Scythe & Sparrow (The Ruinous Love Trilogy #3)

Haunted

HAUNTED

Rose

This is my favorite time of year. And it might not be Silveria Circus, but in a way, this is even better.

A brand-new night fair. An epic haunted house. A creepy-ass tent for my tarot readings.

Saugus Frightfair.

It’s a perfect October night.

My setup is legit pretty fucking cool. When unsuspecting fairgoers come in for a reading from a terrifying clown, I’ve got all kinds of jump scares at my disposal. I keep a remote hidden on my lap and buttons on the floor I can press with my feet. I can turn off the lights, set off a smoke machine, trigger doll heads to drop from the ceiling or screams from the hidden speakers or a ghost mannequin to pop out of a cabinet at the side of the room. Sometimes, other staff sneak in to scare the shit out of unsuspecting clients. People love it. Especially when they get so into the reading that they forget to anticipate the next scare. And my cards have been on fire tonight. Readings about exes and romance and secrets, about ambition and hope and love and loss.

Eventually, things finally start to taper off toward the end of the night. There are still loads of people milling around, but there are longer gaps between visitors to my tent. I wrap up a reading for a pair of teenage girls and when they leave, I take out the creepy teeth and decide it’s time to turn off the neon open sign at the entrance of my tent. When it’s switched off, I let the curtain drape across the door. With a quick call on my walkie-talkie to the fair manager, Wendy, to let her know I’m closing up, I pocket the device in exchange for my phone and send a text to Fionn.

Hey :). I’m just finishing up for the night. You still want to pick me up? No worries if you’re already in bed!

Yeah for sure. Thought I’d make my way there to have a look around. I hope that’s okay! I’m just parking.

That sounds perfect.

With a smile and a deep, contented sigh, I sit back down at my table, cleansing my deck before I shuffle it. I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t had much time to do a reading for myself. And maybe it’s not just that. I’ve kind of enjoyed not trying so hard to interpret the chaos that lives around and within me.

But when my readings have seemed so spot-on tonight, resonating with almost everyone who’s come in to sit across from me, it’s impossible not to pick the cards up and think about the future. Especially when Fionn is in town, though I try not to read our relationship too often in case the cards tell me something I don’t want to know. I’m happy with what we have, even though I want more. And if it’s destined to go in the other direction from where I hope we’re heading, I’d rather just enjoy what we have without being worried about how it will end. So instead of asking about my love life directly, I go to one of my favorite questions for a simple reading, shuffling as I say it out loud.

“How can I prepare myself for what’s coming next in my life?”

I draw the first card.

Knight of Swords.

I sit up straighter. This is a card I rarely pull for myself, and when I do, it usually means I have to act quickly. But it can also mean someone or something destructive. Someone ruinous.

I draw the second card.

Death.

My blood runs cold, as though it’s been drained from my limbs, leaving my skin chilled and my hair raised. Like any card, Death can mean many things. Transformation. Endings. Change needed for growth. But after the Knight of Swords …?

I draw the final card.

Four of Swords.

Stillness. Pause. Mourning. Time spent recovering.

“From what?” I ask. But I don’t think I want to know the answers to my questions anymore.

I stare at the three cards. Unease snakes across my spine. The longer I look at them, the more I wish they would change, or that I could see any other meaning than mayhem and destruction. But no matter how I try to spin the interpretation, there’s only a sense of dread drifting around me.

I hastily shuffle the cards back into the deck, put them in my leather pouch with the selenite, then slide the pouch into my pocket. With a long sigh that does little to calm me, I sit back in my chair and press my eyes closed. I try to find comfort in the sounds of laughter and music outside my tent, in the scents of donuts and popcorn. I close my arms over my middle and think of Fionn’s embrace, of the warmth of his presence and the calm that comes with knowing there’s someone out here in this crazy world who sees the real me and doesn’t turn away. And that’s all I want now. Some comfort and calm.

“Time to go home,” I whisper to myself.

“That’s a shame. I was hoping you were going to tell me about all the good things that lie in my future.”

My eyes snap open and land on a man looming at the entrance of my tent.

His face is painted in white, a contrast to the yellow of his teeth, his lips peeled back in a menacing grin. His eyes are fixed on me, framed by diamonds of black face paint. A red ball covers the tip of his nose, a wig of curly fuzz stuck to his bald head.

I go rigid in my seat.

“After all, I drove all night to get here just to see you. Get it?” Matthew Cranwell points to his face, where a glass eye covers the prosthetic that must now be in place behind it. His smile widens. “Do you like my new look? I think the nose really adds something.”

