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Willow isn’t here. Cerberus confirms this, standing still at my side. If she was still in the house, if she was so much asbreathingin Cerberus’s vicinity, he would have sensed her and alerted me.
He hasn’t; she’s gone.
Since Willow Lynch hasn’tshown me the hospitality of personally welcoming me, I avail myself of her home withliberal abandon. I rifle through her bookshelves, finding schlocky volumes of horrors, ancient Gothics with long-haired girls swooning in front of shadowy mansions and Japanese comics with buxom girls and tentacle monsters.
Her music is no better: rock and heavy metal, grunge and punk, bands with skinny men in leather pants and eyeliner. I go through the CDs, tossing them aside, muttering a soft “Jesus Christ” out from between my teeth.
I go through her paperwork, kept in old filing boxes perched precariously at the top of a slanted bookcase. Nothing particularly interesting there apart from a truly outstanding amount of bills and late payment notices. Looks like Little Miss Blackmail isn’t just plying her dark trade for the fun of it.
Willow Lynch’s life is a very small thing stuck under a very large mountain of debt.
My eyes fall on an old document folded in a plastic wallet. I pull it out and flip it open. Her birth certificate.
It tells me that Willow Lynch doesn’t have a middle name. Or a father, for that matter. Her birthday is the fifteenth of February; she is about to turn twenty-five. She’s a year older than I am—older than I expected.
“We’ll have to celebrate in style,” I murmur to myself.
I pocket the document and return to her bedroom. Her make-up and wigs mean nothing to me, but I go through all her drawers. Her personal style seems to be formed of black clothes, leather, ripped jeans, and oversized jackets.
I’ve never in my life fucked with goth girls, but Iwillmake an exception for her.
Plucking a tiny black silk dress hanging over the back of a chair in the corner of her bedroom, I hold it to my face. A dark, seductive perfume, like flowers and smoke. It’s definitely her.
“Where are you, Willow Lynch?” I murmur to myself.
Cerberus looks up at me as if I’ve spoken to him. I pat his head reassuringly.
Willow isn’t here, but she’ll be back. I could wait for her, or I could have some people stake her out. I have her cornered now.
I’m about to leave when I spot movement out of the corner of my eye. I glance to my left to catch the faintest wreath of smoke, curling weakly in a ray of pallid light before disappearing.
I draw closer. I hadn’t noticed that the living room window was cracked open. Resting in that small crack on the window ledge is a hand-rolled cigarette. It’s still burning, though it’s down to a nub now.
“Fuck,” I mutter to myself.
Willow Lynch is gone—but she hasn’t been gone long. By the looks of the cigarette she’s left behind, I must have just missed her. Did something alert her to my presence? Her window doesn’t face the street where I left my car. Maybe it’s just a coincidence.
Or maybe she has impeccable instinct.
The little black silk dress is still in my hand; I hold it out to Cerberus, who obediently sniffs the dark fabric.
“Find.”
Cerberus streaks out ofthe apartment like a black comet. I catch up with him several streets away, at the end of a long and narrow alleyway between two grey blocks. A delightfully grisly scene greets me.
A scene like a tragic painting, some Caravaggio could’ve painted. Willow Lynch, dressed in black, half-hanging off the wire fencing blocking off the alley from the main road. Cerberus, a ravening shadow, rearing from the floor, jaw locked around his prey’s leg.
And now anewemotion traverses me.
A thrill like pure electricity, like my entire body has been struck by lightning. It makes my blood pump harder in my veins, my skin tingle, my jaw shudder shut. I wrap my hand, finger by finger, slowly around the slim cylinder of the needle in my pocket.
I’m not even going to pretend I’m not enjoying every single second of this.
Willow’s eyes follow me as I stroll down the alley. Her face is ashen, her eyes dark. She doesn’t seem remotely surprised to see me.
“Call off your dog,” she says.
I laugh out loud. “Cerberus.Fetch.”
