Instead, he turn and walks away. Leaving me there alone.
27
Cole
Shaw knows.
The look of triumph on his face was unbearable.
He had no idea she was still alive.
He’s been out wilding the last few weeks, not paying attention to me, his work, our mutual acquaintances, or anything else that should have tipped him off.
That’s what happens when he goes on a frenzy: he disappears from the art world until the madness passes. Until he’s ready to act sane again.
He killed two girls. That means there’s one more to go.
He’s never satiated until he takes the third. Then he goes quiet—sometimes for months at a time.
That’s his cycle. I’ve watched it happen.
He’s predictable. I’m afraid I can predict exactly what he’ll do next:
He’ll try to take Mara as his last kill.
He would love the symmetry of that—he was the one who gave her to me, and he could take her away.
He might do it just to see how I’d react. To see if he could truly make me snap.
I don’t know how the fuck to stop it from happening. Even I can’t watch Mara every minute, every hour. If Shaw is determined to hunt her, how the fuck can I keep her safe?
Especially when she’s reckless and stubborn, determined to get herself killed. I saw the look in her eye—ordering her to stay away from Shaw only makes her want to defy me.
So I terrified her on purpose.
She thinks she isn’t scared of monsters? I’ll show her a fucking demon out of hell.
And it worked. She didn’t come to the studio yesterday, or today either. I know how scared she must be if she stayed home when she’s aching to work on her painting.
She’s home, but not actually alone. I’m watching her right now through the telescope. Watching her lay in bed, reading.
She finished Dracula. Now she’s started The Butterfly Garden. I’m not familiar with that one, but if it interests Mara, I want to read it. I want to know everything in her head.
I’ve been following her continually. It won’t be enough.
Alastor won’t give up that easy.
I could kill him.
That eventuality has always loomed between us.
He knows too much about me, and me about him.
I’ve been tempted to do it many times before.
I almost followed through after he deposited Mara in my dumping ground. I should have done it then.
I’m not afraid of Shaw. But I’ve put myself at a disadvantage: it’s not just me versus him. I have to protect Mara, too—if I want to keep her safe for myself, for my own use.
I’m spread thin. Covering too much ground.
This is exactly why I always avoided these kinds of entanglements. Mara complicates my life in a hundred different ways.
Yet here I am neglecting my own work so I can watch her.
It’s addicting. All-consuming. It has a literal physical effect on me when I’m not near her, when I can’t see her. My muscles twitch like I’ve had too much caffeine. The craving builds and builds until I can’t think about anything else. I lose all my powers of focus because my mind is pulled away after her.
Watching her creates the opposite effect. The drug courses through my veins and I’m soothed, relaxed, purposeful once more.
Several hours pass. It’s late now—past midnight. I should go home and sleep in my own bed.
I stay because of the nagging sensation that she’s not safe, not even asleep in her room.
Shaw is going to do something, I know it. He saw us at the party together, and now he’s going to take some action, leave some sign to let me know that I didn’t fool him for a second.
He must be over the fucking moon right now. His plan worked better than he ever could have dreamed.
All he wanted was to entice me into killing Mara. He never imagined that I might form an attachment to her.
And, as difficult as it is for me to admit . . . that’s exactly what I’ve done. I’m fixated on her. Obsessed with her, even.
Which gives Shaw all the power he could desire and more. I’ve put my attachment onto something fragile, something impossible to keep safe and under my control.
It’s exhausting. This level of focus is draining.
Also, I’m starting to realize that what entices me about Mara is the contact high I get when I’m near her. She feels things so intensely that it makes me feel them too.
I have no control over that effect. I can’t choose what to feel and what not to feel, not anymore. Mara infects me against my will.
Right now, she’s so sleepy that she can barely keep her eyes open. Her head keeps nodding forward and then jerking up again, while she sits propped up on the pillows in her bed, trying to sneak in a few more pages of her paperback.