Page 1 of Looking Grimm (Marionette #4)

Eight years earlier…

The investigator and her husband lay dead in their bed. They hadn’t heard me come in. Neither of them stirred from sleep. They would never wake again.

It was the last job I would ever do. I’d come here knowing that, having left a conversation with Grimm where I told him what I’d always been afraid to. I wanted out of the gang. I didn’t want to play the role of Marionette, a murderer providing fodder for the bloodthirsty media. I didn’t want to fear for my own life while ending the lives of others. I didn’t want to spend another night surrounded by men who hurt and hated me.

More than anything, I wanted to go home. But, since I couldn’t return to the house I grew up in, this one would have to do.

I wandered down the long hall, dragging my fingers over framed pictures of the couple now permanently at rest. There was no rush to leave because no one called for help. No one knew I was here except Grimm and, if someone found me after this was done, I hoped it would be him.

His answer to my question—my plea, really—came with a laugh. There was only one way out of the Bloody Hex: death.

I spent the rest of the afternoon forming a plan. When the other men took Donovan with them on a regularly scheduled visit to the Blooming Orchid, I left the motel room the way I wanted my brother to find it. A bag of cash sat on the bathroom counter with my car keys and a note explaining what had happened. Donovan was only twelve and shit at driving stick despite numerous lessons, but I needed to give him a way out. He would manage and be better off in my absence.

Upon reaching the kitchen of the darkened house, I began a slow, methodical search. What I sought was not in plain sight or in a block on the counter, so I opened drawers. They were filled with silverware, plastic bags, and cling wrap. There was even the token junk drawer crowded with plastic cutlery and sauce packets from local fast-food joints. Finally, I found the knives. I rifled through the selection, passing over gleaming chef’s knives and a set of serrated steak knives. A small, sharp paring knife seemed best suited to the task. Tucking it in my hand, I headed down the hall to the master bedroom.

It was always quiet in the suburbs at night. The loudest sound was my heart, betraying fear with its rapid, thundering beat.

My feet thudded dully against the carpet as I turned into the bedroom and found the door to the en suite bathroom wide open. The bathtub inside had jets that were about to be part of a bloody, bubbling mess. Standing beside it, I cranked the water on and gave a fleeting thought to temperature. Warm sounded nice, so I set the knife on the tub’s edge then balanced the knobs while I watched the basin fill.

In the minutes spent waiting, I worried about Donovan. He was so young. Too young to be abandoned, perhaps too young to be entrusted with his own safety. But I wasn’t doing a great job of that myself. I was the reason we were trapped in this endless nightmare. I was the problem. A problem I was finally ready to solve.

My knees went wobbly with anticipation and dread, so I dropped to sitting. Some baser instinct clawed at me, drumming up panic that started me shivering. I didn’t want to die. Didn’t want to leave my brother alone in the world. But the paring knife stared at me from the tub’s edge.

I killed my way into this, and I would kill my way out. This was my last job, and my last victim would be myself.

Breaths crowded in, making me feel like I was panting as I grabbed the knife. It worked this way in the movies, as simple as drawing a bath and going to sleep. I’d seen enough deaths to have ideas about my own. I wanted to go quietly. Peacefully.

Sucking air and fighting tremors that shook my whole body, I hunched over and draped my arm across my bent knee. My gaze fixed on the thin-skinned place at the bend in my wrist. Veins pulsed there, shallow and easily severed.

I forced myself to watch as the tip of the blade dug in. It stung, and I hissed through my teeth. I’d imagined it would go in easily, slicing skin and tendons and life-giving arteries, but my body seemed to rebel. With another gathering of my fragile resolve, I pushed the knife deep then dragged it across, flicking blood onto the floor as the blade cut cleanly through.

Pain screamed up my arm, and I gasped. The knife slipped from my fingers into the bathtub. Swearing, I reached in after it. Warm water splashed up one arm while bright red blood ran down the other. It dripped off my fingertips to dot the tile floor, painting a gory scene. But it wasn’t enough.

Gripping the knife again, I aimed for the same line I’d already cut and forced the blade in deeper. Blinded by tears and crippling agony, I let out a ragged cry.

So much for quiet and peaceful.

This time, I threw the knife and then cradled my wounded arm to my chest. The flayed skin ached as it pressed against my shirt, staining my clothes with a splotch of crimson. Air rushed in and out, water thundered into the tub, and my heart pounded like a war drum. Everything was too loud, too painful, too difficult.

Why was it so hard to die?

“Everyone dies.” I blew out a smoke ring and watched it drift lazily upward. “That’s it. That’s the end of the story.”

I lay in Nash’s bed, stripped to my boxers in a nest of sheets. It was morning judging by the sunlight creeping under the curtains pulled across the wide balcony window. Nash was awake, fully dressed, and sitting at the foot of the mattress while tugging on his shoes .

He didn’t bother turning around to mutter, “That’s a little dire, don’t you think?”

I wasted a scowl on his back. “Yeah, well, I’m feeling pretty fucking dire lately.”

