“Yeah,” said Val. “Shock.”
“You want me to take you back to the dorms? Can you walk?”
“Yeah,” Val said. “Walk.”
If Jade—she couldn't bring herself to say that terrible word, body—had just been found this morning, then his death must have been recent. GM was nothing if not resourceful, but even he couldn't run all the way to the college, commit murder, and then sneak back into his room. Not unless he had killed him remotely. A trap, poison…
Not unless he hadn't killed him recently.
Val grasped Mary's wrist. She missed the first time, and had to try twice. “When did he die?”
“I don't think we should talk about that.”
“Please.”
“Val…you're hurting me.”
“Tell me.”
“I don't know. The cops said he'd probably been dead a while before they found him.” Mary shook her head. “The things they were saying…thank God we didn't see him. It sounded horrible, just like—”
Just like what? Like the chess piece?
Had he been cut in half?
“Poor Jade. He didn't deserve that.”
“Val, who does?”
To which Val did not have an answer.
I never feel safe anymore. I can't be alone. I can't be in crowds. He's always there, watching me. And I can't escape. Not unless I die—
Or he does.
“You must think I'm royally fucked up,” Val said, pushing away from her as the two of them stumbled into the door.
“I think you're the bravest person I know.” Bullshit. She popped a sleeping pill, and waited for darkness.
Chapter Twenty
Butterfly Weed
How easy it was to hurt her now. He smiled to himself, toying with the metal object in his hand as he walked towards the garishly painted building. If he was being perfectly honest, it was almost too easy.
That dawning horror on her beautiful, ravaged face, though—that would give him pleasure for days to come. But it was not mere schadenfreude, nor even sadism. No, it was far more than that.
What they had was a savage, endless cycle of avoid and approach, plateau and decline. It was dynamic, sustaining him as no stable relationship ever had, and he thrived on it.
A short, dark-skinned young woman passed him on the stairwell. He recognized her instantly. The roommate. She glanced his way and he allowed an absent smile to settle on his lips, a parody of camaraderie. It worked; she continued down the hall.
He glared at her departing back, irate. He did not want her to be here. Her presence complicated things. But only a little.
He used the key to enter. It had been simple to get a copy done, even on such short notice. Tragic, really, how morality disappeared in a puff of smoke when a bit of lucre entered the equation.
The door swung open, revealing a messy room denoting a female presence. Clothes cluttered every available surface, and the décor was very much feminine. None of these things interested him, however; he had seen them before.
It was the unmarked envelope on the doormat that held his interest. Black, grainy, almost like thick crepe. He slid the envelope open and as he suspected, several photographs spilled out. Polaroids of course.
All of Val.
He reached into his coat and produced another set. These were fewer in number, and he was the subject in all of them. He tucked both sets of pictures into his coat. The copy wishes to challenge the original.
How tedious. How dull. What a waste of his time. He did not approve of taking such risks for so little of consequence, but confrontation seemed inevitable.
The occupant of the room made a sound that attracted his attention. He picked his way towards the bed, taking care to sidestep the various obstacles littering his path. When his shadow fell over her like a cloak to block out the light from the sun she shivered.
He smiled.
Truly, she was quite lovely. Quick and intelligent, but subordinate to him in all ways. The perfect mate. Several minutes passed in silence marked by the rise and fall of her chest with each gentle breath.
Life fascinated him precisely because one's grip on it was so tenuous; it could end at any moment.
His eyes drifted to the jar of pills on the nightstand. He tilted his head to read the label and then clicked his tongue. Foolish to dull the senses, to leave oneself so prone. He climbed onto the bed and knelt over her, savoring the warmth of her inert body. He ran his thumb over her pulse. If he killed her now, she would seamlessly slip from dreams to death.
But he would not kill her. Not the mother of his unborn child.
With the tips of his fingers he tilted her face towards him and kissed her—gently at first, but when she parted her lips to inhale he deepened the kiss, sliding his hand down her breast to lie over her stomach. She stirred, and her breathing changed.
She had always been slender, willowy even, but her belly was now slightly distended. Not enough to show, but noticeable if one knew what to look for. He nudged his fingers beneath her shirt to cup the taut flesh beneath. Fertile, lush, and carrying his offspring. He sketched abstract patterns around her navel and thought he might even detect the musky scent of her arousal. His erection strained against his fly when she made a soft, low sound, causing him physical pain.
Her body wanted him, even if she herself did not.
He was tempted to oblige it, but there was no pleasure to be had in the act of conquering if it were not proceeded by a battle. The sentiment was shared by man and beast alike; even a wolf knew the difference between a fresh kill and carrion.
He pulled the hem of her shirt down, covering her demurely, and contemplated her sleeping face. If they were married she could not escape him. Yes, it would accord her some dignity—but in name only.
And he could lock her up if she defied him; if she were dependent on him and his numerous resources she would not be able to leave. He could chain her to the wall like an animal, in her room like a prisoner, or on his bed like an odalisque.
Of course, there would have to be some give and take in the economy of his household. And yes, her good behavior would earn her privileges, gifts, which he could revoke whenever she became so feisty as to be outright defiant.