“You’re right. You look just as much like a clown as the first time I met you,” I say, edging my foot closer to the buttons hidden by my tablecloth. “I heard your wife finally left your ugly ass. Took the kids with her too. Good for her.”

A flash of fury passes across his face, but he banks his ire behind a menacing smile. “It’s been good for me too. Lost a couple pounds. Quit the booze, just about. Got myself a new purpose, ya see. I’ve rekindled my love of hunting.” He reaches behind his back, withdrawing a blade that’s as long as the one I left in my apartment, sitting in its sheath on the nightstand. “And I’ve certainly fleshed out some very interesting details about you.”

He takes a single step closer to my table.

“The Sparrow,” he hisses.

A thousand thoughts swirl through my mind. How could he know? How much does he know? Did someone tell him? Who did he tell? His lips curl with the knowledge that his arrow has struck its mark. No matter how hard I try to keep the fear from my face, he sees it. And he loves it.

“That’s right,” he says as he takes a single step closer to my table. “Did you know I used to be a deputy for the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office? Ten years I worked there.”

I say nothing.

“I might be a farmer now. But those skills? That training? It doesn’t disappear. I started trackin’ down all the places your little circus stopped. Does the name Vicki Robbins ring a bell?” When I don’t answer, he tips the end of his blade in my direction. “It should. They never found out where she got the poison that didn’t quite kill her husband. Shame he murdered her so quick. Maybe he would have gotten a confession from her if he hadn’t choked her to death. But you and I both know it was the Sparrow who gave it to her.”

“I wonder why someone would try to kill their husband?” I snipe as I tighten my grip on the seat of my chair until my fingers lose feeling. “Any ideas?”

Matt chuckles, a low and mirthless rumble that fills my tent with malice. “The more I started to look, the more I found a trail of untimely deaths in the small towns you passed through. At least one or two men every season. You must be responsible for, what, ten murders? Maybe twenty? Oh wait, make that twenty-one if you count Eric Donovan, isn’t that right?”

“As far as I heard, Eric Donovan’s never turned up. He might still be traveling the country, doing whatever dipshits do.”

“You don’t always need to find a body for there to be a murder,” he says around a dark and triumphant smile. We both know he has enough knowledge of a potential connection between me and Eric that there’s no protest worth making. But it’s his next words that turn my skin cold. “Dr. Kane. He must know too, right? He’s the one who did your surgery. Put you up at his house. Worked with Eric’s girlfriend. He beat the shit out of a boxer at that fight club for knocking you over, as the story goes. And he covered for you that time I dropped in for a visit at the clinic. I know you were there, listening to every word.”

“Leave Dr. Kane out of this—”

“I tried, actually. Spoke to him just last night. But he seems hell-bent on sticking with you. I know he was flying here today, I’m bettin’ to see you, isn’t that right?” Matt waggles his brows and squeaks his red nose. “So just how much does he know, exactly? Or is it even worse than that? Has he been helping you—”

“What the fuck do you want? You think you’re here to arrest me? You were kicked off the force for being an incompetent douchebag, from what I heard. So if this is some kind of lame-ass attempt to get yourself back onto the roster, think again. It’s never going to work.”

He shakes his head. The white paint cracks and shifts and flakes on his face as his grin stretches. “Do I look like the kind of guy to pass you over to some idiot in a uniform when I can settle the score myself?”

His leather gloves creak. His fists tighten. The knife glints in the dim light. My own mask of makeup tightens on my skin as I mirror his smile. “Do I look like the kind of girl to go down without a fight?”

I hit the button for the lights and plunge us into darkness.

Matt crashes into my table. I pick up my chair and swing it in his direction. Pain spikes in my wrists and elbows with the impact. Our cries of shock and frustration are a harmony in the darkness.

I take a second swing, a return pass. The chair breaks against Matt and I hear what I hope is the knife as it flies from his hand to break the glass in the cabinet door. All I have left of the chair is the seat. And though he groans with pain and curses with rage, I know he’s not done yet.

I use the only advantage I have now—my knowledge of this cramped space. I drop to the floor and crawl to the back edge of the tent as Matt thrashes around the darkness, destroying everything he touches in his search for me. I stay crouched and quiet, tearing at the canvas until the pins loosen from the grass. Wooden seat still clutched in my grip, I slide free of the tent and run .

An unhinged, dirt-streaked, grass-stained clown running through the fairgrounds attracts only yelps of surprise and delight from the patrons. No one notices the panic in my eyes. The way I stop and spin around and scan my surroundings for the man who wants to kill me. No one hears the heartbeats that roar in my ears.

