I found her around the corner from the staircase, frozen in shock. Her pulse was racing, but she looked uninjured. There was no one else in the cellar, but it had clearly seen frequent, recent use.
Against one wall stood a scarred wooden table, ringed with an obviously hand-carved groove all the way around the edge. The table was stained with old blood and still sticky with fresh blood. To the right stood another, slightly cleaner table covered in barbaric-looking tools. Lined up against one wall were several fleshless, cougar-shaped mannequins.
But none of that was the source of Abby’s fear.
I followed her terrified stare to the wall above the bloody table, where a framed corkboard had been hung.
The board was covered with photographs of Abby.
SIX
Abby
Nonononono…
There I was, in the top left photo, walking through the quad at school. The leaves were still green and I wore shorts. That picture was from early fall.
He’d been watching me for months.
“Abby.” Jace tried to tug me toward the stairs, but I pulled free. My gaze was glued to the corkboard. I couldn’t stand to see the pictures, but I couldn’t make myself look away.
Bottom row, fourth from the left. I was in profile at a register in the dining hall, paying for three sandwiches and a cardboard tray of bacon. Robyn had always wondered how I ate so much and never got any bigger, but whoever’d taken that shot knew about shifters and our high metabolic rate. That’s why he’d—they’d?—been following me.
“Abby. Look at me.” Jace stepped in front of me, his hands on my arms, but I stared over his shoulder, still searching the photos for an explanation. For some motivation that would explain why we’d found some kind of creepy Abby-stalker-board in the basement beneath the scene of a murder.
I’d come expecting to have to cover my scent upstairs, but I’d never been in the cellar. If I had been, the whole thing might have gone down differently. Maybe I wouldn’t be in so much trouble.
Maybe Jace wouldn’t want to get rid of me.
In a picture at the bottom left corner of the board, I stood in the parking lot next to Robyn’s car, my pack hanging low and heavy on my back. Mitch and Olsen stood to either side of me, and Danielle was bent over the trunk, arranging luggage.
My eyes watered. I hadn’t seen any of them since the day that picture was taken, no more than five hours before Mitch, Olsen, and Dani had been slaughtered. Before Robyn had been dragged through the woods to a disturbingly furnished hunter’s cabin for no reason other than that she was my friend. She was bait, intended to draw me to the scene of my own murder.
Fear cooled my skin like a cold wind. My teeth started to chatter. How could I have missed so much? I was supposed to have everything under control!
I’d known since the day I’d killed the hunters that they’d been watching me. Their leader, Steve, had actually signed up for my psychology class just to get close to me. He was the one who’d suggested the campsite, luring us into his very backyard.
I’d fallen into his trap and my friends had paid for my mistake. Now their ghosts were haunting me from a full-color, glossy four-by-six photograph.
But some of those pictures were taken after I’d killed Steve and his friends. Two of them were taken during finals, just days before.
A strangling sound caught in my throat.
Jace took me by the shoulders. “Abby.” That time, when I tried to move away, he pulled me into an embrace, his body pressed the length of mine—a physical shield against a visual horror. “Don’t look,” he whispered into my hair, gently guiding my head toward his chest.
My temple grazed his collarbone. My arms slid around him. I inhaled deeply, and in spite of all the blood—both old and new—the only scent I registered was Jace’s. He smelled like the forest in winter. Like soap and coffee. And like something wonderfully, indefinably masculine.
He felt like strength, security, and power.
I relaxed against him, letting his scent and the feel of him eclipse the horrific implications of that repulsive stalker-board.
“I’ll take it all down.” The steady thumping of his heart intensified, and for a second, I thought I could feel it through his shirt and my jacket, but that was impossible. Right? “You won’t have to see any of it again,” he whispered. “Come upstairs with me.”
But when he let me go, his gaze snagged on mine and I got caught on that fierce connection, like a bug drawn toward a light. I knew better than to touch him again, but I couldn’t make myself back away.
“I never should have brought you here.” His voice was so raw, it hurt to hear. “I’m sorry. You should never have seen this.”
“It’s my fault.” But I knew before the words were even out that he wouldn’t understand them. I wasn’t giving him a chance to understand. I couldn’t give him that chance.
Jace’s brows rose. “Believe it or not, I know how to say no. Even to you.” A small smile tugged at one corner of his beautiful mouth, and I was suddenly crippled by the memory of that midnight kiss in the woods.