“It’s hard to do, but try to imagine it in three dimensions. One layer is for streets. One is for wetlands. Another is for soils,” she says. She lays a delicate hand on each side of my head and shifts me so I can see the layers on an angle, where severed flesh is neatly tied at specific points in the web. “If those idiot investigators would take each section of the design and layer it into ArcGIS software, they’d have enough to make a topographic map. The piece from his chest in the center of the web is this house. Every other little bit of Thorsten represents the last known whereabouts of missing persons he’s taken or killed.” Sloane’s arm rests on my shoulder as she points to a piece of skin wound in fishing line. Her breath warms the shell of my ear, triggering the rise of goosebumps on my neck. “That’s for a man named Bennett who he killed two months ago. I took it from Thorsten’s bicep. B for Bennett.”
I glance at Thorsten who’s starting to stir once more. His sleeve has been cut off, a patch of flesh raw and exposed from where the skin has been peeled away.
“This is so much work,” I say as Sloane slips her hands from my head and moves to my side.
She glances at me, a hint of pink rising in her cheeks before she smirks and rolls her eyes. “You probably think I should take up crochet and acquire twelve cats and start yelling at the neighborhood children to get off my lawn.”
“Never.” I turn toward her and hold her wary gaze. “Well, maybe the yelling at neighborhood children part. I’ll always condone that. But this, Blackbird? This is art.”
Sloane’s eyes soften. A faint smile tips up one corner of her lips. I could so easily lean down and inhale her scent. I could kiss her. Run my hand into her raven hair. Tell her I think she’s brilliant, and cunning, and so fucking beautiful. That I have fun with her. That even though I feel like complete shit right now, I’m disappointed this year’s game is nearly over, because I hate watching her walk away. What we have now? It’s not enough. I want more.
But I’m afraid that trying to push for it will only drive her away. With the way she took off at the restaurant and how long it took to coax her back, that’s a risk I’m not willing to take.
I take a step back and mask my thoughts behind a cocky grin. “I am surprised you don’t already have twelve cats, though. You seem like the cat-hoarding type to me.”
Sloane wallops my arm and I laugh. “Fuck you, pretty boy.”
“You could make so much money as a cat litter influencer on Instagram.”
“I was going to let you do the honors and kill this pretentious fuckwit, but I totally take it back.” With a final glare that has no real venom behind it, Sloane turns and heads back to the table to pull on another pair of latex gloves before picking up a scalpel. Thorsten stirs and moans, but he’s not fully conscious until she twists the cap from a vial of smelling salts and holds it under his nose.
“Please, please stop—”
“You know what, Thorsten…or is it Jeremy? That’s your real name, right? Jeremy Carmichael?” Sloane stops next to his shoulder and looks at her web, reaching up to tap one of the eyes that gazes across the room. “You remind me of someone I once knew.”
Thorsten’s cries grow more frantic as Sloane trails the tip of her blade across his neck. A light scratch lines his skin and I smile as he thrashes. I know her typical process and her next moves. She’ll notch a precise cut into his jugular with a single strike and then leave him to bleed out in his chair.
The final slash of color in her perfect canvas.
“This man, he lured people in with promises of safety and care only to deliver the opposite,” she says as she stares down with disdain at Thorsten’s shaking body. “A lot like you, really. You lured us in with the promise of a meal and nice company only to drug and deceive us. It just didn’t work out entirely the way you hoped, did it.”
“I’m begging you, I’m sorry, truly, I—”
“Did David beg you to stop when you decided to play Lobotomy Barbie with his face? I bet he pleaded with you, and you loved the sound. But the funny thing is, Mr. Carmichael, you and I have something in common. I’ll tell you a little secret,” she says. A devastatingly beautiful smile creeps across her lips as she leans close to his ear. “I love the sound when my victims beg too.”
“No, no, you don’t understand… David! David, help me!”
His pleas for help go unanswered as Sloane backs away and returns to the table to exchange her scalpel for her Damascus blade. Thorsten’s head swings from one side to the next as he loses track of her whereabouts beneath his desperate, sputtering cries. But Sloane doesn’t make a sound as she creeps closer to her prey. She moves like an owl in flight, fluid and silent and graceful. Predatory and powerful.
“The man you remind me of, he presented such a civilized mask to the world, yet underneath, he was a devil. He promised the best education. The best opportunities for students gifted in the arts. He promised a safe place to learn and the best chance for getting into the most exclusive universities for those of us whose parents were wealthy enough to pay the price. And since mine were never around, they didn’t notice the price I truly paid.”
For all the times I’ve thought my soul was little more than a fucking stone, Sloane Sutherland proves me wrong.
Her words echo in my head until my imagination takes me to every dark and terrible possibility. My heart hits every bone on its way down to the floor. All that’s left behind is a black space that burns hotter with every hollow beat.
“I could take it,” she says. “I could cope. I had an end in sight. And in a way, I was learning. I was learning how to keep my rage and darkness beneath a mask so I could carry on in the world. So I kept my mouth shut as I gave pieces of myself away. But you know the one price I could not pay?” she asks as she stops behind Thorsten. Her smile is gone. She stares straight ahead, her eyes nearly black in the dim light. Her voice is low and drips with menace when she says, “The price I could never pay was Lark.”
Ice infuses my veins. A chill spreads through my arms. It sluices down my spine.
“She was the only person I cared about. When I found out what he was doing to her, what she had been hiding, I did some hiding of my own. That same night that she confessed someone else’s sins to me, I waited in the shadows. I made a vow in the dark. That I would wipe out everyone like him that I could find. That I wouldn’t stop until I found the worst, the darkest, the most depraved, and I would erase them from the world, one at a time. And I promised myself that I would never let anyone hurt someone I cared about ever again.”
Sloane’s arms raise on either side of Thorsten’s head, the handle of the knife gripped in both hands, her skin bleached over her knuckles.
“This is me keeping my promise,” she says.
The music crescendos through the speakers. She is a fucking virtuoso, surrounded by her masterpiece. She waits for a single word from the man beneath her, holding out for the perfect note.
“Please—”
Sloane plunges the blade into Thorsten’s stomach.
“Since you asked so nicely, let’s spill the filth from your guts together,” she grits out, dragging the sharpened steel upward through his abdomen to the melody of his blistering scream.
Blood and viscera flood from the straight line carved into Thorsten’s flesh. Heavy breaths saw from Sloane’s chest as she whips the knife free, a flick crimson to stain the carpet with the twist of her hand. Thorsten’s wail slows until it falls silent beneath Sloane’s menacing, watchful glare, and with a few final, ragged breaths, he dies strapped to his ornate chair.
An electric charge surrounds us. The aroma of hot blood perfumes the air. Candlelight flickers on the web. Every detail sharpens, as though the universe has narrowed to this single room.
