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Just the way I like it.
Peace.
Peace and quiet.
I wipe my hands on my black trousers, knowing the stains won’t stick. Then, I pick up the bride’s leg and slide her lace garter from her thigh. It’s stained red with blood.
I press it to my lips, inhaling the coppery scent of her blood intermingled with the tangy taste of her fear.
“Delicious,” I whisper as I fade back into the Victorian wallpaper.
I love my job.
1
ONE: LILY
The dorm is teeming with students.
I tense automatically as a rowdy, obnoxiously laughing frat boy unwittingly knocks into my arm. Every nerve in my body alights at the contact, and the “fight or flight” response I’ve honed over the years rises to the surface. I remember with a flicker of satisfaction that I’m packing an eighty-pound crossbow in my shoulder bag, so “fight” is gonna win today.
Electricity skitters across my skin as I glare at the man out of the corner of my eye, gauging whether or not he’s a threat.
But nope…unless you consider a horny, intoxicated twenty-year-old man a threat.
When he catches me looking at him, his smile broadens, revealing pearly white teeth. Dark hair flops forward into his eyes in a stereotypical, Disney prince, douchebag kind of way.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he begins in a voice he probably thinks is sexy.
But how can it possibly be “sexy” when the pungent stench of alcohol barrages my senses from his breath? Disgusting.
Ignoring him—and his similarly obnoxious friends all hollering at him to get my number—I skirt around the corner of the hall until I come to my destination.
The door is already propped open with a brick.
I don’t bother knocking as I push the door open the rest of the way and head inside the small, unkempt room of my best friend. I toss my bag on the floor, on top of a pile of clothing and open spell books.
Becka sits in front of a mirror, applying mascara. Only a tiny circle in the middle of the mirror is still usable, as the outer rim is crowded with Polaroid photographs of the two of us, tarot cards, glittery skull stickers, and scribbled spells.
“You definitely don’t look like you’re ready to head out and train,” I say conversationally as I throw myself against the wall and cross my arms over my chest.
Becka doesn’t even bat an eye as she recaps her mascara and swivels on her chair to face me. When I first met Becka, she had a pixie cut that made her look elfin and delicate. It framed a face of sharp angles and hard lines. Over the years, her hair has grown until it now reaches her shoulders in delicate blonde and pink curls. She still has the same cherubic features from high school, but they’re accentuated by smokey eyeliner, dark eye shadow, and bright-red lipstick.
And, of course, the skin-tight red dress that clings to her curves.
A dress that will most definitelynotbe practical when we head to the archery range.
I quirk an eyebrow at her as she casts me an innocent look, blinking coquettishly, and then turns back to the mirror. She grabs her favorite lipstick off the desk—Evil Queen Red—and puckers her lips as she applies it.
“You know…” I kick my leg back so I can place it against the wall. “I thought it was suspicious when you called me and begged to train.”
“Oh, really?” she says in that same demure voice. However, with her lips pursed like a duck, it sounds like, “Oh, wully?”
“You hate archery,” I continue, not buying her innocent act for one second. “And guns. And knives. And swords. And—”
She once again turns away from the mirror to flash me a frosty glare. “Not everyone can know how to kill a man one thousand different ways.” She sniffs in feigned haughtiness. “Besides, you know I have…alternative methods.”
I snort as I survey her room once more—almost as familiar to me as my own shitty apartment on the opposite side of town.
