A Poised Nuisance (Lithe Book 1)

by Iris RIvers

  “How do you know they found it? Maybe it’s still there,” Lara said, purposefully ignoring Lilah’s question. The truth was, she couldn’t remember what she had done with the gloves, but she wasn’t going to admit that out loud. “Maybe we can go get it.” Her mind was an incoherent mess, jumbled between flashes of Colin’s body and her previous tears.

  “Really, Lara?” Violet said. “You think it’d still be there? After a full day?”

  “Leave her alone,” snapped Evelyn. Violet shut her mouth.

  “It’s too late,” Ana said anxiously. “All we can do is figure out how to clean this up. To make sure we won’t be found.”

  No one said a word, just sat in the worry, in the calm before the storm. “I’m sorry,” Lara whispered. “I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t realize—”

  “You didn’t realize what, Lara?” Ana exclaimed. “That you aren’t supposed to just leave a body out in the open? Or that this would have consequences—that this was real life?”

  “You should’ve called one of us,” Evelyn said softly. “You should’ve called me—I would’ve told you what to do.”

  Lara looked down to the floor, suddenly incredibly ashamed. She’d been careless—ignorant. They had trusted her with this, and she’d failed them.

  Was she meant to be shocked though? This was how her relationships had always ended: in failure and disappointment.

  “They won’t find us,” said Renee. “You left nothing behind, right?”

  Lara shook her head.

  “Good.”

  “Where’s the blade? The one you killed him with?” Orion asked, leaning forward to gaze at Lara.

  “My apartment,” she answered.

  “Burn it,” said Ana. “Get rid of all evidence: your clothes, your shoes, everything.”

  “Maybe one of us can go to the church,” Lowri interjected. “To check out the scene.”

  “Are you dense?” Orion asked. “If they found us, we’d immediately be suspects.”

  “Wait,” Sienna said. Lara was certain she was silently hyperventilating. “It could work.”

  “How?” Sage asked her. “Wouldn’t that be suspicious?”

  Sienna raised a brow. “Maybe if we went, it would seem that way. But if Lowri went, no one would bat an eye.”

  Ana nodded, as if the gears in her head had finally started moving. “You’re right.”

  Sienna smiled proudly, her teeth bright and her eyes squinting.

  “Wait, you want me to go?” Lowri squeaked, pointing to her chest. Lara looked at her, at the overalls she wore and the green sweater underneath. Somehow, sending Lowri to clean up her mess didn’t feel right to her, but she had no choice. Lara knew she didn’t have the right to interfere—not when she’d gotten them into the mess in the first place.

  “Obviously,” Sienna said. “Like Orion said earlier—you’re white. No one will even look in your direction, not the way they would if any of us went. Besides Evelyn. But you still have an advantage—you look... harmless.”

  “Weak,” Orion stated bluntly. “She looks weak. It’ll come to her defense.”

  “This will work,” Evelyn said calmly.

  “Yes,” Ana replied. “It has to. We have no other choice.”

  Lara nodded quietly, afraid to speak, to embarrass herself any further. Evelyn reached for Lara’s limp hand, squeezing it tightly, and Lara pulled her head up to her, beguiled by Evelyn’s smile. “We’ll be fine,” she whispered.

  Lara looked around to the girls that surrounded her—to their bewitching faces, all different, all incredibly elegant. She wondered what she would do if she lost them all due to her negligence. She hadn’t known them for long, but it seemed impossible to imagine her life without them. Not when she’d bound herself to them with the blood of her first victim, chaining herself to the floor of the tower.

  “I hope so,” she replied, loud enough for the girls to hear.

  “Lara, Lara, Lara,” Irene tsked. “There is no hope inside this tower—only knowledge.”

  “You’ll go tomorrow morning, Lowri,” said Ana, her voice ringing across the bell. “And call me once you’ve left.”

  “What do I look for?” she asked, nervously touching the buttons of her overalls.

  “Anything,” Evelyn said desperately. “Anything at all.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.” ––Jack Kerouac

  Despite Oliver’s promise that he’d keep him updated, Clarke found himself at the cathedral once more the next morning, circling its perimeter, looking for something—for someone. Who? He wasn’t sure, but something in him told him he’d find them. Her.