Huffing, I leaned over and grabbed a liquor bottle from the pile on the floor beside the bed. A swig of amber liquid sloshed around the bottom. I scrutinized it for a moment before twisting the top off and downing it. The emptied bottle dropped atop the heap with a clink, prompting Nash to glance over his shoulder.

His ginger brows dropped low in disapproval. “Off to an early start, I see.”

I took a drag off my cigarette, then ashed it into the crystal tray on the bedside table. The dish was mounded with spent butts despite Nash emptying it every chance he got. I certainly didn’t bother. I barely left the bed these days, only venturing to the nearest convenience store to buy smokes by the carton.

Holding the air in my lungs, I spoke through clenched teeth. “You got shit to say? Say it.”

Nash stood and smoothed down the front of his plaid flannel shirt. It could have been the same damn plaid as yesterday, or last week, or last year. They all looked the same. I used to find his fashion rut endearing, but now it grated on me. How could he not change when everything else had?

“I’m hardly holding back.” Nash turned toward the door, then paused to survey the discarded bottles and cigarettes within my reach. His nose crinkled as he motioned toward the mess. “And you’re gonna clean that up.”

Sucking on the cig caused the ash end to flare. I exhaled and glared at him through the fumes. “I will when I’m damn good and done.”

“It’s been three weeks, Fitch,” Nash retorted. “When are you gonna be done?”

How could he even ask? Three weeks was a pittance compared to my brother’s twenty years of life or the decades I would have to live with the guilt of knowing he died because of me.

Our eyes stayed locked for several moments before Nash blinked and shook his head. He was always first to back down, to give up. No doubt he thought he was giving me what I wanted. But even I didn’t know what I wanted these days.

“Take it easy, all right?” he said with a heaved breath. “I don’t need you blacked out before noon again.”

The passing jab elicited a snort from me as he exited the bedroom and pulled the door closed.

I didn’t move from the bed. The mattress must have had an imprint from the hours and days I’d spent in this exact position. Not sleeping—sleep came with nightmares and panic attacks from which I woke sweating and crying into my pillow while Nash offered comfort I didn’t deserve.

Nash… fuck.

I gazed forlornly at the closed door.

Sometimes I thought I hated him. It felt good when he wrapped his arms around me and kissed my teary cheeks. But it felt a thousand times worse when I snapped at him or threw things and screamed like a demon had possessed my body and wanted everything around me to go away and die.

Everyone dies.

Ash tumbled off the end of my cigarette and landed on my bare chest. I swore and sat bolt upright, swiping at the singed skin. Angrily, I spun and stabbed the cig into the ashtray, burying it amidst the spent butts.

A few weeks ago, with Donovan freshly dead, I had a plan to destroy Grimm and everyone allied with him. I reveled in the thought of taking my well-earned vengeance until I realized it was a dead end. Grimm had gone to ground.

Besides the Capitol, I hadn’t known where to look for him since the gang had vacated the Lazy Daze Motel and moved their operations somewhere new. I’d never been invited and should have taken that as a sign. Attacking Grimm, taking Donovan away, strengthening my ties to Holland Lyle and her investigative team, all of it had estranged me from the Bloody Hex. I hadn’t minded the distance, but I should have wondered more about Grimm’s nonchalance about my attempt on his life, or my threat to expose his illusioned charade to the world.

He was done with me. Done enough to allow Jax and his ilk to make their play for official gang membership by trying to kill Ripley, Donovan, and me. Ultimately, they failed. But they succeeded in the way that hurt worst of all.

I raised my left hand to the muted light and squinted at the Hex mark tattooed there. The skull stared back at me, and I moved on from it to counting the strings inked on each finger. I never got past thirty, unwilling to let Isha put a needle to me ever again. She’d lost that right when she gave Donovan the cursed mark that cost him his life. Like I knew it would.

With a grunt, I rolled over and began sifting through the empty booze bottles on the floor, hoping to find one with some residue I could suck down and avoid a trip downstairs that would involve facing Nash again, or worse, his sister Pippa.

I was still searching, hanging headfirst off the edge of the mattress, when the bedroom door swung wide.

Nash stepped in. “Throw something on and come downstairs,” he said.

Worming my way back onto the bed, I sat up and frowned. “Why?”

He cast a glance at the state of things, the state of me, as though he hadn’t seen it all a few minutes earlier. I’d been living in his clothes since burning mine along with everything else I owned and had piled my dirty outfits on the floor instead of the bathroom hamper. The bottles and cigs were more signs of my presence, like a breadcrumb trail leading to a pit of despair.

Nash walked across to the balcony window and pushed the curtains open, letting in light and a view of the ocean I was in no mood to appreciate. “The room needs to air out,” he said. “It smells like smoke and self-loathing in here.”

When he turned back toward me, I bared my teeth in a sneer. “Wrong time to grow a spine, asshole.”

Nash’s features hardened, and I braced for him to come back at me. I wanted him to even the score by giving me every bit of the shit I’d given him for the past three weeks. Get angry, for God’s sake. Instead, he rolled his eyes away.

“Downstairs,” he said. “You have a visitor.”