I don’t like mysteries, and I definitely don’t like surprises. I watch her descend the stairs with a deep sense of unease.
I follow her down Frederick Street, keeping plenty of space between us.
The wind blows in her face, making her hair dance around her shoulders, sending dry leaves tumbling against her legs. When the same air reaches me, I can smell her perfume, the low, warm scent mixing with the dusty sweetness of the decaying leaves.
She’s covered head-to-toe in the baggy jeans and sweatshirt, giving no hint of how appealing she looked naked and bound. For a moment, I wish I took a picture on my phone. Already the details are losing their crispness in my mind. I’m struggling to recall the exact shape and color of her nipples and the curve of her hips.
How is she alive?
Alastor doesn’t know.
She must not have seen his face, or he’d be sitting in a cell right now. She did see my face, I know that for certain. Either she forgot it in her delirium, or she doesn’t know who I am. Which is it?
I was so certain she was dead.
I hate being wrong.
I hate it all the more for how rarely it happens.
My anger flares at the girl.
This is her fault. Her fault for defying the fate rushing toward her.
We’ve come to a cafe. She enters the building briefly, before re-emerging wearing an apron cinched around her waist, her hair pulled up in a ponytail. She immediately goes about the business of serving the guests at the outdoor tables.
I take a seat at a different cafe across the street, lingering over my coffee and toast so I can watch her.
She’s quick and efficient, and seems to know most of the patrons. In lulls between service, she pauses to talk with the ones she knows best. At one point she shakes her head and laughs, the sound drifting over the traffic between us.
It baffles me that she’s back at work. That she’s chatting and laughing.
She’s acting like nothing happened. Like the night in the woods was a fever dream. Like she knows I’m watching right now and she’s taunting me.
That can’t be true.
But I’m fixated on her, trying to find evidence of what the fuck happened.
6
Mara
I woke up strapped to a bed in a hospital in Hollister.
The nurse informed me that I’d been given four units of blood and that she couldn’t unlock the restraints for twenty-four hours, because that was hospital policy after a suicide attempt.
I was exhausted and drugged. It took much longer than twenty-four hours before I finally had a cop in front of me, taking down a statement.
I could tell from the start he didn’t believe a word I said. The nurses had shown him the outfit I was wearing when I came in, and he couldn’t seem to grasp the concept that it wasn’t something I ordered off Amazon.
“I know you kids get into some kinky shit,” he said, notebook open on his knee, not a thing written down inside it. “What happened? The guy took it too far?”
“Well he tried to murder me,” I snapped. “So yeah, that was a bit far for my tastes.”
The officer stared at me impassively, the pouches under his eyes deep enough to store handfuls of loose change.
“You’re saying he did that?” he said, nodding toward my bandaged wrists.
It took forty-nine stitches to close up the gashes.
“Yes,” I hissed.
“What about those?” He pointed his pen to the other scars farther up my arm, above the bandages. Thin white slashes, a dozen in a row. “He do those, too?”
I was boiling with rage, incandescent with it. I wanted to rip that pen out of his hand and jam it through his iris.
“No,” I said, through gritted teeth. “He didn’t do those.”
“Uh-huh,” Officer Fuckhead said. This time he did scribble something down, and in that moment I hated him almost more than the man who put me in the hospital bed.
“So where did you meet this guy?” the cop asked me. “Tinder?”
“I DIDN’T FUCKING MEET HIM!” I screamed. “HE KIDNAPPED ME OFF THE STREET!”
The fact that I never saw his face, that I couldn’t describe anything about him, also sounded like bullshit. I thought he might be tall. Strong enough to lift and carry me.
When he removed the hood over my head—when I squirmed and struggled and finally rolled over—he was already gone.
The one thing I didn’t tell Officer Fuckhead was what I saw next. The figure who came and stood over me. The one with the face of an angel and the eyes of a black hole.
I was afraid it would only make me sound more insane.