Page 25 of Rule the Night (Blackwell Butchers #1)

MAEVE

I stood uncertainly in the kitchen as Poe walked behind the island. “Coffee?”

“Yes please.”

He put a mug under the fancy espresso machine and set a skillet on the stove. “Eggs okay?”

“Eggs are fine. Can I help?”

He walked to one of the big glass-doored refrigerators. “I got this one. You’ll be cooking a lot from here on out.” He straightened with a carton of eggs and a pack of cheese in his hands and met my gaze. “We like to eat.”

My cheeks burned and I felt hot all over again even though it was significantly cooler inside the loft than it had been on the balcony. Why did everything Poe say sound dirty?

I slid onto one of the chairs lined up next to the hunk of polished wood that separated the kitchen from the rest of the living areas.

The island was one of the few things in the loft that wasn’t concrete or metal, and I had to admit it was a nice contrast with the industrial vibe of the rest of the loft.

Poe retrieved my coffee from the machine and set it on the island. “Sugar, cream?”

I shook my head and breathed in the rich scent of black coffee. Was there any better smell in the world?

Poe started cracking eggs into a ceramic bowl.

“So, um… what do you like to eat?” I cursed myself for the question. Now that I’d read innuendo into his comment about eating, anything on the subject sounded sexual.

“We’re not picky.” He kept cracking, working his way through six of the eggs he’d pulled from the refrigerator. “Well, Remy is picky. But Bram and I will eat anything.”

“How is Remy picky?” It was easier to focus on Remy’s food preferences than to think about all three of the Butchers eating… whatever Poe was talking about them eating.

“He’s a health nut,” Poe said, finishing the last of the eggs. “Puts all kinds of weird shit in his smoothies but turns his nose up at a cupcake.”

He went back to the fridge for some cream and opened it near the bowl.

“If you use water instead of cream, the eggs will be softer,” I said without thinking.

He froze with the carton of cream in his hand, ready to pour. “Water?”

I nodded.

He set down the carton of cream. “How does that work?”

“Eggs already have a lot of protein. The protein in dairy bonds to the protein in the eggs. It makes them denser.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “Huh. How much water?”

“For a dozen eggs? Probably about a quarter cup.”

He went to the cupboard, removed a measuring cup, and turned on the faucet.

“Why are you putting water in the eggs?” Remy said, entering the kitchen from the hall.

He was wearing black track pants and no shirt.

I was starting to think the Butchers didn’t believe in shirts, and I really wished they did, because being forced to look at their sculpted chests seemed like cruel and unusual punishment given that they’d spent ten hours hunting me through underground tunnels in the hopes that they could turn me into their slave for three months.

Remy’s chest was absent ink, but thorny vines worked their way up his arms and over his shoulders.

He went to one of the fridges and opened the door and I saw his back tattoo clearly for the first time: a giant skull like the one the Butchers had worn in the tunnels with the words Memento Mori inked in scrolling script over the top of it.

Remember you must die.

Poe added the water to the eggs and gave them a stir before pouring them into the waiting pan. “Maeve says water’ll make the eggs softer than milk or cream.”

Remy turned around with a handful of ingredients in his hands: yogurt, berries, and a couple of pouches whose labels I couldn’t read. “Culinary school, right?”

I felt like I’d been slapped.

I sat up straighter. “How do you know I went to culinary school?”

“It was in your background.” Remy set everything down on the counter next to a blender, but when he turned to look at me, his elbow knocked into the package of blueberries he’d set on the counter.

The container slid off the edge of the counter. Berries went flying onto the floor.

Remy cursed and bent to pick them up.

Poe sighed like he’d seen it all before, but I wasn’t going to let their unintentional comedy routine distract me.

I folded my arms over my chest. “What background?”

“We do background checks on all the girls who come to live here after the Hunt.” Poe stirred the eggs in the pan with a silicone spatula. “Toast?”

“No, I don’t want toast,” I snapped. “I didn’t give you permission to dig into my life.”

It had been disorienting enough to be in the loft with three strange men, but at least we’d been on an even playing field. I didn’t know them but I didn’t think they knew me either.

“Your permission isn’t required, little bird.” Poe said it matter-of-factly, and my anger boiled over.

“It should be. And why do you keep calling me that?”

He turned off the eggs and split them between two plates, put two slices of bread into a gleaming toaster, and plucked an avocado out of a bowl on the island. “Your hair. It’s so shiny. Reminded me of a raven the first time I saw you in the tunnels.”

The answer took some of the wind out of my sails. It sounded like a compliment.

“So I guess you know everything about me now,” I said, sulking.

Poe eyed me over the island. “Not everything, I’m sure.”

