Page 63 of Half the Summer's Night

I examine the hands. The wrists. The arms. Still nothing. I tell myself what I’m feeling is relief, not disappointment. Only a monster would be disappointed that an accident is an accident and not a murder.

But then I get to the shoulder.

Only one hasn’t been damaged. The other was crushed by the same mechanisms that crushed the head, and it’s nothing more than meat and bone. But the other is smooth and unblemished.

Except for a single, simple mark. So small, so faint, that it almost looked like nothing.

Except I know it’s not nothing. It’s aK.

I stare at it for a long time, my head buzzing. Then, moving slowly and methodically, I peel off my gloves and pick up my phone.

I snap a single picture.

“K,” I whisper, drawing up to other letters in my head.YOURDAR.

YOUR DARK

The camera slips out of my fingers and clatters across the tile. “Your dark,” I murmur, and I think of Nameless brushing his gloved hand against my face.It’s a conversation.

I leave the phone and the body and step into my office. I haven’t looked at the map closely in a while. Not since Olivia died.

Not since Nameless came into my life as a living, breathing person, and not a killer I’m trying to catch.

With a shaking hand, I write out aKon one of my little paper flags. Then I find Neptune’s Adventure on the map and slide the pin into place with a red pin.

It feels empty, doing this.

“Your dark,” I say again, feeling numb. “Your darkness.”

But it’s a conversation, he said. He’s speaking to me.

And I wonder, with a sharp, shuddery thrill, how long he’s seen the darkness hiding inside me.

24

ABI

It’s torture, waiting for nightfall.

I haven’t seen Nameless in a while. A week, maybe. But I also haven’t gone looking for him like I did the night he made me come on the dais.

The night I knelt in front of him and worshipped his cock.

But tonight, I wait for him, sitting on my front porch as the sun sets, drinking a Coke instead of a gin and tonic. My hands shake as I bring the glass to my lips, making the ice clink. I’m not sure I’m more afraid he’ll show up, or more afraid that he won’t.

Darkness falls across the yard, cloaking the cemetery and then the sunflower patch. The street lamps switch on. I scroll idly through my phone, half-watching the videos that Penelope sends to the group chat. They’re all animal-themed, the way they are with her. Otters holding hands and whatnot. But my mind isn’t on cute animals right now.

Something cracks in the yard.

I set my phone down and stand up, blinking into the darkness. “Hello?” I call out. “If that’s you, I want to talk.”

For a moment, the only answer is the sea wind. I go up to the banister, squeezing my glass tight. “Are you there?”

I feel stupid, calling out to the darkness like that. But then one of the shadows moves. A figure steps forward, and my breath tightens.

It’s him.

He steps right up to the edge of the porch light and looks at me through his mask. Seeing that twisted, leering face sends a shiver of heat between my legs.