I’m ready for my close up xx
He always is. Aeron Lore views the world through a microscope with a scarlet lens; he sees everyone and everything in painful detail, each analyzed to identify his own personal advantage. In his line of vision, your faults light up like tumors on an MRI; if you’re lucky, he can use them, and you’ll get his special brand of chemotherapy. Either you take it or resign yourself to rot. It will make you sick, of course. But you’ll survive.
Or if you’re like me, he’ll become a surgeon with a magic knife, as if he can somehow bleed the faults out. And you become his drug. His superpower, his weakness, his immaculate vice. Fun and games, little children.
Don’t be like me when you grow up.
My fingers still shake, my knuckles clanking painfully together. Christ.
The office phone on my desk buzzes. Without looking down, I hit the acceptance button, nearly sending my coffee flying as a secretary’s mild voice crackles through.
“Shit,” I mutter, catching the cup just in time.
The secretary clears her throat in a rush of static. “Miss Reeves? Your ten o’clock is here.”
“Ask her to wait outside my office. I won’t be long.”
“Of course.”
Onscreen, the camera falters again; a young woman brushes past the operative, her haze of red hair obscuring the view for vague seconds. Then she passes, and Aeron comes back into sight, getting to his feet as the loudspeaker announces arrivals from Flight 894, Burlington International, and a steady stream of passengers spills through into the lounge.
Look at this man on the monitor right here, all warm brown eyes and nonchalant grace as he kneels to welcome Ash, his sandy-haired mini-me. Ash practically catapults himself into Aeron’s arms, his green Moshi Monsters cap knocked sideways at an oh-so-cute angle. Now they’re high-fiving. Grinning at each other like loons. The headlines just write themselves, huh? Ethan, Ash’s nice boy nanny, traipses behind wearing a green t-shirt that proclaims I’m kind of a big deal. Comments are already pouring in beneath the live stream, gushing and ignorant and poorly spelled. Perfect.
I take a big gulp of lukewarm coffee and try not to gag. It wouldn’t be ladylike. Everyone here expects my manners to be spectacular, as if being born within a few hundred miles of the Queen of England somehow transmits etiquette by osmosis. At least stale coffee tastes better than the metallic tang in my mouth. I keep forgetting to eat, to drink, and it’s like my insides are bleeding up on to the back of my tongue; I was doing so well at living—seeing friends, exercising, going out with Aeron and not feeling like sacrificial arm candy—and now this.
As Aeron, Ash and Ethan fade out of view, I gather up my phone and access cards before logging out of the computer. Then I do what I’ve been avoiding since the moment I sat down: walk through the workstations. For the past week, there’s only been one topic on everyone’s lips, and I don’t want to hear it. Sure, the whispers get quieter as I approach—I’m the boss and these are my good little worker bees—but I know what they’re talking about. Blood Honey, and victim number two.
They finally named her yesterday: Jamie Perkins, a peppy high school junior with two bona-fide flesh and blood parents, and no known connection to the first victim. I’ve deliberately stayed out of Aeron’s office so I don’t have to see the carnage that is her grieving family all over his massive TVs, but that hasn’t protected me entirely. She’s burned into my retinae like barcode; Darling in that crusted red-brown scrawl. She. Jamie. That was her name. We’re ninety-nine percent sure the FBI are now handling things, which means our sources have dried up, and that meant we had to publish the crime scene photos in full just so we had something to publish. Classy. To say they received a mixed response is an understatement—some Facebook group has started a Go Fund Me page to buy Aeron a conscience.