  Oliver had texted him last night, saying, Someone broke into the cathedral last night. Could be related but seems like it was just some kid putting his head where it doesn’t belong.

  Clarke wasn’t sure he agreed. When he had arrived at the church, taking his 2001 Honda Accord and speeding quite noticeably, he saw a broken lock down on the concrete, below the door. He picked it up off the ground. It must’ve been broken by a rock.

  He shot a text to Oliver. You sure it was just a kid? he typed. Seems to have been done with intention.

  Oliver didn’t reply. Clarke sighed, stepping over the caution tape that lined the front and reaching for the key Oliver had given him, unlocking the church’s door. It was completely dark inside—save for one candle that still flickered. The rest had been blown out. He looked to the golden cross resting on the altar, his eyes following it as it reached up to the ceiling, up to their god.

  A squeak came from beside him, startling him in his spot. It was a girl, he realized. A girl with red hair and pale skin, with freckles and long limbs.

  Lowri.

  It was her, the girl he’d followed. She was there, in the church, open and waiting—innocently looking around like she’d been waiting for him, like she knew he’d be there.

  Should I speak? he wondered. No—no, that would mess things up. That would ruin my plan.

  So, instead, he watched. He stood behind a large wooden table as Lowri roamed the front of the chapel, touching the wooden pews gingerly; he sucked in a breath as she neared the corpse, as she brushed her pasty fingers across the white tarp covering his body. She jumped back abruptly, like she was afraid of what she’d see—like she couldn’t handle a dead body, tangible, directly before her. Could she truly be capable of these brutal murders? If she’s standing here, terrified of simply seeing a dead body, would she be able to steal the life of a breathing person?

  Everything Clarke had found pointed to yes. He just needed to wait for her to fall into his trap, to lead herself to him, subconsciously and willingly.

  Then she would see. Then he would find retribution in the twilight.

  OUT OF FRUSTRATION, Farrow had taken the short Lyft ride to Juilliard’s notorious bell tower—famous for, quite possibly, some of the cruelest things to happen on its campus. There had been a string of murders in its tower, starting in 1929 but not ending, continuing to the year Farrow sat in.

  Kai’s parents had been murdered with a blade, cut across the throat and left to bleed out on their bathroom floor. Similarly, each bell-tower victim had been found with an open throat. The connection was a stretch, Farrow realized that, but she was grasping at straws—hoping to find something, anything.

  It was when she walked up to the daunting tower, its stone a portrait of the sunset above Farrow’s head, did she find it: the inscription. Faint, painted gray, it was scarcely visible in the shadows—but she saw it somehow. She traced a finger across the slight word, etching each letter into her mind.

  Graceful. Who would carve such a word into a place responsible for so much death?

  It most likely was nothing, just a purposeful inscription that had been added during the bell tower’s construction, but still, she remembered it. She stored it in her mind as she drove home, staring out the foggy window, looking up at
the towering buildings. It danced in her mind as she unlocked her apartment door, walking to the open laptop resting on her coffee table. Graceful, she typed into Google. The definition immediately came up.

  Grace or elegance. She wondered if the words correlated to the bell tower. Maybe it had no correlation at all—maybe she was just wasting her time following a complete dead end.

  Still, she couldn’t give up; not when she had thrown herself too deep into this mess to be dug out of.

  A list of synonyms rested just below the definition, each mundane, each dull—but one caught her eye. Lithe.

  She didn’t know the word, the definition, but it still sounded familiar. Farrow dug through her mind, thinking of where she’d seen it.

  The first two letters, she realized, were the same as the letters of the note found beside Kai’s parents’ bodies. Li... it said. Lithe?

  It made sense; the name linked to the bell tower, to the murders that had been done there.

  Had she found it? The missing piece? It was a strange word—strange enough to have Farrow wondering who came up with it. The name shuddered against her skin as she rested her head on her keyboard. She closed her eyes, thinking of the secrets she was soon to uncover.

