by Melissa Marr
Michael gapes at us. He looks at the dead man beside him. In truth, he’s coping far better than I expected.
“No.” I reach out finally. The palm of my hand flattens on his chest. My husband. I’m touching my husband again after seven years. Memories of the pain that follows such moments make my hands shake. “You don’t need her. I’m here. We can leave, just you and me.”
Reid kisses me so tenderly that tears fill my eyes. “I gave you my vow, Tessie. I took you as my wife. In sickness and health. In richer or poorer.”
“I know.” I want to point out that he imagined that those women were me before I left, that if I hadn’t left I’d have died by now. I don’t. Angering him isn’t going to help.
“You gave me your vow, didn’t you?”
“I did. I do.”
“And yet, you told Michael about me. About us. You let him fuck you.” The rage I’ve been expecting starts to seep into Reid’s voice, but his caresses are still gentle. “My wife. My body. This is mine. . . and someone else fucked it.”
I don’t move. “He wasn’t the first. That was Andrew.”
Reid steps back from me. “How many?”
“I don’t know. They didn’t matter. Sometimes I was lonely, and sometimes I just needed money, and . . . they didn’t matter.”
“Michael does.” He walks over and shoves the knife into Michael’s thigh, sinks it hilt-deep as Michael screams.
“I’m sorry. I was wrong.” I don’t know why, but it hurts to see Buddy there dead. It upsets me knowing there’s another woman in my house—in my safe little house in the city that saved me. I flinch at seeing Michael bleed, at knowing that he’s about to die.
Reid jerks the knife out.
“I’ll be a good wife.” I put my hand on his biceps. “You don’t need to do this. I’m yours.”
“Liar, liar.” He shoves me aside. “I’m not sure you could ever be good again, Tessie.”
I stumble, but I don’t fall.
Reid looks at me. “I gave my brother a choice: her or you? I gave Juliana a choice, too. Buddy or herself. He’s dead.”
“What did she pick?”
Reid smiles at his brother. “Juliana wouldn’t kill him. She didn’t listen to me or to him.”
I understand before he puts the question to me. I think I understood before he spoke at all.
“Do you love me, Tessie?”
“I do.”
He holds out the knife. “You can save him or her. The man you’re fucking or the woman Buddy loved enough that he couldn’t decide whether you got to live or she did.”
“Tess?” Michael looks at me. He starts to try to stand.
“Stay,” Reid draws gun from the back of his trousers and points it at Michael.
Michael shakes his head at me.
I feel sorry for him, but the girl in the tub loved Andrew, and Andrew saved me. That means I’m alive because of her. Later, Reid will ask me to choose her or me. I know this game all too well.
Right now, though, it’s her or Michael.
If the girl in the tub dies, the only one left for Reid to hurt and fuck is me.
“I’m sorry, Michael.”
“No!” He tries again to get up.
Reid shoves him down, then stands to his side. When Michael tries to move again, Reid strikes him with the gun. All the while, he stares at me. They both stare at me as I stab Michael over and over.
It’s not the first time I’ve killed a person at Reid’s side. I couldn’t admit how often I’ve done so, not even to Michael. He knows now. As Michael dies, he understands the story he was asking me to share.
Afterwards, I hand the knife back to Reid. “Let Juliana go.”
“We’ll see.”
We stand there. Blood-covered. Silent. I’m not sure what happens now. I used to know what to do at times like these, but it’s been a lot of years.
“Go to bed, Tessie. I need to think.” Reid gestures to my bedroom.
Mutely, I go. It feels wrong to crawl into my clean sheets when I’m covered with filth, but I know better than to go into the bathroom where Juliana is being kept. So, I lie down in my bed and wait.
I don’t know if my husband will come to bed or not.
42
Tess
I wake my husband with a kiss.
After I left him, I’d tried to forget. I’d pushed the details so far down that for a while they only came out when I was asleep. Then they’d come screaming to the surface, and I would have night terrors that made it impossible to let anyone into my bed.
