest shade of black, carefully drawing in the details from memory. As the minutes pass, Kane’s visage shifts. His hair darkens. His muscles are less defined. The slant of his lips is flatter, and his hand isn’t on Mercy’s waist, it’s tangled in the thick strand of raven hair grazing her neck. An open window with a candle on its sill sits just beyond their silhouette, and she peers up at him with a subtle curve to her lips and her hand resting on his throat.
I’m so absorbed in getting Mercy’s expressionjust rightthat I don’t notice the sun crawling across the sky or the cooling temperatures as morning shifts to afternoon then quickly slides into evening. I’m fixing the shading on her combat boots when I hear them coming up the stairs. I jolt out of my trance and slam the sketchbook shut only to tilt too far back in my chair. I catch the barest glimpse of Mercy pushing open her bedroom door before I topple over and slam into the unforgiving hardwood.
She’s on me in seconds, tossing her bag to the ground and stepping on my throat.
This isn’t quite how I imagined my evening going.
“Zane,” she growls, pressing down harder against my windpipe. “What the hell are you doing in my room? Or having tea with my grandmother?” She shakes her head with one short,jerky motion and forgets to breathe, a vein in her neck appearing with her distress.
I relax my body and grab her ankle, the leather of her boot worn thin enough that it fits like a second skin. Her body heat radiates into my palm. Grinning up at her, I dig my fingers into her Achilles heel and enjoy her full-bodied flinch. She doesn’t move, so neither do I, the two of us locked in a stalemate. I would tell her that she needs to be careful before I slit her tendon with my knife, but I can’t speak until she lets up on my throat.
Too bad, not very sad.
“Answer me,” she hisses, glaring twice as hard.
If I actually hurt her, Kane will blow up at me.It’s too soon, I can hear him whine, and I have to stop myself from rolling my eyes. If she’s bad enough to stomp on my fucking neck, she can handle a little pain. I ease up my grip on her Achilles tendon and tap the toes of her boot instead. After a moment’s hesitation, she eases up enough for me to breathe. The inhale burns. I use the pain to keep me grounded. “Needed to check something.” Grabbing the ridiculously flowy fabric of her skirt, I wrench it aside to check that her panties are still in place.