  The next night, Farrow went back to the bell tower. Her fingers traced across the familiar stone, needing to feel the engravings of the word.

  It wasn’t there.

  She felt the scarred edges of a knife’s blade run across the stone, crossing out the word as if to erase its existence. Farrow smiled, the feeling foreign and savaging.

  “Hide all you want,” she whispered into the emptiness. “I’ve already found you.”

  LARA COULDN’T SLEEP. She’d tried to, she truly tried, but she knew lying restlessly in bed would do no good. So she left her apartment, her feet moving across the city sidewalk as if they had a mind of their own. She shoved her hands into the pocket of her hoodie anxiously, hiding them from the cold air.

  When her feet finally stopped, she looked up—and there it was. The cathedral. The same one she’d committed murder in; the same one she’d taken control of. Her reign. Her dynasty. It felt safe, walking up the stairs, kneeling underneath the caution tape that surrounded it. If Lithe knew she had come here, Lara was sure they’d murder her.

  Someone had placed a heavy lock on the front doors. Lara cursed, looking around for something heavy. She picked up a rock and used it to tear down the chain, its rough surface scraping her skin. It shattered to the floor, the metal grazing her feet.

  She entered the church and looked at the pews, confirming its emptiness. A few candles were lit, flickering in the darkness, fading in a non-existent breeze. She wondered who had lit them—the church was supposed to be empty; it was a crime scene. Lara’s crime scene. Once she walked in further though, she realized she wasn’t alone. She never had been.

  A boy wearing a red shirt sat in the middle of the room, on a long pew. His head rested between his hands like Colin’s had been when she’d found him.

  Was she dreaming? Colin couldn’t have been here, alive and breathing. It wasn’t Colin though, because he didn’t have dark skin and dark hair. He didn’t bounce his leg impatiently when he was stuck in his head.

  Only Kai did those things.

  Kai was here, sitting in the cathedral, breathing, moving, real. He wasn’t dead, though she thought he was.

  When had Kai ever been alive?

  Lara felt her fingers tremble as she clenched her fists. She blinked once, twice, squeezing her eyes shut to remove him from the room, hopeful that he was only a figment of her imagination, that she’d finally lost her mind. He was here, though, and he wasn’t leaving. No matter how hard she tried, he stayed. He was here, and Lara had no other choice. She couldn’t stop herself from moving closer to him; it was Destiny herself that moved her, shoved her closer to Kai—meeting his stillness with her own.

  “How did you get in?” she whispered silently—so silently she barely heard herself. Lara loomed behind him, not ready to meet him at the pew.

  She wanted him to stay silent, to say nothing at all, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. “The back door was open,” Kai said. He didn’t move, didn’t turn his head to face her. He knew who it was, who it always would be. He had memorized her footsteps, her breaths; he would know them in death.

  “Why?” Lara said, the tone of her voice imploring. “Why are you here?”

  He didn’t speak, didn’t answer her question. Instead, he stood, head turning and eyes burning as he walked over to where Lara stood. She took a small step back.

  “Answer me,” she said, suddenly angry. She couldn’t handle his silence, his carelessness—not anymore. The candles flickered in the distance, burning down to their wicks, pushing smoke from their trembling bodies.

  “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. The darkness made him look alluring, like he belonged to the night—like he was made of it. If Lara was the bloodthirsty queen, then he was the coveting king. He was the one that grinned as she pulled the trigger—laughed as she bathed in blood. He was the one to blame for her sins, for her iniquity. It was Kai, Kai, Kai.

  It was always going to be Kai.

  “Yes, you do,” she said. “You do.”

  “I thought you’d be here,” he whispered.

  “Why?” she asked, startled by how loud her voice had become.

  There was silence, then: “You follow death. You follow tragedy.”

  Lara stepped back again, shaking her head. “What are you saying?”

  “You follow me, don’t you? You’re like a moth drawn to a flame—you can’t help yourself,” he said quickly, as if was coming to the realization as he spoke—the words falling from his mouth as his mind whirled. “I’m tragedy; I’m death. I was born in it; I was raised by it. That’s why you do these things to me. It’s why, even when I give you no reaction, even when I continue to beat you, you don’t stop. You can’t. You crave it—the pain. You savor it.”

