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A gentleman would cover Willow up and respect the privacy of her old wounds. But I’m not a gentleman, especially not where Willow is concerned. What I want to do is to press my tongue flat against her wrist and lick all the way up her arm. Would the scars form a landscape of ridges under my tongue? Or would they feel soft and silky, like delicate dents in her skin?
“Stop staring at me, perv.”
I look up. Willow’s eyes have fluttered open. Her voice is gravelly, and her eyelids are drooping, as if they’re too heavy for her to open properly.
I lift her arm up by the wrist. “What’s with those?”
She raises her eyebrows. “My arms?”
“Your scars.”
“Ifell,” she says, choking out a laugh.
“Is that so?” I murmur, tracing my fingers over her scars. They’re soft and barely raised, like subtle satin stitching along her skin, permanent reminders etched into her. “You seem to have a thing for falling, Lynch. Didn’t realise you were such a gravity enthusiast.”
Her laugh is rough and wet, crawling its way through the thick tunnel of phlegm probably building inside her as we speak.
“Oh yeah,” she says, the mirth in her voice not quite reaching the dangerous gleam in her venomous eyes. “I fuck with gravity big time.”
“And gravity fucks you right back,” I retort, leaning in closer, my breath ghosting over her clammy skin, raising goosebumps along the cold flesh. I wonder what she would do if I were to give in to my curiosity and run my mouth along her scars. “Never seen gravity cause this kind of damage before, though. What a mystery.”
She smiles. Colour is returning to her face, redness flooding into her cheeks and nose. Oh, she’s going to have one hell of a fever.
“Not every mystery is meant to be solved, Luca,” she says with false sagacity. “That’s what secrets are for.”
“Secrets happen to be my business.” I lean down over her. She smells of rain and mud and disinfectant and that dark, sultry perfume. A heady, confused cocktail overwhelming my senses. “I find I prefer solving mysteries more when they’re not supposed to be solved.”
“You’re Freud’s wet dream,” Willow says. “Maybe that’s why your dick doesn’t work. Nobody ever tried to forbid you from using it. Did Mummy Fletch never tell Little Luca he would go to hell if he touched his peepee?”
Talking to Willow, I’m beginning to realise, is very much the same as a fencing match. You try to score a point by touching her with the tip of your foil, but every word she speaks is a deflection, a dodge, a parry.
Verbally, she’s agile and elusive, deflecting every question, speaking a lot without saying anything whatsoever.
“My dick must have permanent residence in your mind, Lynch. You can’t go a day without bringing it up.”
“Up?” Willow’s voice is an amused rasp. “You sure about that?”
“You should consider picking up fencing.” I trail my fingers along the edge of her jaw, feeling the tension in her muscles, and settle my fingers on her pulse. It’s fast and erratic. “Put those deflection skills to good use.”
She gives a soft sigh and murmurs, “I’m not a mystery worth solving.”
For a moment, I wonder if I heard her correctly. I expected a mocking reply or a sharp insult, but notthis.
“You could dig and dig and dig.” Her voice is low and faraway and dreamy. I wonder if it’s the fever talking, or the exhaustion, or whether this is another mask she’s putting on, another character in another performance. “And get all the way inside me and all you’d find is a big darknothing.”
Whether she’s feverish or lying or pretending, her words are needles that pierce deep into my mind. Not because they hurt or make me feel something as common as sadness or pity. But because Willow has put into words what I know to be the truth of the human condition.
After all, deep down, isn’t that what we’reallfilled with?
A big, dark nothing.
The next day, whenWillow is lying half-comatose in bed like a sleeping beauty pumped full of medication, I give her a gift. A golden bracelet for her delicate wrist, locked into place like a cuff and fitted with a small but powerful tracking device. My first gift to her, as a reward for her performance on the first hunt.
I can’t wait for her to discover her gift. She’ll hate it—and she’ll hate me for it—and that will be a reward all in itself.
Later, once the tracking device is all set up and linked to my phone and security system, I summon Woodrow and Nadine to the house. I bring them upstairs to Willow’s room, where she lies feverish and medicated and oblivious, a codeine sleeping beauty.
Woodrow stands absolutely frozen, his face unreadable as stone. Nadine’s mouth falls open, her dark eyes wide.
