Page 63 of How I Met Your Murderer

“Yeah—you loved it,” I teased, grinning at the memory. The chef in his stained apron beaming with pride as he presented the cosmic horror in a pie plate, and Raff clutching the countertop for dear life after a single bite.

“You laughed so hard the lights flickered!” Raff accused, threading our fingers together.

“You gagged so hard Máirtín nearly banned you from the kitchen,” I shot back. “We could hear him weeping in the scullery for days.”

The monk chuckled, clearly amused by us. His pale eyes skimmed over our joined hands, but rather than looking repulsed or upset, he cracked a smile. He was missing a canine tooth. “You two are worse than Lady Arabella and her stable lad,” he said fondly.

Raff’s face went scarlet, and I had to look away from both of them, suddenly fascinated by the pattern of cracks in the tower wall.

Having spent sixteen years drifting, invisible, feared or unwanted at best, it was overwhelming to be fully seen. And not just that, but to be seen with Raff like this—as a man holding the hand of the man he had just masturbated with on an antique and probably very expensive couch.

But the monk only kept smiling, and finally continued, “When the chef added the powder to his recipe, the fire leapt higher than I’d ever seen. It burned the hair right off Máirtín’s face and set the whole kitchen ablaze. And in the flames . . .”

When he hesitated, both Raff and I leaned forward slightly, drawn in by the long pause.

“There was a shape,” the monk said slowly, frowning. “Tall. Too tall. Like a man made of fire, but . . . not shaped quite like one. Its limbs, if you could call them that, bent wrong. It danced in the flames, and the heat of it warped the air around it even with the whole kitchen going up—flames licking the ceiling, pots melting. And Máirtín . . . he was still alive at that point. Alive and in a panic to snuff the flames, until he saw it dancing. His eyes went wide, and then he fell. Dropped dead right where he stood. And that thing . . . danced right over his body without a care. Almost like it was celebrating.”

Dropped dead right where he stood.

It sounded too familiar.

The space around my ribs went thin, like the world was shrinking me to fit. I needed to move. To get away from the flickering artificial candlelight and just be in Raff’s arms for a minute. Because if this figure made of flame had killed before—dropped someone on the spot—then maybe it had also ignited the skull candle and threatened Raff’s family. And maybe, just maybe, it had seen me standing on the topmost balcony sixteen years ago and . . .

But I hadn’t been burned. A figure made of fire was bound to leave a mark. Right?

We thanked Brother Fintan and hurried down the stairwell from the tower. It was cold and narrow, so the smallest noises made a deep echo. Raff’s flashlight bounced against the stone ahead of us, but the long shadows it threw seemed to reach back toward us with grasping fingers.

Halfway down, Raff stopped.

“Is your knee—?” I started to ask.

“No, but Eric,” he interrupted urgently, his voice low and rough. “Just come here.”

I stepped into his arms right away. His hands came up to cradle my face, wonderfully warm and not shaking in the slightest, which helped steady me, too. I leaned into that touch like it was the only solid thing in the world.

The seed of fear Fintan’s story had planted in me had taken root and was swiftly growing, cold and sharp. The image of Máirtín collapsing in the fire. The shape in the flames leaping and swaying over his fallen form. The knowledge that the thing we were calling Gary had been killing for centuries . . .

Raff’s forehead settled gently against mine. “This is a lot, I know. Old Gary’s been killing for a long time. Sounds like all he does is consume.”

“Devour,” I whispered with a little shudder. “Yeah. And I wonder if . . .” I couldn’t quite bring myself to say it, even to Raff, because that might make it real. I wondered if I had seen this figure made of fire and forgotten. It wasn’t like I remembered the day of my death at all, as Raff knew. “I wonder if we’ll hear other stories like Brother Fintan’s, and if so, how we’re supposed to fight something that’s made of fire,” I finished lamely, because Raff was still looking at me expectantly. Patient and kind. “But we’ll figure it out. I believe in us. I believe in you.”

His eyes softened, vulnerable in a way that pulled at my light, like a lantern guttering.

So I kissed him. Soft and slow at first. Then desperate. Grateful, as his lips caught mine and pulled me back into myself. Pressed close, I counted his heartbeats again—one . . . two . . . three—each one steady, another tether to here and now, and not sixteen years ago at the top of a castle I couldn’t even remember walking into.

His hands slid into my hair. Mine curled into the fabric of his overalls. The stairwell felt too small to contain everything I felt—fear, longing, love, the knife of needing to let go when all I wanted was to hang on tighter than ever.

When we finally pulled apart, he pressed a kiss into the top of my hair. “Okay,” he whispered hoarsely, “Time to do what we do best: let’s keep goin’.”

The stables were even colder than usual, judging by the way Raff nestled deeper into his jacket. He set a battery-powered lantern on the edge of a stall for shy, skittish Donnacha, the young stable hand who had been here even longer than Chef Máirtín.

I spotted the stable hand first, as a shimmer at the corner of my eye, and gently put a hand on Raff’s arm. I guided him to the stall where Donnacha brushed a horse who hadn’t existed for centuries while humming an old tune.

Raff cleared his throat. “Tráthnóna maith, a chara,” he said gently. Then, although he really didn’t need to translate the basics for me anymore, he added almost out of habit, “Good evening, friend. We’re asking everyone the same question tonight, if you’ve got a moment.”

Donnacha held his soft-bristled brush above the old mare’s flank and considered us, blinking slowly. “A moment,” he agreed. “But that’s all. The work never ends around here.”

“You’re telling us,” I whispered, mostly to Raff, tugging a lock of his hair.