Page 112 of Behind the Shadows
He nodded slowly.
I stared out the window in the basement.
Something about the shadows seemed different now. Not just dark, but hungry.
Thirty minutes passed. Dope stayed quiet. He hadn’t spoken for a while. I watched him out of the corner of my eye, his gaze unfocused, flicking occasionally to his forearm where the tattoo lived. Where the boy in the drawing had worn it first.
Dope didn’t say he was scared. He didn’t need to. And I didn’t need to tell him I’d seen him save and hide that file.
Some truths weren’t meant to be dragged into the light—not yet.
But I knew this much:
The Pied Piper wasn’t only a memory. He wasn’t a relic of our pasts. He was still here. Still playing. And we had just stepped a little farther onto his stage.
49
KIP
“I have eyes and ears everywhere, cops and politicians are on my payroll, I own more property and land than you could ever imagine. So, what makes you think that I don’t know about you? What you did for your uncle with cleaning the bodies, the kills you’ve not shared with your friends, the bloodlust, and what you all do in the Horizon Society. I do think it’s brilliant to feed Death his victims so he can stay under the radar. Dope had a good idea with that one. Death is very creative in how he kills and tortures as well. And Ella.” The Pied Piper clapped his hands together several times, the sound echoing through the small cabin. “I just adore her. Death did very well with her.”
My chest squeezed tight as he rattled off more details about my life, including when I’d left on trips with Uncle Vinny, and when Mother had put the belt around my arm and shot heroin into my veins.
“Lily was reporting to you,” I muttered.
“They all are, but some of those details my people weren’t around to see. Think, Kip. How would I know where Death killed his latest victims to make sure there wasn’t a trace of evidence?You came in to clean as well, but I was there before you almost every time.”
I frowned, trying to understand how he knew. Who was his informant? My nostrils flared as Dope came to mind. He had the tools and skills to cover his tracks and conversations. Maybe all the information he’d found on the Pied Piper was fed to him to keep us off the Pied Piper’s trail. It would explain how he knew where we were all the time.
I leaned forward. “How?”
The words that tumbled out of his mouth next sent ice through my goddamn veins.
“Didn’t you ever wonder how you were able to get your cross?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I was older and stronger than Mother. It was the knife she carved my skin with, and I swore she’d never fucking do it again. I overpowered her and ripped the chain off her neck one day.”
“Did she wear it all the time?”
I shook my head. “Hardly ever; that’s why I took advantage of the opportunity.”
“Don’t you think Lily was smarter than that?”
My jaw clenched. “What are you getting at?”
“You were supposed to have the necklace, Kip. I wanted you to have it. It was a gift from me.”
I gawked at him. “Why the fuck would you give me a gift?”
Silence.
The air around us crackled with a dark, foreboding energy that threatened to turn me inside out.
“Before you took it from Lily, I had a tracker and a camera put into one end of the cross. It’s not visible to anyone. You thought you chose to wear it out of rebellion, but you’ve hardly taken the necklace off for years. It also served as a symboliccollar. It marked you as mine. No one was to touch you or Death. Even—well, we’ll save that for a conversation for another day.”
Jesus Christ, I’d fucked Holland with that cross!
“From the look on your face, you’re remembering all the ways you’ve used that crucifix.”
