Page 86 of Half the Summer's Night
I feel hot and feverish. The few times I killed like this, it was for Uncle Nash, and always in a controlled space, the victim tied down and already worn thin from Uncle Nash’s information-gathering tactics. This is different. It’s wild and natural. It feels like what I’m meant to be doing. What I should have been doing my whole life.
I stumble back, the knife slipping out of my blood-drenched fingers. The man slumps forward in Charlotte’s arms, head lolling. His chest is ridged with all the cuts I made.
“Damn,” Charlotte says. “I feel like you needed that.”
She drops the body in the grass and wipes her bloody hands on her shorts, leaving smears of crimson in their wake. And like that, the spell breaks.
“Fuck,” I say, panic surging through me. “Fuck, we left all this evidence—We aren’t even wearing gloves?—”
“We did not leave evidence.” Charlotte grabs my arms and jostles me, making me look at her. She stares through the holes in my killing face, like she’s trying to see my eyes.
Abi does the same thing.
“Someone’s going to drive by,” I say in a panic.
“Probably,” Charlotte says. “Which is why we should skedaddle. As for evidence, don’t worry about it. Remember, we aren’t human.”
“What?” I feel dizzy. But good, too. Powerful. All that adrenaline pumping through me feels like desire, and I kind of wish Abi were here. Although if she had just seen what I did, I bet she would run screaming right to the police.
“We aren’thuman.” Charlotte scoops up the bloody knife and wipes the blade on her shirt. “So whatever DNA evidence they find, it’ll be inconclusive because they don’t know what they’re looking for.”
“Don’t fucking lie to me.”
Charlotte ambles over to the car. “I’m not,” she calls out over her shoulder. “Trust me, you would lose your mind at the kind of evidence Jaxon and I have left behind at crime scenes.”
For half a second, I have no idea what she’s talking about. Then I get it. I flush with second-hand embarrassment.
“Come on!” Charlotte calls out. “Before someone drives by, like you said.”
I race toward the car, heart pounding, and slam into the passenger seat. Charlotte turns on the engine and peels off, and I bend over to look at the rearview mirror, to watch our victim’s car recede into the distance.
“You felt it,” Charlotte says suddenly. “Didn’t you?”
I want to tell her no. Want to say I have no idea what she’s talking about. But that would be a lie. Because I did feel it when I sank her knife into that man’s chest. I can still feel it, surging through my limbs like electricity.
Power. Strength. A sense that this is my place in the world.
“Yes,” I whisper, fixing my gaze on the road in front of me. My killing face feels stuck to my skin, like it couldn’t come off even if I wanted it to. Like the two parts of me are finally melding together.
Charlotte laughs. “Want to do it again?”
I look at the clock on the dashboard. It’s a little after noon. I have plenty of time before dark. Before I need to get back to Abi.
“Fuck, yes,” I say.
31
ABI
The day moves too slowly. I manage to get some paperwork done, but I don’t even bother performing the autopsy I have on the docket. I tell myself I’ll do it tomorrow, that when Nameless comes by tonight, I’ll ask him to stay even after the sun comes up. I think he will.
I hope he will.
The promise of nightfall is both terrifying and reassuring. Reassuring because Nameless has only ever come to the funeral parlor at night, and he’s the only person I want to see right now. The only person I trust to protect me.
But it’s terrifying, too. Because I don’t know who else will be looking at me in the dark.
Fortunately, my fax machine stays quiet. No more photographs. No more messages. No one calls my work phone. Penelope and Chloe text me a few times, checking in on me. I tell them I’m fine. Lies.
