Page 65 of The Blood we Crave

It’s not possible.

But this ishissignature. The singular body part left out in the open spaces of Ponderosa Springs, tied with a ribbon and inscribed with a message. Gifts he left for the town to show just how much smarter he was than all of us. That he was able to steal our daughters, wives, and mothers without a trace.

It’s not him. It’s just a copycat. It’s the logical answer, but my mind will not let me believe anything logical right now.

My soul feels detached from my body, leaving me numb and alone as I relive all the brutal memories of the night my mother was murdered.

The flashes of spurting blood that expelled from her body with every harsh slash of his knife, the dulled screams that broke through my small hands. He’s back—is he coming for me now? The ghost that escaped his wrath?

I tumbled backward through the crowd of people still fixated on the detached limb, tripping over my shoe slightly and bumping into a few random bodies. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I can hear someone calling my name, but it’s drowned out by the smell.

The one that refuses to leave my body, my nose, even after the countless showers. The stench of decomposing flesh, my mother’s decaying body. It’s all around me, dragging me further and further back to that night.

When I was little, alone with the dead and all the silence that came with it.

He’s back. He’s back and coming for me.

He—

“Stop.”

My back hits something cold. Cold enough to freeze my mind, my racing thoughts for just a moment, to smell something other than death.

Citrus and fresh sheets.

“Do not let them see you break, Scarlett.” His voice is steady, a rock against the crashing waves that threaten to take me under. “They do not get to see you break. Do you hear me?”

Icy hands curl around my upper arms, thumbs caressing my skin with gentle strokes. All of him overtakes me. He steps into me, the feeling of his chest chasing away all the memories.

Piece by piece, all that Thatcher is comforts my mind, pouring over the darkness like an urn of wintry light that illuminates me. Like frost covering the leaves of flowers. Protecting them. Shielding them.

Allowing me to breathe, to stop.

I anchor myself to that, the skin-to-skin contact he refuses to give others. My body hums at the places of raw connection, of his fingers tracing my bare arms. My head lulls back into his chest, resting there as I inhale the smell of him just beneath his jaw.

Where his cologne is the strongest, wafts and lingers.

“Get out of here. Be a ghost, Lyra, and go hide. Find the quiet,” he mutters into my ear, the stiffness of his tone leaving no room for argument. “You wait for me, and then you break. Only then.”

My nod feels more like a twitch, and my voice comes out strangled.

“If I become a ghost,” I choke, “how will you see me?”

A shaky breath comes from his throat, tickling the bottom of my ear. The haunting recollection of our first encounter sways between us, when we were little kids experiencing a vile evil that most can barely imagine.

Two children sewn together by the Fates’ bloody fingers. A story written in crimson and soaked in cruel endings. Had our parents felt this way? Did Henry Pierson soothe my mother’s soul before stealing it, the way Thatcher did mine?

While others around us are stalled in fear, we exist in the memory of our beginning and the start of our harrowing ending.

“Pet,” he purrs, “I have always seen you.”

learn to play by the rules

THIRTEEN

thatcher

“Sir, I am sorry, but there hasn’t been an inmate escape since the 1970s. I can assure you everyone has been accounted for.”