I open Michael’s bag and look at his notes. If Reid saw them, he would know how much I told Michael. Michael’s version of me is wrong. I have a flicker of a wish that I could ask him if he saw me that way.
But he’ll never speak to me again.
If I survive, though, I’ll send his chapters to his agent. Maybe someone else will finish it. Maybe they’ll get it right.
Michael now shares a fate with all of the women I wasn’t good enough to save.
I don’t forgive Reid, but I can’t forgive myself either. We are both guilty. I won’t let Juliana stay in my tub. Not another one. I know what I have to do. I’ve been ready for today for several years.
Today, though, I must be Tessie. I must be the version of me that barely survived. I must be the woman who loved a monster, or I’ll die here.
Gently, I say, “Reid?”
He stares at me, and for a moment, I see the man I loved.
“Happy anniversary.” I lean down to kiss him again. No matter what blood or lies we’ve let come between us, I taste a sweetness, a promise we’ll never reach.
“You weren’t home for any of our anniversaries.” Reid cups my face in his hands. “I fucked strangers that looked like you.”
I think about them, pretty things all dressed in red. They died and bled in my place. He did that. He killed women who looked like me.
Juliana looks like me, too.
“You can do whatever you need so you can forgive me.”
I walk over to my closet and pull out the suitcase of things I’ve gathered in his absence. It was a strange compulsion to buy things that he’d like, things I hate, but I knew this day would come.
I bought other things, too.
Reid picks up a spiked baton and runs his fingers over it. “You bought this?”
I nod. I’d ordered it from a guy I’d met at a club. They were used by the Chinese police. “There’s one with electricity too.”
He glances into the box, then back at me, staring as if I’m his goddess, like only I can understand him. It’s the sort of trust that held us together for so long, and I’ve brought it back in this offering. I want nothing more than to make this moment the end, to freeze our lives here--before the bleeding and pain.
Before anyone else dies.
He picks up a strip of leather with metal bits knotted into it.
“Will it make you forgive me? Will you let Juliana alive and untouched if I let you hurt me instead of her?”
“Yes.”
I strip.
By the time Reid is sated, I’m shaking and sobbing. Being willing to be tortured isn’t the same as it not hurting. My mattress is ruined, and I know I’ll need stitches on my back.
“No one’s ever trusted me like that, not without wearing chains so they couldn’t escape.” His fingers trail through the blood on my belly. I’m fairly sure most of it is from the deep cut on my breast, but there are other shallow cuts on my stomach too.
I don’t speak. I’m not sure if I can.
“Sometimes, I just can’t stop. I dream about hurting you. I used to pretend they were you when I killed them. It’s not that I don’t love you, Tessie. It’s because you love me.”
I’m glad to finally have it spoken between us, to have the truth on the bloodied sheets. He wants my death. “It’s okay.”
“You’ll need to heal before we travel.” Reid has propped up on one arm, staring down at the bruises that
are already purpling on my skin. The look of awe is still on his face.
I pull him close, so I can kiss him. I whimper a little, but he likes that, the proof that I hurt and still want him. When he pulls away, I ask, “May I get a bottle of wine?”
He nods, and I go to the kitchen. One bottle. One corkscrew. One glass.
“Let’s toast to new starts,” I suggest as I hand it all to him.
Reid looks more at peace than he ever has before as he opens the bottle and pours the wine into the glass. It’s that ridiculous pink wine he always bought for me. I keep a bottle of it for this day.
After he fills the goblet, he holds it up. “To us.”
“To us,” I echo.
He drinks, swallowing most of the measure he’s poured. Reid never was one for doing things by halves. I’d worried about that, but Reid is unchanged.
When he holds it out, I touch my lips to it, but none of the drugged liquid even touches my tongue. There was no reason for him to suspect a thing. I'd injected the drugs through the cork.
