Page 4

My skin prickles. My mother was right: for all that I might want to think otherwise, I am a prey animal. I might know how to fight back, but, like a house cat, I’m very, very aware that I am not at the top of the food chain. And it’s not because I’m a woman, either.

“All right, well—” I fish around for a twenty and set it down next to the cash register. Flick my gaze over to the camera beside the Powerball rack. I wonder if that’s how he’s watching me, or if there’s another camera behind the register. I don’t see one. “Here you go,” I finish. “I’ll be on my way.”

“Thank you,” the man says. “I appreciate your business.” Then, a beat later: “Sorry for any inconvenience.”

“Uh, sure. Of course.” I don’t really mean it. The truth is, this place is giving me the creeps. A million alarm bells are going off in the back of my head, and I keep my senses alert as I gather my snacks in my arms and make a beeline for the door. No footsteps behind me, no reflections in the glass windows. When I step outside, the parking lot is still empty save for my car. There’s no obvious place for someone to hide, either.

I breathe out. At least I parked close to the entrance, and I move quickly as I unlock my car, offload my snacks, jump into the driver’s seat. I check the backseat: empty. I peer through the windshield at the gas station windows. There’s no sign of movement inside. When I turn on the engine, I hold my breath, but it kicks on without a problem.

“Fucking weird,” I mutter, although the truth is that the Backwoods Gas and Go is not the first fucking weird place I’ve stopped at, nor is it the first that’s set my prey-animal instincts blazing. That’s what happens when you avoid the main roads because you and an anarchist named Adrian are planning to crash a billionaire’s Halloween party in a week.

I don’t wait around. I don’t even bother to hook my music back up, just back out a little too quickly, gravel flying up in an arc around my tires. My engine rumbles reassuringly, and I feel some of the tension ease out of my shoulders as I pull back onto the empty highway. No more gas station stops, I tell myself. My tank has more than enough to get me to Clifwell, and I can eat real food once I’m there. I’ll pee on the side of the road. Right now, my focus is connecting with Adrian. Everything else is⁠—

A loud, sudden pop shatters the silence, and my car seems to breathe out and then thumps and dovetails across the asphalt. Something lights on my dash: the air pressure light. Thump-thump, thump-thump rises around me like a heartbeat, and I slam on my brakes even though all my instincts are screaming at me to keep fucking going.

I skid to a stop on the side of the road, my breath quickening. The first thing I check is the rearview mirror. The gas station lurks behind me, but there’s no sign of a human being. My next move is to snatch my knife out of my purse, not that it’ll do much good if someone’s shooting at me.

That’s my initial thought, anyway. Someone shot out my tires. But there was no report. This high in the mountains, a gun blast would echo, and I didn’t hear anything like that. Just that loud, explosive pop. Like a tire blowing out.

“Fuck,” I whisper, pushing open my door just enough to look down at the tires. It’s the front one, the rubber shredded to ribbons.

Those warning bells are clanging now, loud and insistent. Maybe it’s just a blown tire. They happen.

Or maybe not.

Maybe I am well and truly fucked.

2

VICTOR

Amore perfect Mary has never walked through the doors of the Gas and Go.

It’s been three weeks since that unsatisfying kill. Three weeks of ants under my skin. But when I see her on the filtered, grainy CCTV screens, I know all the waiting I’ve done has been worth it. It’s not just that she looks like the first Mary, although she does, before the first Mary got sick: the same sturdy, voluptuous body and thick, dark hair, even if she has it cut a little above her shoulders where the first Mary kept hers long and braided. But that was just the expectation for women at the time. Mary would have cut hers short like this if she could have.

Those superficial similarities aren’t what’s really important, though. A Mary has a certain air about her, a confidence that butts against the expectations of the world. And this woman, this victim, this Mary, walks into the Gas and Go like she’s used to cutting through bullshit.

I watch her move across the CCTV screen, my heart pounding. I can’t just kill her out back like I did that man three weeks ago. Not a perfect Mary like her. I need to take her alive. I need to treasure her, just like I treasured the first Mary.

My hands shake with excitement. My mask is on its hook, huge glass eyes staring at me, but I make no move to put it on. If I go out there in the mask, she’ll run. I’ll probably catch her, but she might hurt herself in her panic. I need to capture her elsewhere.

The road spikes.

I watch the Mary jump between each of the screens, gathering her selections. She’s nervous. I can’t see it on the screens, but I can feel her wariness and trepidation through the walls. She isn’t afraid, but she’s cautious.

The smart thing to do would be to go out there and ring her up and smile politely and let her know everything here is normal. But she can’t see my face. Victims never see my face. Certainly not Marys.

She arrives at the cash register, dumps her purchases on the counter. This is my first time really getting a good look at her face, and I lean in close to study her. She lifts her gaze, eyes flicking around, brushing past the camera I have hidden among the tins of chewing tobacco. She looks nothing like the first Mary. She looks everything like her.

She’s beautiful, even grainy and pixelated. Big dark eyes. Pretty, full lips. I won’t touch her face so I can kiss her when I’m done. That’s all I’ll do, all I ever do when I kill a Mary: lay a single, gentle kiss on their still lips, just as I did the first one.

“Hello?” the Mary calls out. Her mouth blurs on the screen, but I hear her through the walls, her voice low and slightly raspy. A whiskey voice, they used to call it. In the movies, a woman with a voice like that was dangerous.

“Hey, I’m kind of in a hurry!”

I force myself to focus. I have two choices: ignore her until she leaves or call out for her to leave the money on the counter. Either way, I’ll get what I want, which is her tires going across my road spikes. But the idea of only interacting with her after I’ve captured her, after she’s transformed with fear⁠—

I want to speak to her now. I want to hear her speak to me.