“Early morning for yard work,” she says, voice light and teasing. I set the body down, snow crunching under my boots, and her eyes flick back to the corpse. “You’re…precise,” she says, contemplatively, staring at the bullet hole that claimed his life. Her lips twitch, but I say nothing, confused by her blank composure, watching me in quiet fascination, impervious to the scene before her. The ground gives as I roll the body into the pit, the soil and snow crumbling at the edges as it falls awkwardly, landing with a heavy thump.
I don’t spare her a single glance while I work, unconvinced that she is even human as she follows me toward my SUV for the other body. The cold bites into my gloves as I walk across the bloody path back through the snow, dragging the corpse with me. Wordlessly, I round the second pit, and pull the tarp free. It crackles beneath my hands, frozen hard from the night. Once the body is in, I straighten.
“What did they do?” she says, her voice a thread of sound caught in the wind as it begins to pick up. I pause, letting my eyes drift from her pale figure to the bodies before us, then back again, meeting her gaze. A slow smile curls at the edges of my lips.
“What makes you think they did anything at all?” I murmur, my voice low and raspy in the cold. “Maybe I just enjoy killing people.”
She tilts her head, curiosity flickering in her blue eyes, so unbelievably captivating I almost have to force myself not to stare too long before it seems weird.
“I don’t believe you,” she whispers and I raise a brow, walking over to the nearby tree for my shovel.
“Oh yeah, and why’s that?” I ask, before I begin filling the hole, the dirt falling back into the pit with each slice of metal.
“Because I don’t believe that you’re a monster,” she replies softly, as if it’s some sort of secret she keeps. Or perhaps daring me to contradict her. Her words hang over me, and I pause mid-shovel, the clumps of frozen dirt suspended for a moment. Her gaze lingers on me and I notice her hair has grown a little longer, falling over her shoulders and brushing the tops of her thighs.
“Aren’t you cold?” I finally ask, and her brows furrow slightly, a fragile crease that makes her look alive, and not the ghost I had thought she might be.
“Cold…? Oh. I’m always cold. I barely noticed.” Her soft voice is almost a sigh, as if she’s hiding something beneath the frost in her bones. I drive the shovel sharply into the mound of dirt, and step toward her. I hold out a gloved hand for her to take, and she stares at it, suspended in the space between us.
“Come with me,” I say, and her eyes widen, uncertain, as if by simply taking my hand she’d be stepping into my world and vanishing into thin air. She takes it anyway, her hand much smaller than mine, then looks up, her eyes searching my features for a moment. What will she find there? Will she see the darkness I carry? Pierce through the mask I hide behind?
Will she stay anyway?
Her lips, a natural shade of scarlet, part slightly. She does not know me. I am a stranger to her. A man she should avoid. A man not fit for a woman like her.
“Where are we going?” she questions, her voice breathy and fragile. I let my gaze linger on her for a heartbeat longer, drinking in the warmth of her ethereal presence. The ice-cold wind tugs at the hem of her dress, but she doesn’t seem bothered by it. Perhaps she is a ghost. Sent here to haunt my days, to unravel my nights, to consume the rot festering deep within my chest.
“Home,” I reply, watching as the decision ripples across her face. Danger. Intrigue. Acceptance.
But it’s her that is dangerous to me. She awakens something foreign in me. An ache. A hunger. A recklessness I do not recognize, and it feels like the ground beneath my feet will give way at any moment.
My gloved fingers curl around her cold ones, guiding her across the forest, passing the blood,passing the gravestones, the angel statues draped in snow-covered vines and debris dripping with ice. The bodies I have still yet to finish burying will keep, hidden beneath a blanket of snow. For right now, my little ghost needs to be warm.
She follows without hesitation, her presence almost weightless beside me, and I feel the pull of her gaze with every step. We reach my house, and I open the door, dropping her hand and ascending the stairs first. A silent reassurance that there isn’t anything about to jump out at her when she crosses the threshold. Nothing but the warmth that awaits her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
RAVEN
Iwatch her by the fireplace, the heat brushing her skin with soft tawny light, cradling the mug I made for her—hot chocolate—steaming between her fingers. I can feel the heat radiating from her hand, into mine, even from across the room. Her cerulean eyes are fixed on the orange and blue flames, and I trace its flicker across her face as we both stand in silence. She knows I’m a killer, knows that I’ve got blood on my hands, knows I have no remorse whatsoever. Yet it still doesn’t bother her. My mind churns, circling the question of her like an arrow searching for somewhere to land.
“You spend a lot of time out here,” she finally says, her soft voice breaking over the quiet. She must have known that I’d been watching her for her to notice. Or maybeshewatches me?
“So do you,” I murmur, leaning against the back wall, not wanting her to feel uneasy by my closeness while she’s tucked away inside my house. The leather of my jacket creaks against the wood paneling as Ishift to get comfortable. She turns, finally looking over at me, her eyes wide with intrigue and I shrug. “It’s quiet. I spend most of my time alone. You notice things.” She nods, seemingly satisfied by my answer, returning her gaze to the fireplace.
The room feels smaller with her in it, the shadows painting silhouettes across the walls like ominous finger puppets but it doesn’t do anything to distract my focus on her. It isn’t out of the ordinary for a stranger to wander through this area, but it’s mostly farmers and local street riff-raff coming to blow the cobwebs out of the exhausts of their collector cars. So why, other than in my graveyard, haven’t I ever seen her before? I notice the faint tremor in her hand, the mug shaking slightly, yet I’m not certain that it’s from fear. I know she’s aware of me standing here. Aware of the quiet surrounding us, but if she’s afraid, it’s hard to tell.
“Tell me where you’re from?” I push, needing to know as much about her as she’ll let me, but she doesn’t so much as look in my direction. When I’m convinced she’s not going to reply at all, I open my mouth, ready to apologize for being intrusive, but she speaks before I can get the words out.
“Here.”
Here?
Her shoulders shift, clutching the mug closer toher chest, the blanket I had draped over her shoulders earlier, falling away slightly, exposing the skin of her collarbone.
“This city?” I ask, tilting my head, watching as the firelight glistens across her skin. She turns slowly, and for a moment, I wonder how easy it would be to keep her here. To keep her locked away in the corners of my home, safe from the sharp, rotten teeth of the world. But she wouldn’t be safe from me, and that might just be a far more dangerous thing.
“Something like that,” she answers, slowly crossing the room and placing the empty mug down on the sidetable. She unwraps the blanket from around her shoulders, then folds it, neatly draping it over the armchair in the corner of the living room. My eyes follow her as she moves, watching the amber lit skin across the hollow of her neck, studying her. Is she being vague for a reason?Who is she?