No one knows the realization that blares through my mind, obliterating all other thoughts.

If I don’t kill Matt Cranwell, he will kill me. And he will take Fionn down too.

I cannot let that happen.

I look left and right but there’s no sign of Matt Cranwell.

“Why does this shit never go right?” I ask out loud as I pivot on my heel and scour the crowd. The scent of donuts and churros and burgers swirls around me on the cool breeze. Aside from the occasional staff costume I recognize, it’s impossible to pinpoint a familiar face beneath masks and makeup. A little surge of panic ripples through my heart. Maybe Matt has taken off like any sane person would do. Maybe he’ll bring in the cops after all. There’s no reason to entirely bank on his narcissism and misogyny and fondness for physical violence to get the better of him. And Christ, what if he does think rationally and take this to the police? Fionn will definitely be dragged down into the thick of this mess with me. My imagination threatens to run wild with images of red and blue lights, courtrooms and lawyers and metal bars that slide closed and never open.

But I can’t get caught up in all that now. I’ve got a job to do. “Get your shit together, Rose Evans.”

I start another turn when a quick burst of movement catches my eye. I spot Matt next to the hot dog stand. He’s peering around the corner of the glass display. Then Matt spots me, and unfortunately, he’s picked up a second weapon, his knife clutched in one hand, and a hot dog skewer in the other. He straightens and comes out from behind the cart, creeping another step in my direction. “It’s on, you fuckin’ clown,” he snarls through a feral grin.

I take off running.

Matt roars a threat of vengeance behind me as I weave through groups of teenagers with their popcorn and cotton candy, and staff dressed as zombies and witches and deranged clowns. I dart between stands and through narrow passageways. My heart riots in my chest. My stomach threatens a revolt. But I still keep Matt just close enough that he can find me. Just far enough that he can’t catch me. And I keep my eye on the target I spot through the crowd.

The haunted house.

I run for the staff-only side door, tossing a glance over my shoulder as I scramble to pull the keys from my pocket and unlock it. Matt is in the distance but lasered onto me. He has a limp in his step that slows him down, but not by much. He snarls when I give him my best psycho clown grin. I push the door open and leave it ajar, and then I plunge into the darkness, ducking into the shadows.

A moment later, Matt bursts through the door.

“Fucking bitch.” He starts limping down the corridor where performers can travel behind the walls to scare visitors from behind hidden panels and trapdoors. Screams and laughter and the dusty aroma of glycerin fog linger in the air. His head swings side to side as he looks for any sign of me, a weapon still clutched in each hand. I step from the shadows, pulling the door shut with a quiet snick .

I sneak behind Matt, the flat seat clutched between my hands.

“Where the fuck are you,” he whispers.

I smile.

Ta-da, motherfucker.

I use all my force as I swing the wooden seat and hit Matt in the back of the head. He stumbles and screams. His weapons clatter into the shadows. He drops to his knees, his head clutched between his hands, a mess of rage and chaos. I set the chair down and slink past him as he writhes in the dark. I start feeling for the knife so I can fucking finish this, once and for all. And just as I think I’ve felt the sharp tip of something metal, a hand clamps around my ankle and yanks me back across the floor.

When I roll over to fight him off, his glass eye is gone, leaving his lid half closed. But that’s not the one I’m focused on. My shocked gaze is caught on the other eye, bulging much too far beyond the confines of its socket.

“Holy fucking shit, it’s true. I hit you so hard your eyeball popped out.” I retch, barely managing to swallow down a swell of nausea. The lids are pulled back across the bloodshot globe, making him look both surprised and cartoonishly angry. I retch again. “Put it back in, for the love of God.”

“I’m going to fucking kill you ,” he snarls. He pitches toward me, his hands tensed into claws that I’m sure he’s desperate to clamp around my neck. With a sharp kick to his chest, I manage to keep him at bay long enough that I can scramble to my feet and take off running down the corridor. With a momentary glance over my shoulder, I see Matt staggering to his feet, the knife gripped in his hand. He stalks toward me, and I dart through a curtain at the end of the hall to enter the ground floor of the visitor’s section of the haunted house.

I slip past a group of teens huddled together in a corner of the creepy kitchen display, giving them an extra scare as a worker dressed as a bloodied butcher frightens them with a plastic knife. I keep going past a couple who clutches each other when a staff member drops from a hidden platform near the ceiling. I head past the smoke machine and lasers that obscure a clown crouched beneath white tendrils of mist. Matt is still behind me, and I pick up the pace through the displays and jump scares and terrified visitors. Then I head up the stairs to the second level.