If I had to, I’d drink it, too. I’d choose death rather than a return to being his prisoner. I want to live, but I am willing to die. With Reid, death is closer to survival than a life as his wife.
He’s not paying attention, though. His eyes are on the rivulets of blood that trickle over my body, and I can see that the sight of my blood still excites him.
I move, reaching out for the bottle of tainted wine again, wincing from the motion, and fill it up. I don’t know how much it will take.
“If you were gentle, we could make love again.” I extend the cup to him. The mere thought of it makes me cringe, but there are two dead men in my house and a woman trapped in my bathroom, and I cannot let him live. “Would you mind being gentle?”
“I can do that.” He empties the glass, and then he lays me on my bed so carefully that I imagine myself as hand-blown glass, too fragile, too rare. I think of us, of the way we found this peace at last, as we make love. For a moment, I remember the way it was at the beginning. I remember how he offered me safety and care. I remember how lucky I felt—before I realized that my beloved was a serial killer.
When Reid rolls me over so I’m on the top, my blood drips onto him, and his look of awe expands until I think we’ve reached something magical.
“I love you,” I remind him. A part of me always will. Tessie will love him. That was the only way to survive. I loved him.
I see the drugs taking hold, the hitch in his breathing, the blinking as his vision blurs. I wasn’t sure of the dosage, so I mixed Rohypnol, Ketamine, and some Ambien too. Probably any of those would do the job, and mixed with wine they’d knock him out quickly. If necessary, I think drinking enough of it would kill us both, but I couldn’t be sure. I need to be sure at least one of us dies here.
I’d rather it’d be Reid.
“Tessie?”
“Shhhh. This is for the best.” He’s unconscious by the time I finish the sentence.
Gingerly, I climb out of bed and walk across the room, trailing blood as I go. That can’t be helped. There are many worse things all through my house. Dying is messy, and this house wasn’t meant for death.
I go to the kitchen.
There’s never been a trace of me before when there were bodies to find. Today, there is no choice. My fingerprints are all over the house, and there will be three dead bodies here by the time the police come. I’ll be in their system. There’s no avoiding it. Not now. I don’t know if I’ll be able to disappear again. I want to, but first I have to end my marriage.
I take the knife that he tossed onto my counter. Blood is crusted on it. Andrew’s blood. Reid and his brother will share this too. It has to be a knife. Guns are noisy. I don’t want people to come too soon.
Knife in hand, I return to bed. There’s something strange about how still Reid is when I go back into my room. I knew he was unconscious, but it seems wrong to see him that way.
I’m careful as I crawl onto the bed. I lower the knife tip to his belly and put my weight into pushing it through the flesh and into his body. What we think of as “stomach” from the outside of our skin is really intestine, but I’m not looking to kill him yet. I want him to bleed, to start to die. I want him to die as he has killed, with cuts and wounds, with slowness and care.
Reid jerks as the blade slides into his belly.
Carefully, I stab him again. This time, I aim higher, hoping to catch the liver. That’s a better spot to stab someone.
Killing my husband doesn’t take as long as it feels like it should.
As I stab him, he thrashes, but the drugs do their job perfectly. They’ll wear off, but unless someone asks for an autopsy too soon, I’m not expecting anyone to ever know about the drugs. On TV or movies, people always get autopsied, but the cause of Reid’s death will be readily apparent—and no one will ask a lot of questions about his death. If they do know, it doesn’t really matter.
I’ll be gone. Freedom has cost me my city, but I am alive. I have survived.
There are a lot of things I don’t remember, but so many of the ones I do are awful. If the police find me, here or somewhere else, I will not be able to give them all of the answers.
If I died here, too, no one would be left to mourn me.
Not Michael.
Not Andrew.
Not Reid.
I’m no different than the girls in the tub. Reid chose women with no families, no lovers, no one to look for them. I had money, and a mother I barely spoke to. Now, I don’t have those things either. I’m just like they were.
