So I do the humane thing and make her forget.

Not because I’m virtuous. The simple truth is I can’t deny her, because I can’t deny myself. Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh, marrow of my bone.

I trap the lock of white framing her face, caressing the damp strands. “You have my word,” I swear to her.

Not a promise.

A threat.

Nothing and no one will come between us.

She stands before the fire, her back to the crackling flames. A deity amid the light, a beautiful force destined to annihilate me.

With pained regret, I tug the sweatshirt down her shoulder and expose her soft skin.

I kiss her shoulder worshipfully, my mouth lingering, breathing her into my lungs to memorize the fiery ache. Then, as I pull away, I puncture my finger with the blade. As I trace the sigil along the delicate joint of her neck and shoulder, the chorus of the hymn stirs my soul.

In the midst of life we are in death.

Could any philosopher deny the soul has a mate when staring into their twin flame?

He whom love touches not walks in darkness.

I’ll always find her, no matter how dark her mind goes.

I rest my forehead to hers as I continue to trace the symbol over her skin, our breath mingling, our emotions a tangle of heat and want and heartache.

Then I capture her lips with mine in a decimating kiss to chase back her pain. Fuck, I eat her pain like a goddamn fiend. I take it for her, every morsel of anguish and fear and sickness. I kiss her with a desperation my soul has never known.

When her mouth closes against mine, kissing me back with equal hunger, I tremble under the annihilating force, the tender feel of her tongue meeting mine with demanding need.

Sheltered in this moment, time stalls for us, and I covet every second.

“Stay,” I whisper over her lips.

Her breath shudders hot across my mouth.

“Stay with me,” I plead.

She blinks up at me. “I’ll stay with you.”

At her concession, I scoop her lithe body into my arms, relishing the feel of her palms braced on my bare chest as I carry her toward my bed. Before I even draw the covers over her, her eyes are closed, her body fighting against the sleep pulling her under.

I place a gentle kiss to her forehead, then step back and check the time on my watch, already dreading the loss of it. But there is still a lecture hall that needs to be cleaned, evidence destroyed, and surveillance to alter.

By the time the sun breaks the sky and I reenter my townhouse, I know the fallout before I cross the threshold into my room.

Her bag is gone, and so is she.

A hollowness takes up residency inside my chest as I stare at the dimmed embers in the fireplace. Like the dying light of the fire, the coals growing dull, my inspiration is fading without her.

Before my muse crashed my life, I inked a sigil in my chest. As my obsessive desire all but consumed me, I carved into that mark tonight. I made a demand of the universe, I opened the wound and let the blood flow. And now that I’ve tasted my muse, I know it will be a vain and futile attempt to try to forget her.

I can no more purge her from my thoughts than I can tear my soul mate from my sternum.

She is the bridge erected over my abyss. She is life sparked amid my death.

My desire was born in those hauntingly beautiful hazel orbs that are cast with silvery storm clouds.

I lower to my haunches and reach into the fireplace, scraping aside ash as I take the tiny object between my fingers. I twirl the shiny gold piece as I stare at the initials.

The object that brought her here, the token she’s searching for.

Time and tide wait for no man.

My muse will return to me.

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2

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MUSE

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HALEN: NOW

There are as many conflicting tales around the muses as there are the gods themselves. Their origin, their number. Whether they were deities or forces.

One myth says the goddess of memory birthed the muses, and that they were then given to Apollo to raise. Hence their devotion, love, and aptitude for the arts and science.

The irony doesn’t escape me—as I’m sure it hasn’t escaped Kallum—that memory and logic presided over the muses. Two connections to me. A wink from the universe, a jab of cosmic synchronicity as my memory returns with a vengeful force.

Yet the one aspect all the poems agree on is that the muses were a source of creative inspiration, existing merely to inspire hungry souls.

Six months ago, with one violent act, I was claimed by one such ravenous soul.

I stand at the entrance of the storage unit, my hand gripped to the halfway drawn roll door, a shaft of evening sunlight slashed across dingy concrete.

A file box sits in the corner of the unit. I haven’t opened that box since I sealed it closed in the early morning hours, where the sky was still black, a blank canvas awaiting a new start.

My gaze drifts across the discolored blots on the floor, my vision unfocused, and suddenly a pool of blood seeps up from a dark stain. A flash of Wellington’s mutilated face surfaces with the coarse, heavy feel of the tire iron clenched in my hand.

With a slow exhale, I blink away the disturbing imagery of the horrific scene I created in a haze of rage and vengeance. A detached moment in time that fractured my psyche is where Kallum and I were fashioned, twisted together. Stained deeper and darker than the soiled concrete.

I enter the unit and lower the roll door closer to the floor for privacy, but still allow enough natural light to filter into the small five-by-eight room. The manager gave me a decent deal, agreeing to let me rent it here in Hollow’s Row week-to-week rather than pay for a full month, as it’s uncertain how long I’ll remain on the case.

That decision is yet to be made.

Unease churns in my stomach as I lift the hem of my skirt and drag the file box away from the corner. As recovered memories can be highly unreliable, I need something tangible to help me piece together the details.

I lower to my knees and insert the tiny key to unlock the lid. One fortifying breath, then I tear the top off like a bandage over a wound.

Within are the contents of the Harbinger killer case from the third crime scene. The scene I was frantically working before I discovered the cufflink with the college insignia and Wellington’s initials that led me to Cambridge.

I shove aside files and a pair of joggers, my heart rate quickening as my gaze falls on what lay beneath. I touch the gray cotton fabric, needing confirmation of its existence, before I lift the sweatshirt from the confines of the box. Stretching the garment by the shoulders, I stare at the college name branded across the front in bold crimson letters.

A bone-deep tremor racks my body as a flash of memory assaults. The scream wrenched from my throttled airway. The cold, calculating look in his eyes as he crushed my windpipe. The sickening feel of my thumbs sinking into those callous eyes. The way the solid iron of the lug wrench reverberated off his skull when I struck his head.

The blood.

So much blood as it collected dark and shiny under the lamplights around his unmoving body.

“Breathe.”

The stranger’s deep baritone cracks into my state of shock.

“Come back to me.”

Then the warmth of his suit jacket embraces me as he drapes it around my shoulders.

The memories crash against one another. Kallum’s actions throughout this case as he attempted to jog my memory fight for dominance with my very first recollection of him that night. Every interaction with him holds new insight and meaning. Like when he placed his jacket around me in the killing fields, and his frenzied demand as he commanded me to breathe during the ritual. Every time he slipped my hair tie off, or when he dragged my shirt collar down my shoulder in the interrogation room. His thumb swiping wine from my lip like the blood he once smeared across my mouth.