I force my eyes open and blink against soft light. My vision swims, then slowly focuses.
Books.
Shelves and shelves of books. Floor to ceiling. Walls lined with them. Old leather bindings. Gold lettering. The smell of paper and aged wood.
A library. I’m in a giant library.
Perhaps I’m hallucinating, tripping. Perhaps I’m still sleeping and dreaming of a happy place.
The resurrected aching in my shoulders begs to differ. Slowly, I turn my head—moving fast makes the room tilt—and take in more details. High ceiling. Ornate molding. Windows with heavy curtains drawn shut. A Persian rug beneath what looks like an antique four-poster bed.
The bed I’m strapped to.
My wrists and ankles are bound to the posts with leather cuffs. Not as brutal as that table of horror but just as effective. I can shift about six inches in any direction, but that’s it. And I’m still naked.
One nightstand on each side of the bed. More books on them with annotated sticky notes. A desk on the other side of the room with multiple monitors. They’re facing away from me. Whatever they display isn’t for me to see. A gun next to them.
A chair sits across from me. In it lies proof I’m neither in a happy place nor hallucinating.
The fucking black hoodie and the butterfly mask.
Butterfly Man, who is definitely not Jacob Torrance because Jacob has just tried to save me and failed, is…drawing.
A sketchbook in his lap, pencil moving in fast lines, he’s focused entirely on his work, as if he’s possessed.
My head races to orient myself, to remember what happened after the needle. The explosion. Did I hear an explosion? Or did I dream it?
“Buonasera, my sweet Angel. Slept well?” he says without looking up from his drawing, his voice still distorted.
“What?”
“Tino and Angel, chapter forty-eight. Isn’t that what he said to her when she woke up after their first night together? He was painting her, too. He couldn’t let that perfect moment, when she was tied up in his bed, her virginity blood drying on the sheet and between her legs after finally making her his, pass by without capturing it.” He throws a glance at me. “Isn’t that your favorite book, your favorite daddy? Your favoritestalker?”
He turns the sketch around. The image steals my breath. It’s me and him. A recreation of that scene fromThe Italian Obsession: Tino sitting naked next to Angel while she’s bound to his bed, painting her while she sleeps. It’s perfect. Every detail.Except Angel’s face is mine, and his face is blank. Just the butterfly mask where Tino’s features should be.
“Delusions are taking over again, aren’t they?” My voice comes out hoarse. “Exactly how insane are you? What I write is fantasy, not despicable atrocities I secretly want in reality.”
“Yeah?” He drops the pencil and sifts through his sketchbook until he finds something in particular. He shoves the drawing in my face. “What about this?”
It’s me again with his depiction of himself, in another scene from a book of mine. My wrists are crossed above my head, my back against a door, and he’s on his knees, eating me.
Just like Tristan and I were in that inn. The clothes are the same. The room details, too.
“Isn’t that fromThe Nightingale’s Whisper, his favorite?” he asks. “Did he come in his pants for you, too?”
I swallow. He chuckles.
“You were watching?”
“I’m always watching, darling, so don’t bother lying to me anymore. It’s borderline insulting.” He tucks my hair behind my ear. “What you write isn’t fantasy or despicable atrocities. It’s your secret desires that are so dark and depraved you question your sanity, and I, shamelessly and devotedly, will fulfill each and every single one of them with you, for you.”
“What happened to Jacob?” I force the words out to change the subject. “Where are we?”
He moves to another drawing and shows it to me. Dom and Nicky. The blue room scene. Same perfect recreation. Same masked face where the hero’s should be.
He shows me another. And another. Eighteen total. All of us. All reenactments of my own stories. All with him faceless behind that mask. “Which one do you want to start with? The darkness you write but never speak. Which one do you want to live first?”
A lump clogs my throat. My arm throbs, the right one, but my gaze flashes to the left. There is a small bandage exactly where my birth control implant is. Panic cuts through the drug haze. “No.”
