But I don’t hear a word as I push the cat from my lap and rise to my feet.
Because I’m staring at a text I’d sent him at the end of March, the same day he’d called and asked me to be his date for the awards.
Do you think this gala will have an ice cream buffet? If so, I should probably let them know that you only accept freshly-milked semen.
My blood turns to shards of ice in my veins.
I remember holding that white tub in my hands in Thorston’s kitchen as I read the homemade label to Rowan.
April tenth to thirteenth.
I know what he said on the way to the gala. I remember it as clearly as I remember the warmth of the kiss he’d pressed to my neck in the lobby, the tingle of electricity in my skin when he’d taken my hand across the leather seat during the drive. ‘At least one thing is going right at 3 In Coach’, he told me. ‘Stuff inevitably goes wrong. It just… feels like a lot lately.’
Lark is still talking when I say, “I have to go,” then disconnect the call.
My fingers are cold and numb when I open the app for the camera I installed in the restaurant kitchen.
My stomach churns as I take in the details on the screen.
“No…” Tears flood my vision. “No, no, no…”
I clutch at my heart as it shatters for a second time. Blood drains from my limbs. The edges of my vision darken and I press my eyes closed tight. A sound of anguish tumbles past my lips as my knees buckle, my phone dropping from my hand. I know the horror I just saw is real. But there’s no time to fall apart.
What if you’re not fast enough?
I don’t answer that question. I can’t. The only thing I can do now is try.
I swallow the lance of pain and steady myself to take one turn in the middle of the room. My gaze lands on my leather case where I keep my scalpel among my pencils and erasers.
Hands shaking, I pick up my phone and dial the Unknown Caller, a contact whose name I never entered into my phone. He answers on the second ring.
“Spider Lady,” Lachlan says. “What’s the occasion?”
“I need a favor. Urgently,” I reply as I whip my case from the side table and stride toward the door. “You have as long as it takes for me to run twelve blocks.”
“Sounds fun. I like a challenge. What do you need?”
“I’ll tell you what I know,” I say, already descending the stairs by twos. “And you’re going to give me everything you can find on David Miller.”
22
FINESSE
ROWAN
T he sharp edge of the mandolin lays against my inner forearm between the ropes that bind me to the chair. My palms face upward in curled fists, my short nails digging into my flesh as I brace against the pain I’ve already endured and that which is yet to come. Ragged breaths saw from my chest and I grit my teeth. I know what’s about to happen. Blood already pours from two other wounds, and he’s determined to get the perfect slice this time.
The blade catches in my skin and peels it from the flesh beneath.
I swallow a scream as David pushes down to resist my futile struggle and glides the mandolin toward my elbow until a thin strip of my skin is cut away. He tosses the bloodied tool onto the prep counter where it skids to a halt next to his gun.
Then he tears the flap of skin free from my arm with a merciless tug as the sound of my distressed cry fills the room.
“You know, I developed a taste for this at Thorsten’s,” David says as he leans close until he takes up all the space in my vision. He grips my hair with one hand and wrenches my head back to smile down at me. His once vacant eyes are not fucking vacant anymore. They are ravenous. And they’re pinned on me. “Did you develop a taste too?”
Blood drips across his fingers from the sliced skin pinched between them. I thrash in my chair but can’t escape his hold.
“Just a little nibble,” he says.
I press my lips tight. A choked growl of protest vibrates in my throat as he smears my bloody skin across my lips.
“No?”
His counterfeit pout turns into a reptilian grin.
David’s tongue slides out between his teeth and he lays the skin across it like a veil, holding it out for me to see. He closes his lips around it, lets it wiggle against his triumphant smile.
Then he sucks it into his mouth.
Eyes closed, his jaws work slowly, like he savors every bite as he rolls it between his teeth.
His audible swallow turns my stomach.
“Such a delicacy. So very rare.” He turns away to the table and drags a bottle of Pont Neuf across the stainless steel counter. “You know what else is rare?”
My answer is only ragged breaths.
“A woman like Sloane,” David says.
I’m going to be fucking sick.
I have never, never felt like this. Like there’s an empty pit in my stomach. Like I’m falling into it from the inside out. So helpless. So fucking desperate. That look in her eyes when I told her I didn’t love her, it haunts every breath I take. Those goddamn tears rip me apart.
“Not many people would do what she did for me,” David says as he spins the corkscrew into the bottle. It squeaks with every metronomic turn of his hand. “But then, that’s her way, isn’t it. Just like she protected that friend of hers, the Montague girl. So strange how that teacher just suddenly disappeared from their boarding school, don’t you think? People do have a funny way of conveniently disappearing around the Montagues.”
“Leave her alone,” I grit out.
“Though when I dug and dug and dug for answers, it seemed as though there were already rumors swirling about the things he did to the girls there. Terrible things. Depraved things. Deviant things. But at least he did one good thing—he made the Orb Weaver. A beautiful monster.”
The cork pops free of the bottle.
His voice drips with feigned innocence when David says, “Do you think she would want to do those deviant, depraved things with me?”
My vision reddens with rage as I thrash in the chair. “Leave her the fuck alone,” I snarl.
David sighs as he pours himself a glass of wine. “I don’t think she wants to either. But I’ll make her.”
I erupt within my restraints, unhinged. Wild. Insane.
But I go nowhere.
“Maybe I’ll take my time,” he continues as he unwinds the cork from the metal spiral. “Make her trust me. Maybe I’ll even make a miraculous semi-recovery. You know, not so much that I don’t still tug on her little black heartstrings, but just enough that she can convince herself into fucking a lobotomized man. Or maybe I’ve used up all my patience already. I’ve been waiting for this moment for so long, you know. Maybe I’ll just follow her all the way back to 154 Jasmine Street. I could break into her house and bring her a doggie bag. Feed her little pieces of you and then fuck her until I tear her apart, until she’s nothing more than another piece of bloody, pulverized meat destined for the trash.”