‘Who wants to see how her spilt blood will sparkle under the moonlight?’offers the third.
I am fucked if I think I can handle Cara and the three other personalities inserting themselves into our relationship. Imagine having three people all vying for different things: one wants the normalcy of a real relationship, one wants to suck on her clit until she’s crying out for more, and the other is more entranced by how beautifully her blood could paint an entire wall as I tie her up in ropes and carve my name into her skin. Four voices, one body.
“We’re screwed—all of us,” I state aloud to no one as I try to find my own voice in the crowd. Because all I want is for Cara to see me for who I am. Every fucked-up inch of Ezra Wolfe bent down at her feet as he pleads for her love and understanding.
The unhinged, murderous part of me – the part that refuses to admit I want her – was ready to burn this place to the ground when I saw her car missing from the driveway. Panic hit. I thought she’d come to her senses and skipped town. Nurses at Blackwood never last long. Pretty young women escaping bad lives, lured in by Lenora’s minimum wage handouts, backbreaking shifts and speeches about family. They burn out, pack away their trauma and move on. Another town, anothertyrant, another cycle. They keep running until something – or someone – finally takes them down for good.
For someone like me who has witnessed the demise of the worst that humanity has to offer—I’m sure of one thing—Falcon Falls is where dreams go to die. And yet - I already know I will never help Cara to leave; I’m too selfish to let her go, and of everything I’ve done in my life, I’m sure that is what I will be judged on most when my final day with the devil approaches. She is too good, too kind, too caring—too everything I’m not. And yet I still can’t bear the thought of being trapped here without her. Curse my life for what it’s worth because for as long as I have air in my lungs, I will use it to convince her she belongs here with me.
Letting myself into her room and seeing that everything is as it should be, my need to destroy something settles, that lingering rage constantly thrumming through my veins calming the longer I spend in her space. I bury my face into her pillow and suck down a lungful of her familiar lavender and honeyed almond scent. One thing I am sure of is that watching Cara through the mirror isn’t enough to sate my obsession anymore. Thoughts of her invade every waking moment I have, and if I don’t have her soon, I don’t know what I might do.
Today is the day that Cara Morgrieves understands that from the moment she entered Blackwood - she was destined to be mine.
I pull the string on the lamp beside her bed, running my fingers over the cover of her latest read as it lay open page-down, marking where she left off last night. I have read and reread her file until every detail documented was seared into my memory, but being here, chasing the memory of her touch on the inanimate objects she surrounds herself with, I lose all sense of reasoning.
Her bed is in disarray, like it usually is. With the regiment instilled in us here, I’m tidying it to military standards before I’ve even realised I’m doing it.
Moving around to her dresser, I pull open the top drawer; stacks of her white gloves that she uses to hide her prosthetic are neatly piled beside her underwear. Fingering through, I select the black lacy pair she wore that first day and pocket them. I’ve murdered more men than I care to count—a little panty raiding is hardly going to damn my soul.
I select the wolf tarot card from her deck and slide it into the fold of the crudely papered gift wrapped with a red ribbon bow I brought with me and place them on her pillow.
The sound of a rumbling beat-up engine followed by the crunching of worn tyres over the pebbled driveway outside of Cara’s window alerts me to her return. Hidden behind the ivory curtains billowing as the cool evening breeze floods in through her partially open window, I look down as Cara circles the stone falcon fountain and pulls her car into park. She climbs out, and all the tense energy I had been feeling dissipates in an instant. She glances around suspiciously before pulling out a cardboard box, stacking a few paperbacks on top as she kicks the door closed with her booted foot. She heads for the fire escape at the rear of the building, and I make my way over to the door. Checking the room before I switch off her lamp, locking the door with the identical key to hers that hangs around my neck before I head next door to watch her arrive.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CARA
Ikick the door closed behind me, dumping the box I collected from the post office down onto my bed. I hurry over to engage the lock with the key looped around my neck and shuffle out of my trench coat, slinging it onto my mattress before running in to start the shower.
Glancing at my reflection as steam begins to fill the small space, I assess the damage. My clothes are soaked with rain and sodden with a muddy sludge around my knees, my t-shirt torn around my shoulder. I paw at my blonde hair matted with motor oil, rubbing my sleeve over the streaks of grime across my cheeks that refuse to budge. Had I known my piece of shit car would decide to blow a tyre on my way back from the post office, I would have opted for hitchhiking into town this morning. My mechanic skills on a scale of one to ten are a pitiful three, and that tyre change on the barely lit back road proves it. There is a small chance that the tyre will fall off tomorrow, but for now, I’m just grateful to be home.
“Home,” I snort aloud, wondering why it feels so right to refer to this place with such comfort.
Climbing into the shower, the intense hell-heat of the water spray soothes the aches in my limbs, the tightness in myshoulders melting away the longer I stand here bracing myself against the tile. Of all the birthdays I’ve had, this isn’t the worst.
Stepping out on steadier legs no longer fraught with the cold night air, I dry my hands and slide my prosthetic back on before wrapping the towel around my body. Using a second fluffy towel, I bend over and bundle up my hair, strolling into the bedroom and hurrying over to close the window before clicking on the small gas fire.
I tear open the big brown box on my bed, that thrill of excitement filling my belly as I push back all those less than savoury birthday encounters I had been forced to endure when Doc ruled my life; being beaten black and blue to celebrate another torturous year under his rule wasn’t the treat that sadist thought it was.
Pulling out the envelope beneath the shredded paper filling, I find a note from Suzy scribbled on a Donatello’s diner menu, a place we loved to sneak out to back in Grove Point.
My dearest Cara,
Happy fucking birthday woman!
Package one is because music is the root of all happiness.
I tear open the package marked with the number one and squeal, the mini suitcase record player bound with old teal leather and the stack of LP records tucked away inside is the best gift Suzy could have possibly sent me.
You always got way more use out of it than I ever did. I hope the record choices suit.
Thumbing through the selection of records, I cackle at her choice ofPsycho Killerby Talking Heads. My best friend certainly knows how to send a message. I excitedly lift it onto my dresser and plug it in, setting up the record to play as my thoughts drift to my very own psycho killer that I haven’t seen nearly enough of today; just knowing he’s there in the same room has become an addiction.
I pick the menu up off the bed and continue reading as I tap my foot along to the beat.
Gift numero dos, because every girl deserves a little buzz therapy on their special day. Foreign languages were never your thing—look for the big 2.
I don’t know how concerned I should be that the pink vibrator I’m holding has twenty speed selections; death by orgasm might just be a thing after how long I’ve gone without sex. I tuck it away in my bedside table with a small smile. My best friend knows me so well.
