Page 87 of Lovely Wicked Things

“Ha, yeah. The universe.” I nod slowly. “The universe didn’t do any of this, Kallum. You did.”

He shrugs a shoulder. “Sometimes the universe needs a little help.”

“Where is it?” I demand. “Where is the cufflink? The one that I left behind in your fireplace when I ran out of your townhouse after I realized I’d killed an innocent man.”

“Innocent is a stretch for Wellington.”

I clench my hands as I try to control my rapid inhalations. Eventually, I did recover most of my memory from that night. By the time I made it back to my hotel room, shock and sleep deprivation wreaking havoc, I buried everything into a filing box, thinking I could bury my guilt. It wasn’t that I had killed a man that shattered my mind; it was that I had killed aninnocentman.

And I had done so with the Harbinger.

“While you never cease to impress me, sweet Halen, you’re still missing a key piece.”

I lift my chin defiantly. “And that’s exactly what I came here to get.”

But first, I have to understand the madness of the man.

I sit in the leather chair across from him and look over into the fire. “Wellington was always a part of the equation, just not as the actual killer. He was supposed to be the scapegoat. You always have to have a scapegoat. So in order to solve the equation, we have to have the unknown variable.” I lock with his severe gaze. “Me.”

He captures me with that irresistible smolder, and I hate how it affects me, how my heart squeezes. I stand and pace the room, my gaze cast down at the floor, letting my thoughts take me back to that moment with Kallum in the killing fields when he brought up the Harbinger case.

“Atropos, Lachesis, and Styx,” I recite. “Three species of the death’s-head hawkmoth. All from the Greek mythos, and all associated with the underworld, with death. When I said the species of the moth was irrelevant to the Harbinger case, you made sure to point this out to me, that the Acherontia moth is an omen of death.” I glance up at him. “I didn’t understand what you were trying to tell me at the time, but I do know you never say anything randomly. There’s always a reason.”

As his gaze roves over me, a sly smile brightens his features. “God, you’re brilliant. No one else could’ve put this together, Halen.”

“I keep trying to understand why you chose the moth, why you devised such elaborate, macabre scenes, how they connected to Wellington. I just couldn’t understand your reasoning, so I went back to the Harbinger letters. They were too vague, some obscure riddle. At first, once I linked the victims to Wellington, I thought they were only meant to denote his doomsday. That’s what the authorities were supposed to glean from them, right?”

The setup looks like Wellington was killing off people who could hurt him financially and career-wise. Kallum is, quite literally, a genius. His victim selection process was meticulously tailored to Wellington, a gift wrapped package for law officials to make their case.

“Care to elaborate?” I prompt him.

“Only if you whip out the sharp objects so we can put these cuffs to good use.”

At my refusal to be baited by his charm, Kallum shifts his gaze to the flickering flames. “It was like it was predestined,” he says. “Percy Wellington set himself up the first day he walked into my lecture hall. He laid the foundation for the Harbinger in that room, with his ideals and talk of doom.” He smiles to himself. “Percy was already a monster. I just gave him a moniker.”

I shake my head. “But that doesn’t explain the letters, Kallum.”

He reacts to my use of his name, his throat working to force a swallow.

“What were the letters?—?”

“They were love letters.” His gaze snaps to me as his words compress the tense atmosphere to a point.

My throat tight, I swallow past the torrid ache. “To me,” I say to clarify. “They were love letters to me.”

He nods once.

My thoughts drift back as I recall what Kallum said to me that night in the marsh, when he opened himself up about his fear of losing me:All risk poses a threat of ruin. If you want to destroy me, don’t take your next breath.His wording was just similar enough to the phrasing in the Harbinger letters.

“You were always trying to tell me,” I say as I swipe my hair from my vision. “The letters were about me, an omen for my future doomsday. My death.”

Devyn said I would figure it out—and I thought she was the delusional one.

“To prevent your death, Halen,” he says, offering further clarity.

“I still don’t understand how?—”

“Yes, you do.”

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