Page 9 of Soul to Possess (The Artmaker Trilogy #1)

The bones had finished drying sometime around midnight.

They were curled like white fingers, arranged in rows on the stainless-steel table in my shop out back, waiting to be repurposed.

They always waited so patiently. That was the beautiful thing about the dead—they never rushed you.

They didn't whine or question or demand.

They simply offered . Again and again and again.

I washed my hands in the deep sink, the water ice-cold from the well pump.

No heater out here. Just metal and silence and the thrum of my own skin.

There was something reverent in the chill—it kept me alert, awake, aware.

The way the cold bit into me reminded me that I was still human, at least on the surface. Still wearing the shape of one, anyway.

I turned the bones gently, brushing flecks of dried flesh from the delicate curve of a rib.

She’d been small, that one. Fragile. So easy to lift.

So light when she stopped struggling. I didn’t remember her name.

That’s the trick of it. You can’t remember names.

Names give people too much weight. Names belong to women with futures, with plans, with someone waiting to hear from them.

But bones… bones don’t need names. Bones are mine.

My thumb dragged across the grain of her clavicle. Smooth. Not quite perfect. A hairline fracture from where I’d gripped her too hard. I made a mental note not to use that piece for the centerpiece sculpture. Imperfections matter.

The wind outside kicked up dust against the siding. A hollow moan. A warning. A welcome. Snow was coming. I could feel it in my teeth. And she was coming too. The surprise girl.

The thought landed in my brain like warm blood on a frozen floor—an expanding heat, sudden and wrong.

I breathed through my nose, slow and even.

I’d been careful. Precise. Harry would make sure the bus took the right turn.

The detour would look like an accident. A brief delay.

A helpful suggestion. He was so good at making things feel normal.

And she would step off that bus with her big-city shoes and her soft, haunted eyes and not know that every inch of this had been sculpted for her. That every flake of snow, every frozen tree branch, every hollow mile of South Haven had been chosen . For her. For me. For us .

My hand curled into a fist before I realized what it was doing. Bone crunched under my palm, and I forced myself to let go. I couldn’t break anything else. Not today. Today was for patience .

Soon. She’d learn the shape of this place.

The weight of it. How it curled in on itself in the winter and became something else .

She’d learn what it meant to be seen by someone like me.

And if she ran? That was fine. The chase was part of it.

I was good at chasing. Better at catching.

And once the catching was done, I could make another fine piece of art.

I pulled off my gloves and wiped a smear of something dark from the side of the table. The scent of bleach burned the back of my throat, mixing with the faint, sweet rot that never quite left the air out here. It calmed me. Anchored me. This wasn’t about lust. Or love. This was about possession .

This was about knowing her in a way no one else ever had.

Not her friends. Not her mother. Not her husband.

Not the version of her that walked the world with small smiles and guarded steps.

I would see the rest of her. The inside parts .

The parts she hid even from herself. And when she finally broke?

It wouldn’t be the sound that mattered. It would be the silence after.

That soft, reverent stillness where all the pretending stops.

Where I could finally make her my masterpiece .