The labyrinthine second story is filled with narrow rooms and screams from the floor below. I back up into a shadowed space and crouch between a china cupboard filled with decapitated doll heads and a blood-spattered sheet, trying to slow my breathing and listen for Matt’s work boots thudding across the floorboards. But he doesn’t come. A couple passes. Then a group of four teens. But still no Matt.

I wait. Try to sense the presence of anyone in the dark beyond the manufactured screams and the haunting music that play through the hidden speakers. Maybe he’s left. Come to his senses. Decided to seek treatment for his very fucked-up ocular situation. Or maybe he’s off to call the police, the thing he should have done in the first place.

I need to find him before he does.

There’s a quiet scuff of shoes against the wooden floorboards. This might be my best chance to face him. I stand and peer around the edge of the cupboard. But it’s not Matt that I see.

It’s Dr. Fionn Kane.

I’m not sure how he knows it’s me, even in the dark, even with my horror clown costume when there are clowns all over this fucking fairground. But he does.

“Crap,” I hiss as he strides toward me.

“Rose.” Fionn’s eyes dart from my face to the seat of the broken chair in my hand and back again. “What are you doing?”

“I’m, um … working …?”

“And by working you mean running around yelling, ‘Come get me, you ugly piece of shit,’ and laughing maniacally?” His eyes narrow. “I thought I saw someone in a costume following you. I came to make sure you were okay.”

“That’s really … that’s nice. I’m totally fine … just out here representing the spooky season atmosphere,” I say with a shrug as he reaches forward and flicks one of the stuffed arms of my jester’s hat, the bell on the end tinkling in reply. He frowns.

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” I try not to shift my weight on my feet, but I can’t help the need to fidget under his unerring stare. “Why don’t you go get us some hot dogs? I’m totally famished. I’ll meet you there as soon as I’m done with my … thing.”

“Your thing .”

“My performance thing.”

“I thought you said in your text that you were done for the night.”

“Um … Yeah. Almost. Just one more thing.”

I dig in the pockets of my baggy black-and-white pants, the fabric stained with a spray of blood that could be fake. Or not. When I withdraw a roll of food and drink tickets and hold them out for Fionn to take, he watches my hand with suspicion. “So when are you actually done?” he asks.

“Maybe give me, like … twenty minutes?” It comes out as a squeaked question. My throat just seems to close around the words. Fionn’s eyes snap to mine as though I’ve just confessed every one of my mounting sins. His chin dips toward his chest, and he pins me with a stare both wary and menacing.

“Rose—”

A floorboard creaks behind Fionn. A flash of orange light glints off a blade. I drop the tickets and grip Fionn’s wrist to tug on it as hard as I can, enough to imbalance him and send him stumbling past me.

I deliver a solid kick to Matt’s shin as I hear Fionn’s shocked voice say Cranwell’s name like a question behind me. “Thought you’d never catch up,” I say. With a second kick, his knife flies from his hand and hits the wall. He snarls in frustration, searching the floor as I duck behind Fionn and shove him forward toward the next room. “Time to go, Doc.”

We tumble into a mock bedroom with Matt on our heels, his irate string of swears punctuated by the screeches and screams and cackles that pour from the speakers overhead. There’s fake blood everywhere. On the walls. The ceiling. The bed where a life-size possessed mannequin springs up from the mattress. An old TV that crackles static in the corner of the room. Fionn rushes forward, and his movement triggers the sensor for a strobe light. It pulses a disorienting rhythm of light and darkness.

Fionn reaches back for me and grabs my wrist as he stumbles toward a door on the opposite side of the room, hauling me forward. But Matt catches my shoulder. Spins me around. I’m knocked out of his grasp and a shocked cry fills the room. There’s a blinding flash. It’s the automatic camera, hidden to take pictures of frightened visitors. In the light, I see the horror on Matt’s face, his features exaggerated by makeup and blood and shadows.

The strobe turns off, leaving only the dim green and blue lights mounted in the corners of the room. Fionn drills Matt with an unblinking, ruthless stare. Even when Matt looks down in horror at the knife Fionn presses into his abdomen, Fionn never breaks his gaze away. He keeps hold of the back of Matt’s neck with his free hand, his fingertips digging into the painted flesh.