He cut the avocado into halves and sliced one on each of the two plates of eggs. Then he pushed one of them toward me like it was no big deal that they’d totally invaded my privacy.

“Can I have a fork?” I asked.

“Are you going to stab me with it?” he asked.

“Not this time.”

He opened a drawer and put a fork next to my plate. “I’ll take you at your word.”

Meanwhile, Remy had finished picking up the spilled blueberries and was calmly loading ingredients into the blender. So far I’d tracked two scoops of protein powder, some of the yogurt, fresh berries, sea salt, and several spoonfuls of powder from small unlabeled mylar bags.

Poe took a bite of the eggs while he waited for his toast. “Wow, you’re right about the water. These are pretty fucking amazing if I do say so myself.”

“They’re just eggs,” Remy said.

“You wouldn’t be saying that if you were eating them instead of the chemistry experiment you’ve got going over there,” Poe said.

“What was that?” Remy asked.

Poe opened his mouth to repeat the words but Remy started the blender, grinning at Poe as his voice was swallowed by the roar.

He turned it off, and Poe opened his mouth to say something else, but Remy started the blender again, cutting Poe off for a second time.

He turned it off.

“Fucking dickhea— ”

Back on.

I choked back laughter. I didn’t know these assholes well enough to laugh with them.

Poe shook his head and took a bite of eggs, obviously annoyed.

“Is your sister’s boyfriend the one you want dead?” Remy turned off the blender and poured his smoothie into a glass.

The question almost knocked the wind out of me. For over a year I’d harbored my desire to kill the man responsible for June’s death, but I’d never spoken it out loud to a single living soul, not even Bailey.

“That’s none of your business,” I said.

I’d lost the Hunt, was living here like a slave-slash-housekeeper. My story — June’s story — didn’t belong to these men.

“I wouldn’t blame you,” Poe said quietly.

There was an ocean of quiet pain in his words, but before I could respond, Bram stepped into the room.

The atmosphere shifted, like it had when he’d moved in the holding room before the Hunt.

It had been easy to forget how huge — how monstrous — he was when he’d been out of sight. But now that he was in front of me again, it was impossible to deny.

Unlike Poe and Remy, Bram’s upper body was covered by a white T-shirt, not that it did anything to hide his cut biceps and chiseled pecs. He was wearing different jeans than he’d worn during the Hunt, but the denim didn’t seem any more equipped to contain his body than the other ones.

It was hard not to stare at the scar that bisected his face, not because it was ugly but because it made his features even more interesting. It was like looking through a kaleidoscope, and I had to force myself not to study him, not to try and make sense of him.

Probably futile anyway.

He stomped past me without a word and made his way to the coffee machine.

Remy flashed him a too-bright smile. “Morning, sunshine.”

Bram grunted and set to work making himself a cup of coffee. When he turned around, he took in the skillet and my half-eaten plate of eggs.

He ignored me and turned to Poe, who was buttering the toast that had popped out of the toaster. “New girl cooking already?”

Wow, really? Rude.

“I cooked,” Poe said. “Going to make a store run with Maeve today.”

“I can take you,” Remy said to me. His blond hair was still tousled from sleep (or maybe from the gym in the hall?) and his hazel eyes looked green in the sunlight streaming into the kitchen.

“No fucking way,” Bram said. “If you take her we’ll have nothing but granola and chicken.”

“Most commercial granolas are loaded with sugar,” Remy said, taking a sip of his smoothie.

“Um, excuse me. I’m right here, and my name is Maeve.”

Bram turned to look at me and for a long moment I felt like I was falling through space, nothing but vast emptiness in his eyes. “I know your name.”

The moment passed so quickly I might have imagined it.

He dug around in the fridge and emerged with what looked like a chocolate muffin.

Remy made a sound of disgust. “That shit’s going to kill you.”

Bram flipped him off and put the muffin on a plate in the microwave.

I ate my eggs in silence, taking it all in. This was… a lot: the bickering between the three men I’d only known for less than twenty-four hours, my new living arrangement, the cameras, the background check they’d done into my past.

That part made me the maddest. One of the things no one tells you about public interest cases is how they take on a life of their own.

June’s story had been plastered all over the news.

In the days before her body had been found, it had been the subject of breathless gossip in true-crime forums (I heard she was using drugs/it’s always the boyfriend/maybe it was that sex trafficking ring in Blackwell Falls/was she a prostitute?).

A million caricatures had been created of June, a million personas that had nothing to do with her but that were subsequently associated with her anyway.

It all came out in the end, but I was still protective of June, of her story. Now the Butchers knew all about it and I couldn’t help feeling exposed.

I tried to calm myself as I finished my eggs. The Butchers might have thought they knew all about me, but they were wrong.

I still had plenty of secrets.