He could put her out on display during social occasions, dressed in beautiful fabrics as if she were a rare, exotic animal. He could teach her French poetry and Italian pillow talk. He could control what she did, who she saw, and even what she ate and wore.
He could dress her to his tastes morning, day, and night. Especially nights. Every night, he could take her if he pleased, and it would be his marital right.
Oh, she might resist at first because a bird that has known freedom is the bird that fights hardest when caged, but she could not fight him forever.
Especially if there were children.
He placed a lacy green plant on the blanket, folding her hands over the leaves to keep it in place. A mere token, a reminder to be vigilant.
His task completed, the door closed with him on the other side, latching with almost no sound. And then, except for the steady ticking of an unseen clock, the room subsided into a hush once more.
▪▫▪▫▪▫▪
Hours passed before she roused herself from sleep, blinking in confusion as her eyes took in the afternoon sun. Sleeping pills were not meant to be used in this way, to make oneself sleep whenever reality became too overbearing to face-on. They were meant to be taken at bedtime to maintain a healthy, normal sleep schedule.
Sometimes, when she thought about this, she felt guilt uncurl inside her like an insect uncoiling to reveal its horrendous inner parts. She wondered if she was becoming an addict, or if she had finally gone crazy. She knew she should call her psychiatrist and let her know what she was doing, if only to find out if it was possible to sicken from abusing her medication the way she was, but then she worried that her pills might be taken from her and, as a result, did not make the call. Mostly, she tried not to think about it.
Even so, her dreams had been strange and disjointed, as surreal as what she imagined an acid trip might be like. She had been having a lot of strange dreams like that lately. The last one, for example. One moment, she had been drowning in a black sea, each breath knifing pain through her lungs, and then in the next, a dark prince was kissing her back to life, as if she were sleeping beauty—only to kill her again with a blade of ice and starlight.
She took in the room dazedly, feeling a bit as if she were in another dream.
Mary was sitting at her desk, working on her Stats homework. Val could hear the punch-punchpunch of the graphing calculator's buttons, followed by the scratch of pencil on paper.
She considered feigning sleep a little while longer. Mary would have questions that she would insist be answered. A few more minutes of avoidance could be a blessing. On the other hand, her spine was stiff and she felt as groggy as if her brain had been packed in cotton. If she lay in bed for much longer she would just end up falling asleep again.
Also she was relieved that she hadn't had to wake up alone. Often when she woke up, her roommate was already gone and that made her feel even lonelier than she already did. Maybe she needed somebody to confide in, if only so the burden wouldn't be on her shoulders.
Val stretched, and something slid off her bed to brush lightly against the floor. She paused, frowning, and leaned over to peer beneath her bed to see what had fallen. Some sort of plant. She had never seen its like before, but it looked kind of like carrot leaves.
“Hey, you're awake. Good. There was something I wanted to—” Mary trailed off into a startled yelp. “Oh. My. God. Val, what the heck are you doing? Is that hemlock? What are you doing with hemlock?”
Val dropped the plant in her hands as if it were on fire or had sprouted thorns. “Hemlock?” Mary went into the bathroom to get a wad of paper towels. She carefully picked up the plant—the hemlock—from the floor.
“That's hemlock?” Val yelped.
Mary crushed the leaves a little and a foul odor asserted itself, making Val wince. “Hemlock,” she confirmed. “My parents had some in our garden. By accident. It killed our neighbor's dog. So I'll ask you again, what the heck are you doing with hemlock?”
“H-how do you know it's hemlock?”
Mary shook her head in disgust. “See the white flowers? Also, the stalk—it's not fuzzy. Parsnips and parsley and carrots—the lookalikes—have, like, these little fuzzy bits on the stalks. But mainly it's the smell that's a dead giveaway. And the color.”
The stem was an angry purple with streaks of red that reminded Val of infection.
“You weren't going to eat it, were you?” “What? No!”
“This couldn't have come from around here. There are laws about this sort of thing. The university would be real careful not to have any of this stuff growing were students or animals or kids could get at it. This had to have come from the woods.”
She turned suspicious eyes on Val.
“I wasn't going to eat it. I'm not suicidal just because I'm depressed.”
“Right. Okay. Sorry.”
Mary put the hemlock in a ziplock bag, towels and all, and sealed it tight. She went into the bathroom. Water gushed from the sink as she washed the traces of the plant from her hands.
Val stared at the plastic baggie of hemlock and wondered if she was feeling the effects of its poison.
Gavin had access to plants.
He knew a lot about them.
He knew about their uses, their properties, their meanings.
But what was he trying to say here?
Hemlock, for hatred?
Knowing him, it wasn't that simple.
Val washed her own hands and nearly ran into
Mary, who had positioned herself outside the bathroom door. “If you weren't going to eat it, what were you going to do with it?”
“Nothing.” Val spoke through clenched teeth. “It was there when I…woke up…” The dream—the kiss. “Shit.” That had been no prince kissing her. He was here. He was here, watching me sleep.