“You thought you were going to enjoy your revenge,” Fionn says. With a swift tug, he draws the blade upward. Crimson floods from the wound, staining Matt’s torn shirt. His mouth is open but only a strained noise of pain escapes, as though his body is too shocked to manufacture sound. “And how does this feel?” Another jerk of the knife. “Still pretty good?” A soft tear of flesh, followed by Matt’s whispered plea for mercy. “Because I think it feels fucking fantastic .”

Fionn whips the knife free of Matt’s abdomen and tosses it behind him. He bunches Matt’s shirt with both hands at the shoulders and pushes him to the wall where mannequins disguised as dead bodies hang from meat hooks. He slams Matt’s back into the wall and keeps him pinned there with one hand as he tosses one of the dummies to the floor with the other.

“Please,” Matt begs, his voice barely audible between the recorded screams and voices playing around us.

But Fionn ignores him.

Matt has no strength to fight back. No way to stop Fionn as he hoists him up and pushes his back against the wall, letting gravity drive the pointed hook into Matt’s body. He gasps with a fresh wave of pain. Fionn takes a step back and surveys his work. Blood pours from the gash up the length of Matt’s abdomen. It trickles from the corners of his mouth. Matt’s limbs scrape across the wall, but they don’t touch the floor. One of his hands raises above his head in a desperate search for relief from the metal hook, but he can only trace the rusted iron. He doesn’t have enough strength to grab it. Everything is moving slower than it should, like he’s a fly caught in amber, stuck in the sticky embrace of time.

Matt’s lips move, but they can’t seem to form words, just a slow series of motions that carry no sound.

But Fionn seems to decipher the plea, his focus still locked on Matt. He laughs, a callous and cold delight that quickly dies. “ Help? You want someone to help you?” Fionn shakes his head. “Do you really think I would ever, ever let you threaten her and walk away? Do you seriously think you could hurt her, and I would just let you live? You don’t deserve mercy. When have you ever given that to anyone else? So the only thing I’ll give to you is suffering .”

With his final word, Fionn delivers a punch to Matt’s face that renders him unconscious. His head drops forward. His breathing is shallow, a liquid rumble. And then it goes quiet.

We’re both staring at the man on the wall when excited voices come from a few rooms away. Fionn turns to me and I’m sure my face is an identical mask of panic. “Get under the covers,” I hiss, pointing to the bed before I rush to the mannequin lying on the floor. I whip the burlap sack from its head and pull it down over Matt’s instead, cringing when I catch a glimpse of the bulging eye. With a few deep breaths to recenter myself, I turn to check on Fionn’s progress. But he still hasn’t moved.

“Come on, Doc. Under the covers. Make some creepy sounds.” I take him by the hand and lead him there, forcing him to lie beneath the stained white sheet. His face is expressionless when I cover him over just in time to creep out a pair of couples who clutch each other and laugh. I keep them moving toward the exit, and as soon as they’re gone, I take the walkie-talkie from my pocket and turn it on.

“Wendy, it’s Rose, come in.”

Static crackles on the line. And then, “I’m here, over.”

“I’m on the second level of the haunted house. Someone puked all over the floor,” I say, casting a glance to the dead man hanging from the wall as Fionn casts the blanket aside and rises from the bed. “I’ll clean it up, but can you shut it down? Over.”

“Yeah, the last group just went through for the night anyway. Do you need help? Over.”

“No, I’m all good, thanks. It’ll take a while, but I can finish here. I’ve got keys so I can do a final lockup. I’ll see you tomorrow. Over and out.”

I turn down my walkie-talkie, sliding it into my pocket as I let out a long stream of air through pursed lips. My arms tremble. My heart slams so hard against my sternum that it could break bone. Fionn is standing in the center of the room, unmoving, eerily still. He watches as I pull the jester hat from my head and let it fall to the floor. I must look fucking deranged with my hair in wonky pigtails and my black-and-white makeup probably smeared with sweat and my clown costume streaked and stained. Maybe I am as unhinged as I look. Maybe that’s what he’s thinking as he looks at me, his expression unreadable. The music and screams stop, plunging us into silence so abrupt and all-consuming it nearly hurts.

This has gone too far. This time, there’s no coming back. I just don’t know how to be anything but what I am. Mayhem.

“I started it,” I whisper. But I think we both know that I’m not talking about Matt Cranwell. And for the first time, I feel remorse for what I’ve done. The choices I make might suit me, but maybe this life is only meant to be lived alone.

A tear breaches my lashes. Another quickly follows.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

Fionn breaks his haunted, motionless vigil. He strides toward me.

And the moment his lips touch mine, I know I’ll never be the same.