Page 35 of Lovely Violent Things

“Then what am I missing?” Agitation creeps into her locked frame. “Why go through the effort to confiscate the hemlock? It’s a huge risk.”

I cock an eyebrow. “You’re overlooking a vital piece,” I say. “You’re failing to consider that he may no longer have need of his higher men because he’s found someoneworthier. In that case, it’s likely they’ve become a burden. Serving up hemlock hotcakes would remedy that.”

She can’t completely accept the danger she’s in, because she can’t trust the source. This is why she has to come to these conclusions on her own.

Trusting that I’m telling her the truth is a double-edged sword—or a doubled-edged tire iron.

If she believes what I tell her is the truth, then she has to contend with a much darker, frightening reality, one where she’s capable of her very own monstrous acts.

That tendril of fear coils tighter, and she wraps an arm around her waist as she defiantly battles her doubts. Then, glancing at the sun-bleached skulls, she says, “Where are the antlers?”

“Maybe he’s fucking with us.”

She eyes me with a healthy measure of contempt. “There’s something else here,” she says, gloving her hand. “Start looking.”

“You mean, like this?” I can’t help the smug smile that curls my lips as I step aside to reveal the symbol.

8

PHILOSOPHER’S STONE

KALLUM

Scored into the hard-packed clay of the ravine wall is the symbol for the philosopher’s stone.

The accusation in Halen’s slitted gaze is adorable. “You really enjoy doing that.”

“I don’t have much else in the way of entertainment.”

“You just let me ramble on,” she shakes her head, “wasting time.”

I shrug. “You were on a roll. Here—” I extend my hand as she steps across the blanched bones to help her over to my side. “You might be right about this being his first site.”

“How’s that.” She moves closer to inspect the alchemic symbol. The philosopher’s stone is depicted as a circle within a triangle, within a larger circle.

“At the first crime scene, we thought the pupils of the dissected eyes were positioned to point to the hemlock. But they were looking past it, at his sacred site, his beginning.” I glance around the ravine. “This place holds his answers. That’s why he used lemon to conceal the path here.”

If he exposed it by removing the hemlock, he has something diabolical planned. As my gaze falls to Halen, unease crawls beneath my flesh.

“This is where he made a choice.” I rest my arm on the clay wall as I lean over her. “Sitting here in this ravine, pondering philosophical thoughts.”

She peeks up at me. “People really do that?”

“Don’t you?” I give her my smoldering smile.

Returning her attention to the symbol, she brings her camera around and captures a few pictures. “Not if I can help it.”

Beneath the banter—which I admittedly enjoy—is the sliver of truth found in her words. Pondering life for Halen would be a torturously cruel pastime. As evident in the way she tried to conceal all reminders of her grief and heartache under the verse inked on her skin, right over the scar which reminds her of her loss.

“Maybe you just need something rousing to stir your soul.”

I’m so close to her, I hear the catch of breath in her throat. See the way she purposely tries not to blink to show the effect her pondering mind has on her. I imagine her amid the dancing firelight, an ethereal goddess with a crown of bone, her body beautiful and glistening with my blood, and feel the furious tempo of her heart.

I know she’s thinking about that moment too.

If I leaned in right now, one quick dip of my head, I could taste her. With her defenses lowered, the lure to steal inside her soul and stoke the flames higher is a demanding pulse in my veins.

Something feverish flashes in her hazel gaze before she says, “The beginning and the end.” She straightens, pulling away from the symbol and me. “If this is where it started, then something happened here. A person doesn’t just suddenly decide to immortalize themselves with an ancient wisdom. There was some inciting incident, a trigger…”

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