Page 17 of Rule the Night (Blackwell Butchers #1)

MAEVE

I pulled up outside the old two-story house on the outskirts of town and turned off the car.

“Which one is it?” Poe asked from the passenger seat of the Honda.

“That one,” I said, tipping my head at the yellow clapboard house.

He studied it through the window and I tried to see what he saw: a neat little farmhouse that had been divided into two units long ago, the flower beds blooming with deep blue hydrangeas and delicate English roses, babied by Mrs. Carr, the widow who owned the building and lived in the front unit.

The walkway was laid with brick pavers and a cheerful flag flew from the porch, the word Welcome emblazoned over a field of sunflowers. The lawn had been recently trimmed, not a weed in sight.

“You live here with your parents?” Poe asked.

“No.” I wanted to shut down any conversation about my parents. They weren’t part of what I’d done by joining the Hunt. They weren’t part of anything I’d done since June’s murder. “With my roommate.”

I didn’t even want the three men who’d claimed me in the Hunt to know I lived with my best friend. Basically, I was just going to look at the next three months as a quiet little prison stint, one my friends and family didn’t need to know about.

I flipped down the visor and swore when I saw the blood streaked across my cheeks and forehead. It looked even worse than I’d imagined, liked I’d escaped from the set of a gory horror movie.

I could not talk to Bailey looking like this.

I opened the console and pulled out a pack of makeup remover wipes I kept in the car. I hated the way makeup felt on my face, and I always took mine off right after my shifts at Lushberry.

I scrubbed at the blood on my forehead with the first wipe, then used a second one for my cheeks while Poe watched from the passenger seat.

“Should I be offended that you’re in a hurry to remove our mark?”

“Depends.” I turned to look at him. “Do you want my roommate to call the police when I go in there?”

“Definitely not.”

“Then you want me to get this blood off my face.” I looked in the mirror, turning my head left and right to make sure I’d gotten it all. “What kind of sicko marks someone with their blood anyway?”

“Our kind.”

“Obviously.” I stuffed the used wipes into the cup holder in front of the console. “I’ll be back."

Poe reached for the handle on the passenger door.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“Coming with you.”

“Um, no, you’re definitely not.” The conversation I had to have with Bailey was going to be hard enough without a huge tatted stranger standing there while I packed my unmentionables. “Just wait here.”

I knew Bailey was home because she worked a boring office job five days a week and had the weekends off. Plus, her white Corolla was in the driveway we shared with Mrs. Carr.

Poe sank back into the seat. “Won’t you need help carrying your stuff?”

I couldn’t tell if he was being straight about wanting to help or if he was just plain nosy, but it didn’t matter because no way in hell was he coming in. “No.”

“If you’re sure.”

I’d never been more sure of anything in my life, except maybe the fact that I was in a world of trouble and Bailey was going to tell me exactly what she thought of the situation.

I got out of the car and headed into the house with my phone and keys in hand. My wallet was still in the glove box where I’d left it when I’d gone into the Orpheum the night before, and there had been no point carrying a purse.

At least I had Rose. If I had to live with three scary guys for three months (I tried not to think about what they were going to make me do), having a weapon was better than the alternative.

I spotted Mrs. Carr at her window as I approached the house and returned her wave. She was more than a little nosy, but it had never bothered me before June died.

Back then, I hadn’t had anything to hide.

I’d been more careful in the year and a half since June’s murder. The things I’d been doing could get me into trouble, and the fact that I was preparing to pack my belongings and live with three men whose names I’d learned less than an hour before was Exhibit A.

I’d wanted to avoid witnesses to my comings and goings, but now there seemed no point. I was moving out for three months. Mrs. Carr was bound to notice eventually.

I continued around the building and up the short flight of stairs that led to our apartment at the back of the old house.

I took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly before I opened the door.

Bailey turned around on the sofa, craning her neck to look at me. On the TV, one of the girls on Love or Money, our favorite reality show, was mid-tirade, obviously chewing out one of the other girls in the house.

“Did you get my texts?” Bailey asked. Her dark blonde hair was held by a clip, her long legs stretched out in shorts under one of the tank tops she wore around the house.

That was how it had always been with us, ever since we’d become best friends in second grade at Forest Day School, the private school my parents had scraped to afford for June, Simon, Olivia, and me.

“Yeah, sorry.” I set down my phone and keys. “I didn’t look at my phone until ten minutes ago, and by then I was on my way home.”

“Must’ve been some inventory,” she said.

Guilt heated my face. I’d told Bailey I had to work inventory at Lushberry because it had seemed less complicated than telling her about the Hunt. I’d planned to win, in which case the three men who’d hunted me would be planning a murder and I’d be on my way back to my normal life.

What was left of it anyway.

Instead Bram and Remy were probably making up the guest bedroom — at least I hoped that was where I’d be sleeping — while Poe waited in my car outside.

“Yeah… about that.” I sat on the other end of the couch.

She lifted her eyebrows. “Uh-oh.”

“Yeah… I need to tell you something.”