And then he'd tried to poison her.
“Someone is trying to kill me.”
Mary shook her head and picked up the phone. She disappeared with it into the bathroom. Val heard her voice, a low, urgent murmur, issue from the door.
Calling the men in the white coats.
No. She was being paranoid. Mary wouldn't do that—would she?
I don't know. You already know that she thinks you're crazy.
But Mary was also nice to her. Respectful. Tiptoeing around the patient.
Val went to her computer to research hemlock. She quickly learned that it was very, very poisonous. Even a trace amount was enough to kill someone. She read a story about campers who, attracted by the straw-like shape of water hemlock, used them in their drinks. They all died from the effects of the poison.
Hemlock paralyzed the respiratory muscles and essentially caused suffocation. It was a member of the deadly nightshade family. An entire branch of the stuff was a death sentence. If she had ingested part of the plant in sleep, or even touched her lips or mouth with her contaminated hands, she wouldn't have woken to see the light of day ever again.
What had been going through his mind as he twisted her fingers through the leaves of the plant? What about when he had kissed her?
If he had kissed her.
Reality was blurring.
Or maybe she was going crazy after all.
Mary came out of the bathroom and set her phone on her desk. Val watched her grab a pile of clothes from the floor and cram them into one of her open drawers, pushing down, hard, until it could close.
“What are you doing?”
“Cleaning.”
Val frowned. “Why?”
“I called Student Services and told them we needed the locks changed.”
“Is that who you were calling?”
“Who did you think?” Mary said lightly, redoubling Val's doubts.
“And they're doing a room inspection? What did they say?”
“After they finished chewing me out for being irresponsible, you mean? They're sending someone over at four.”
Both girls turned to look at the clock—it was two. Thinking of Gavin, Val said, “That's not soon enough.” He must have gotten a copy made of her key. If he had a mind to, he could easily pay them both another visit. Neither she nor Mary was capable of overpowering him.
“Yeah, well, it's better than nothing.”
That was true. But then, almost anything was. “This is really freaking me out.”
Val opened her mouth to—what, provide comfort? She wouldn't be doing Mary any favors. Fear wasn't pleasant but that was why it saved lives.
Aversive stimuli.
Paranoia.
She wondered if Mary really had been calling Student Services, or if she had called her in as some sort of psychiatric emergency instead. “Help, my roommate has gone crazy—send backup.”
“I don't want to die,” Mary was now saying. Did anyone?
Yes. Some people do.
I do. Sometimes.
Fleetingly.
But the human body was a determined engine; even when things were at their bleakest, it clung desperately to survival, switching to reserves hidden so deep that even scientists hadn't found them all.
“I'm sorry,” Val whispered.
“This wasn't what I signed up for.” Mary sounded like she was going to cry. “This isn't how I pictured my freshman year. God, Val, why didn't you say something sooner? Why didn't you tell me?”
Why don't I come with a warning label, you mean? “Because I'm trying to forget,” Val said, harshly.
“At least tell me what he looks like.”
“Who?”
“Him.”
Val rolled over to face the wall. “I don't want to talk about him.”
“It's not like I'm asking you to dish. I don't want to know your life's story. I don't want to know how you two met. I just w
ant to know what he looks like in case—in case I ever run into him.”
She did sound fearful. But Val had long ago ceased to believe that anyone was completely innocent. There was always some darker motive at play. Even with those who were close to you.
Especially those who are close to you.
Blake, Lisa, James—they'd all had secrets. Secrets that had driven a wedge between the four of them and had, ultimately, led to their destruction. It was the people closest to you who knew how to hurt you best.
“He has black hair. Pale skin. Gray eyes. He's very…tall. Striking—his coloring, I mean.” Not just his coloring. “You would know him straightaway. There's like this energy that surrounds him.”
Animal magnetism.
Mary went still. “I think I have seen him.”
Val looked over at her so quickly that she heard something snap. “What? You have? When?”
“A while ago—he wanted to know where Vance lived. He said he'd been bothering you. Vance, that is. That he was a friend looking out for you.”
“I haven't seen or talked to Vance since the party.
Did you give him the address? You didn't—did you?” “I think I did. Oh my God, what have I done?” Val shook her head. So much for Vance.
Mary chewed on her lip. “You know—I think I might have seen him in the hall. Earlier today. Yeah. Now that I think about it, it was him.”
“Did he say anything to you?”
“No.”
Then he might not kill her.
None of this was making any sense. Vance wasn't the rook. He couldn't be the rook. She would have staked her life that it was Mary.
But it looked like GM planned to kill Vance first.
▪▫▪▫▪▫▪
Val paid a drop-in visit to the school psychologist, who doubled as an adjunct professor (her patients were not allowed to take her courses). Val revealed as much of her story as she dared. The psychologist nodded complacently throughout the duration of the hour-long session, withholding judgment.
This actually might be helping.
And then, afterward, the psychologist gave Val a deferral to a psychiatrist, which Val tore up and threw away into the wastebasket on her way out. She didn't want to be foisted upon someone else, like garbage.
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