  Lara looked down to Kai’s moving lips, remembering when they’d been centimeters from her ear, whispering foul things, things one should never say within the confines of a church.

  “You were wrong when you said I was worse than you, and you know it. You knew it from the moment the lie slipped off your filthy tongue.”

  “You crave it too,” Lara said. She was shaking—not out of fear but vexation. “The pain. The suffering. I can see it in your eyes each time you look at me.”

  “You’re right,” Kai admitted, talking two steps toward Lara. This time, she did not move back. “I do.” He looked up to the ceiling, at the unlit chandeliers, and asked aloud, “And what does that make me? How horrible must I be to enjoy it?” He slowly looked back down at Lara. “Maybe I am worse than you, after all.”

  When Lara said nothing, Kai closed his eyes, relishing the silence. “Every time,” he said, “every time I close my eyes, I see you. Do you know how miserable it is? Do you know how badly I wish I could tear my brain from my skull each time I shut my eyes?” His eyes shot back open. “You’re there. You’re always there.”

  He took another step, then another, and once again, they were in the same position they had been countless times before—the one that left them with no air to breathe and no space to think. But it was different this time, Lara realized. Something was very different, and Kai could feel it too.

  “Sometimes I wonder if it was you who killed my parents,” Kai whispered, his lashes fluttering. “Can you imagine that? Your tainted hands, stealing the breath from my parents’ lungs. I dream about it sometimes.” He laughed grimly. “You’re a murderous girl, Lara Blake.”

  Lara wasn’t sure if she’d heard Kai speak this much before, but then, listening to his voice, feeling it dance across her skin, she never wanted him to stop.

  “I dream of you too,” she whispered. “I dream of wrapping my hands around your neck like you did to me last night, squeezing until the life dims from your eyes.”

  Kai groaned, looking d
own at the floor.

  “You’re right,” she said. “I am murderous. I’m depraved—vicious. That’s why you should walk out of here, forget you saw me.” She looked at the shining piercing in his nose. “I don’t know what I’ll do if you stay,” she admitted. “I’m afraid of what I’ll do, and you should be too.”

  “I’d never fear you,” Kai said, looking back up to Lara’s face, then down to her shaking hands. His eyes squinted against the darkness. “You’re bleeding,” he said suddenly.

  “What?” Lara looked down to where his eyes roamed her skin. She was bleeding, she realized, from a cut on her finger. It must’ve come from the rock she’d used to break open the lock. Her finger was coated in it, the blood.

  Kai reached for her hand wordlessly, turning over her palm. Then he pulled her finger up to his face, touching it to his lips. Lara sucked in a breath, nearly pulling her hand away at the contact.

  “I love seeing you bleed,” he whispered, taking her finger into his mouth. His tongue swirled around Lara’s skin, luxuriating in the taste of her sins, then pulled it free, allowing her finger to drop back to her side. Lara didn’t move, didn’t make a sound; she just stared at Kai’s lips, coated in her own blood. It was an agonizing sight.

  “You’re evil,” Lara said, her breathing labored, her palms sweaty.

  “And you’re not?”

  Lara looked into the fire of Kai’s eyes, while he looked down at the fullness of her lips. Then, as if their flame had finally blown out, Kai brought his mouth to her own. It was horribly wondrous—a jumble of emotions; all so intense, so passionate, that Lara could hardly breathe. At this point, she wasn’t sure she wanted to.

  They collided together like sword against sword. He tasted of blood—her blood. Lara kissed him back feverishly, the hunger in her stomach growing as he tugged on the thickness of her hoodie. They pushed at each other’s chests with equal force, angry that they were doing this, angry that it couldn’t happen faster. Lara slipped her tongue into his mouth, gripping his skull with her fingers. She felt the metal of his septum ring clash against her nose as he breathed into her mouth. Lara bit his lip roughly, drawing his own blood. Evening the field. It had never been peaceful with them. It had never been a fantasy.