I look at the bodies in my living room as I walk toward the bathroom. Juliana is the last girl who will be in the tub. She’s the last detail to sort out before I leave New Orleans.
43
Juliana
Tess stands in the doorway. She’s naked and bleeding in so many places I can’t figure out where to look. I hope that at least some of that blood isn’t hers.
For a moment, she just stands there. Then she says, “They’re all dead. Michael. Andrew. Reid. My lovers. All three. Dead. You are not, though.”
I nod. There’s a knife in her hand still. I’m not sure what to think, except I don’t think the Teresa I sought is the same as the woman in front of me now. She’s far from stable; on that at least, Andrew told the truth. I wince at the thought of Andrew. Michael, who arrived with Tess, is dead, too.
And Reid. The Carolina Creeper is dead. That, at least, is a victory.
But if that’s all her blood, I’m not entirely sure if Tess will live.
I’m also not sure if she’s here to kill me.
“Can I help you, Tess?” I ask as carefully as I can when sheShe stands, silently bleeding. “If you have bandages . . .”
She nods.
I tug on the chains on my arms. “If you unlock me, I can help you.”
She nods again, but that’s all she does. She doesn’t move or react. I’m not sure how she’s standing. There are bruises, dried blood, and torn skin.
“He’s dead,” she repeats. “They’re all dead. But not you.”
Tess stares at me, and I wonder if there’s any chance of survival for either of us. If Reid were in the room, there wouldn’t be. She saved me from him. I just don’t know if she means to kill me or free me.
“You can’t leave here like that.” I talk to her as I’ve spoken to so many mourners in my life. “You need to cover up. People would stop you if you left like that. You may be going into shock.”
Again, she nods.
Obviously, this isn’t working, so I try a new tactic: “Unchain me, Tess.”
She meets my gaze. “If I do, you can’t leave yet. I don’t want to hurt you, but I can’t go to prison.” She holds out the hand with the bloodied knife. “My husband did bad things, but it was wrong to kill him. They’ll think so. It was all I could do. He wanted to hurt you.”
“You saved me.” It’s the truth, but I know it’s not enough. His death was likely self-
defense, but what about the rest? If Andrew was to be believed, Tess would be hospitalized for her crimes.
I could lie to her, tell her that won’t happen, but I can’t be sure what she’d do if I tried to stop her.
“You need to get out of the tub so I can wash,” she says. Then, after a too long moment, she adds, “I don’t want you to have to die. Do you understand that?”
“You want me to be safe, but you’ll stop me if I try to leave before you say it’s okay. Is that right?”
She nods.
“I promise, Tess.” I mean it, too.
Maybe that’s the wrong answer, but it’s the one that feels right. There are three dead men in the house. The only person in danger is me. Waiting an hour won’t change anything.
Moving so slowly that I want to weep for her, she comes closer and unhooks the handcuff that has held me captive. The chains clatter to the floor beside the beautiful claw-foot tub.
“Stay in the room.”
I see her staring at the tub as if the thought of climbing into it is akin to scaling a mountain. Softly, I ask, “Can I help you?”
Tess nods again, and I help her into the tub. Over the next two hours, I help her. Eventually, the water isn’t red, and her wounds are bandaged. I apply antibiotic ointment to the worst of them. Some are days old, so I know Reid wasn’t the one who inflicted them.
“Did Michael do that?”
“He wanted to understand Reid.” Tess looks at me like she’s asking a question. “J. Michael Anderson . . . he was a writer. I was his muse.”
I am no longer so sure that the other man’s murder is a crime. “Tess?”
She meets my eyes in the mirror as I stitch her back. My prior experience with stitching flesh is on the dead. I try not to think about how different it is to stitch the living. Tess stays as still as a corpse, despite the lack of pain relief.
“No man should hurt you,” I tell her. “What Michael did, what Reid did . . . you deserve better. You deserve kindness.”