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Death.
I look up at him and smile.His eyes widen, the blood draining from his face as he sees his little stalling technique didn’t work after all.
“The death card doesn’t mean death!The death card doesn’t mean death!”he says frantically, waving his hands in front of me as if performing some warding protective magic.
“Well, in this case it does.”I pick up the sharp pointy knife that looks like a mini jeweled sword off the table and jab it into his carotid.
He grabs at his throat, his eyes wide.“That was a mistake.”
Or I think that’s what he said.The blood is gurgling and choking him, muffling his words so I really can’t tell.He could have said anything.A moment later, he’s dead, his sightless eyes staring up at the ceiling.
Mina snaps out of whatever trance she was sitting in just now.“Brian!My God, what did you do?”
“What I had to do.He’s not safe to leave alive.He would have talked when the police inevitably came calling.He couldn’t follow one fucking simple instruction.If he’d kept his mouth shut and just made the fucking costumes he wouldn’t be in this situation.He has nobody to blame but himself.”
Why am I justifying myself right now?I did what I had to do to keep us safe.
The cat yowls from the other room and gets a case of the zoomies, rushing in and out around our legs, jumping on and off the table, and on again, knocking candles over in her frantic surge of random craziness.There are far too many flammable things and fabrics in this room.It goes up into flames so quickly.
I grab Mina’s hand, and we run for the exit as the smoke chases us into the main part of the shop.Then I stop, remembering that fucking list.I can’t risk that it’ll be spared.
I rush back behind the counter.
“Brian!We have to get out of here!”She’s coughing and covering her mouth with one arm.
I pull out several drawers behind the counter, tossing things out behind me, until finally I find the list with everyone’s information.I toss it on the flames and watch as the fire consumes our costumes and the list—the only evidence tying us to the scene of the crime.
The investigation on The Yuletide Slayer will inevitably hit a dead end and the city will be talking about something else as soon as the new year rings in.
“Come on!”Mina shouts at me.She manages to pull the fire alarm as we run from the burning shop.
We get in the car, and just as I’m pulling out, the black cat crosses right in front of our path.
“Brian,” Mina says after we’ve been on the road for several long minutes.
I take a deep breath, still shaky and paranoid we might be forgetting something… and half worried we may have been seen at some point.
“Yeah?”
“What did he mean back there?What he said?Tell her before it’s too late?”
I sigh.“Mina, for God’s sake, he didn’t mean anything.He doesn’t know anything.He’s not psychic.He knows I’m a killer, and he wanted to play on your sympathies to try to spare his own life.And clearly it worked.”
Well, not the saving his own life part, but he did his damage tonight.
“I don’t think you should have stabbed him with that thing.It looked like some sort of ritual knife.And then… the cat, and the flames and…”
“Mina...that guy… I think he was some sort of mentalist or illusionist.He clearly runs in those circles.He’s picked up some tricks of the trade along the way like cold reading and getting inside people’s heads.He probably had something set up so he could make that breeze and candle thing happen to freak out people who come to the back room for a reading.He was just using your fears against you.”
She stares out the window and doesn’t say anything else, but I know she’s still thinking about it and what dark secrets I might be withholding from her.And once a seed like that is planted, there is nothing on this earth that can dig it out.
12
MINA
I’m sure I’m going to see Benjamin Barker’s sightless eyes in my nightmares for a long time to come.I’ve never felt bad about someone we’ve killed before, but Benjamin wasn’t a bad guy.And he wasn’t an immediate threat to our life.He just had a poor slip in judgment and paid the highest price for it.Would he have talked to the police?Maybe.Brian is right about the risk, but I can’t stop thinking about how it all went down, how scared he was, how he begged… and Brian’s complete lack of mercy.
And then there’s all the magic tools.I know Brian doesn’t believe in that stuff.And I’m not sure if I do.I glance down at my grandmother’s ring.I mean… I wear it all the time, so don’t I believe in that stuff just a little bit?
