Page 152 of On Edge

Music burrows into my brain, like an insidious whisper in my ear as he hums along to it.

In the barber’s mirror, I can just about see his reflection.

The mask, slick with blood, his torso coated in it.

I bite down on my lip hard to keep the panic inside, watching as Troy rotates his shoulders and then turns away. In the mirror, he takes a fresh razor from a leather roll on a side table, testing its edge and turning it in the dim light. The tattoo on his back of a swan with its wings outstretched seems to glare at me.

If he catches me here….

I don’t want to think about it.

My only hope is to move under the table, inch by inch, and then run for the door. But the floor betrays me. There’s a soft squeak as my heel snags on something slick.

Troy stops. Those demonic red eyes lock on mine through the mirror, where I’m hiding behind the chair.

“What have we here?” His voice drops to something dangerously soft. “A rat?”

33

SAGE

Troy moves, predator fast, stalking around the chair.

The hideous music fades.

And all I hear is my pulse thundering as he closes the distance between us. I shuffle back, but not fast enough. His hand fists in my coat belt, dragging me to my feet like I weigh nothing. My back slams against the wall, and suddenly he’s all around me—his body caging mine, a hand locked around my throat.

“Who are you and why were you following me?”

My heart beats so fast against my ribs, sucking the air and words from my lungs.

“Tell me.” His red eyes rake over me as he leans over, and I catch his familiar, expensive cologne that he was wearing at dinner, beneath the smell of blood and death. But the Troy at the hotel, and this demon, now, won’t connect in my head.

“You have three seconds to tell me who you are and why you’re sneaking around, or I’ll carve the damn truth from your mouth.”

As his grip tightens, fingers curling around my neck in a way that makes breathing too hard, a razor appears at my throat, cold steel cutting in. He presses it against my racing pulse.

He doesn’t recognize me through the disguise, in the dark.

“It’s me, Sage!”

He hesitates, considering. Then reaches up and pulls the cap off my head so that my hair tumbles free.

“Sage?” He says my name like he’s tasting it. “Why the fuck are you here?”

As he pulls me forward, spinning me until my back hits his chest, I see us both in the dark mirror. His arm bands across my collarbone, razor still at my neck.

“Did you come to enjoy the show?” His breath is hot against the shell of my ear, and the bloody mask presses to my cheek, leaving sticky warmth on my skin. “Or did you come here planning to turn me in, little finch?”

I struggle against him. “No, let me go!”

He drags me toward the barber chair and hauls me into it. I fight him, but he’s stronger. Somehow, I lose the coat, and then his hands are everywhere, gripping my waist, pinning my wrists, binding them to the armrests with wire that bites.

I aim a kick at his ribs.

“Stop,fuck?—”

He catches my ankle, his hold on me bruising as he forces my leg down to the footrest and secures it there, and then does the same to the other one, so my legs are spread apart. When I’m finally bound, chest heaving, unable to escape, he steps back to admire his work.