And Sloane the goddess of chaos at the heart of it all.

There’s a shiver in her blade. My gaze tracks a slow path up the length of her arm. Her shoulders tremble, her attention sharpened on some faraway memory brought too close to a murky surface from another place in time. I know it because I feel it sometimes too, the way I feel it in her now. It’s bleeding into her lightless eyes.

Neither of us should be trusted. She could turn on me while she’s caught in this lethal fog. But when I see the first tremor in her lips as a tear slides across her freckled cheek, I know I’d take any risk for Sloane.

I approach with careful, measured steps. She doesn’t move as I fold my hand around her wrist and pry the handle of the blade from her grip. I lay it on Thorsten’s bloodied lap and she hasn’t as much as shifted on her feet, her gaze still caught in another moment of time.

“You’re okay. Lark is okay,” I whisper as I slide one arm across her back. When Sloane doesn’t react, I fold my other arm around her too, until she’s caged in my embrace. “You did good.”

There’s no change in her, not even when I tighten my arms or lean my head on her shoulder.

“I’m okay too,” I continue. “Though I might need some antacid. Something about that homemade dijon dressing just isn’t sitting quite right. Not sure what it could be.”

Sloane huffs a breath of a laugh and leans some of her weight against my chest. Wherever she’s gone, I know in this moment that I can bring her back.

“David might have some pointers for me. Sounds like he’s having no trouble with dinner.”

“It’s really bad, Rowan,” she says into my shirt, her voice muffled. “When I went into the kitchen to get the bowl, he had half a sausage link hanging from his mouth.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad—”

“It was raw.”

“Okay, yep. That’s pretty bad.” I swallow down the uncomfortable protests of my stomach and cleanse the imagery from my mind with a deep breath of Sloane’s ginger scent. I don’t want to let go, but time is always working against me when it comes to her.

It works against me almost as hard as she does.

Sloane tenses in my embrace and I let her go before she can pull away. “We should probably check on him,” I say, shifting my attention away when she looks at me with a question in her furrowed brow.

“Yeah, I guess we probably should.”

Sloane shifts around me, her gaze lowered as she leads the way out of the dining room. When I offer to take the metal bowl she refuses, claiming I might spill it on the walls and give her twice the amount of cleanup work, but I don’t think that’s the full reason. Maybe she just feels guilty for not telling me about Thorsten earlier. Maybe she needs something else to focus on. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because she meant what she said. That she cares.

I mull over her reasoning as I follow Sloane down the corridor, the bowl held as far from her face as she can manage without the risk of spilling. Her steps slow until she stops and lingers just before the threshold to the kitchen. When I halt at her side, she looks up at me with a grimace, her nose crinkling, a little spattering of blood dotting her cheek like a crimson echo of her natural freckles. If I could, I would tattoo it right into her skin.

Fucking adorable. 

“It’s too quiet,” she whispers. “I don’t like it.”

“Maybe he wandered off.”

“Or maybe he’s in a meat coma.”

“Christ. Too soon.”

We lean forward and peer through the door.

David is sitting on the counter, his legs swinging and his gaze vacant as he spoons what seems to be cookies and cream ice cream into his mouth straight from the tub.

“That’s a relief,” I say as I let go of a held breath.

“He’s living his best life.” Sloane’s shoulders drop and she watches David for a moment before heading into the room with careful steps as though not to spook him. He tracks her movement as she stops at the sink to ditch the contents of the bowl before dousing everything with bleach, but he doesn’t move, just keeps slowly digging into the pint of ice cream.

I lean against the doorframe and cross my arms as I watch Sloane work at the sink. “When did you figure out who Thorsten was?”

“Pretty much right away.” She shrugs, her focus still caught on her hands as she washes the bowl more thoroughly than it probably requires. “I heard about a cannibal killer in the UK from a few years ago who hadn’t surfaced recently. When Lachlan gave us the location and I looked into disappearances nearby, they fit the same profile as the victims in his previous location. After that, I went through local real estate purchases from the last few years and bingo, found him.”

“Did you consider at any point that you might want to clue me in about a cannibal inviting us over for dinner?” I ask.

Sloane shrugs, her attention still not shifting to me. “Maybe. Mostly only when I was scraping human meat off your tongue. Up until then, no, I can’t say that I did. You insisted on worming your way onto my dinner invite, after all.”

“Christ.”

She giggles, clearly delighted with herself. Her eyes shine with amusement when she turns to me as she dries her hands with paper towel. “Worked out pretty well in the end, wouldn’t you say?”

“Not really.”

Sloane grins as she heads toward David whose focus is consumed by the ice cream in his grasp. She shoots me an unsure glance before she stops by his swinging legs. “Hey, David. I’m Sloane,” she says. He doesn’t acknowledge her words, just watches her as he slides a spoonful of ice cream into his mouth. “Maybe we should take a break from the food, what do you say?”

Sloane’s smile is sweet, her movement fluid and graceful as she grasps the tub with one hand, the spoon with the other, then gently pulls them from David’s grip. He doesn’t protest and relinquishes both items at her request.

“Well,” she says as she saunters closer to me, her dimple a shadow of restrained amusement as she keeps her eyes fused to the plain white tub in her hand. She’s still reading the homemade label when she draws to a halt in front of me. “I might never look at ice cream the same way again.”

“I don’t want to know.”

“Ingredients: cream—”

“Sloane—”

“Sugar—”

“I’m begging you,” I say, but as soon as ‘beg’ leaves my lips, Sloane’s grin ignites. My stomach flips in the most uncomfortable way.

Sloane clears her throat. “‘Semen, milked April tenth to April thirteenth.’ That’s an interesting substitute to salt—”

I push past her and vomit in the sink to the sound of her traitorous laugh. Christ, I thought there wasn’t anything left, but I was wrong. It takes a long moment to recover myself before I can rinse my mouth and the sink, my breath and balance both unsteady.

“Christsakes. What a fucking weirdo,” I say as I wipe a thin film of sweat from my forehead and turn to face Sloane where she stands next to David with her arms crossed and a shit-eating grin spread across her lips.

“Yeah, he was a strange one.”

“I’m still not sure if I’m talking about Thorsten or you.”

Sloane giggles and shrugs. “Maybe it’s fun to see the perfect pretty boy a little messed up for a change.”

My dark glare only seems to amuse her further. “I think you’ve already seen that plenty,” I reply as memories of last year’s game bubble to the surface. I can still recall Sloane’s touch as she bandaged my bloody knuckles, can still feel the warmth of her fingertips on my skin.

“That was different,” she says. “That was you in your natural element. This is…definitely not that.”

I huff a breath of agreement but say nothing further.

“But, you do kinda owe me extra for this year’s win,” Sloane says as she wanders closer.

I give her a suspicious glance as I lean against the stainless steel sink. “How do you figure?”

“Saving you from choking, for one thing. I thought that was kinda obvious,” she replies with a shrug. She stops just out of reach as she gnaws the edge of her lower lip. “I think I need to make a claim.”