Chapter 43 Kir
KIR
“Choke this love ‘til the veins start to shiver / One last breath ‘til the tears start to wither”
— “River” by Bishop Briggs
“This is the best date of my life.”
One little sentence is all it takes to gut me.
It’s the surprise in her voice that gets me most of all. She’s almost awed by the concept itself. Not just a date, not just a good date, but the best date? That’s something for other women, she seems to think. Not for Jillian Pierce.
I wish I had something smooth and aloof to say, because smooth and aloof is the only mode of operation that keeps this from spiraling even further out of control than it already has. But that shit went out the window a long time ago. Right about the same time I came in her window. Pun intended.
So instead of smooth and aloof, I just give her the truth:
“Mine, too.”
Jillian grins. It’s fleeting, but fuck, is it beautiful.
Then she grabs my hand and drags me back through the curtain into the chaos.
I lose track after that. Not of her—never of her.
I could find Jillian in a windowless room with my eyes sewn shut; the pull of her is gravitational.
But I lose track of everything else that ought to matter.
The assignment. The article. The kill order and Lukas’s ultimatum looming over our heads.
Afon, the body in the folding chair in Brooklyn…
All of it dissolves the moment she tightens her fingers around mine and pulls me toward the next room.
The mask hides half her face from me, but the grin remains. I can see that, her pearly teeth in the dark, and then her wide, surprised, delighted eyes when we stumble down a hall and emerge into a fog-choked ballroom.
As we find a place to watch along the wall, one thought runs through my head on endless legs:
I could do this every day for the rest of my fucking life.
In the center of the ballroom is a bed. It’s a four-poster draped in dark linen with a single lamp burning amber in the corner.
The pinpoint spotlights and the swirling smoke make the whole space seem smaller than it is, borderline claustrophobic.
Around us, the audience has formed a loose circle along the walls.
Their white masks float in the gloom like a jury of the dead.
Two actors occupy the center. One is asleep.
He lies on the bed with his arms at his sides, chest rising and falling gently.
The other stands over him. The standing man is shirtless, his torso gleaming with sweat or oil, and in the half-light, his musculature looks carved from rock.
He stares down at the sleeping man with an expression I recognize immediately, because I wore it myself in a Brooklyn alleyway just a few nights ago.
It’s not just anger, though it’s partly that.
It’s not just hatred, though it’s partly that, too.
It’s not bloodlust, or fear, or psychopathy.
It’s resignation.
Acceptance that what happens next is what was always fated to happen.
Then, with a long, dragged-out sigh, the standing man places both hands around the sleeper’s throat and starts to choke.
I know what happens next because I know the play. Duncan dies in his bed at the hands of a man he trusted. Macbeth murders his king because someone he loved told him it was necessary, and because power makes parasites of us all.
The hands tighten. The sleeping man’s body jerks, once, twice, and then goes still.
The killer holds on for much longer than necessary, like he recognizes that letting go means the sin is truly committed.
Eventually, though, he releases his grip and steps back to examine what he’s done.
His fingers are spread wide, trembling. It’s as though the dead man’s throat left invisible burns on his palms.
Around me, the audience watches without breathing. Jillian’s hand is clamped around mine so tight I can feel the individual bones of her fingers grinding against my knuckles. She’s riveted. Leaning forward on her toes, her lips parted beneath the white mask, completely consumed by the performance.
But me? I’m not here.
I am not watching the performance anymore.
I’m seeing my father’s kitchen. Crushed pills. Applesauce. A boy in a closet.
I’m seeing a piss-soaked alley in Williamsburg and a stranger zip-tied to a folding chair with a hole between his eyebrows.
I’m seeing Jillian’s apartment. The breaker cut. The phone jammed. Her spine against the wall and my hand over her mouth and her body going somewhere I couldn’t follow.
Kill the reporter by the end of the month…
… Or I’ll send someone who will.
On the bed, the dead actor lies perfectly still. The killer’s hands hang at his sides. He turns in a slow circle, surveying the ring of masked faces as if searching for one that will absolve him.
His gaze passes over me. Hesitates. Shakes his head. Moves on.
Jillian must think I’m enthralled. She has no idea that the temperature of my blood just plummeted, because the scene on that stage is not a metaphor.
It’s a fucking fortune telling session. It’s exactly what my father has been asking me to do for weeks, and the only difference between Macbeth and me is that Macbeth actually went through with it.
Well, that’s the only difference for now.
Who knows what the future will hold?
Jillian turns to whisper something. But before she can even get the first syllable past her lips, she sees something in my eyes, and the sentence dies faster than Duncan did.
I don’t know exactly what she sees there.
I only know what I feel, which is the cold, marrow-deep certainty that the universe just held up a mirror and I looked directly into it.
What’s that thing Nietzsche says? Stare long enough into the abyss and the abyss will stare back at you?
This is what that looks like. The abyss has seen me and it has deemed me unworthy.
As for how that looks on the architecture of my face, I don’t know.
It’s bad enough that I can see what happens to hers.
The light in her eyes is immediately snuffed out, cold, dead.
Her lily-white grin collapses. Her lips quiver and her fingers tighten in concern around mine as she whispers, “Kir…? Are you—”
I rip my hand away.
Her fingers grasp at empty air for a fraction of a second before dropping to her side, and I see the confusion register across the exposed lower half of her face. She rocks backwards on her heels, almost like I shoved her from me.
“Stay here,” I growl. “I need air.”
“Kir, what’s wr—”
I don’t stay to hear the end of her question or answer it. Instead, I slip between two masked audience members and rush into the corridor beyond the ballroom. The dreary fog eddies and curls in my wake like it’s clinging to me.
The hallway is narrow, dimly lit, lined with peeling wallpaper and eerie portraits. A woman in a filthy wedding dress rounds the corner ahead of me and reaches out toward my throat with pale fingers. I shudder, then sidestep her without breaking stride and keep charging on.
I need air. Fuck, I need air. I can’t breathe in this goddamn place. This graveyard chill is seeping into my lungs and sealing them up like cement.
I find a stairwell and take it down, two steps at a time, past a landing decorated with taxidermied birds suspended from the ceiling on invisible wire. Their glass eyes track me as I pass. Like the actor who played the killer Macbeth, they see me for what I am and they do not approve.
At the bottom is a fire exit. I slam the push bar and stumble out into a service alley behind the building.
It’s the city in December, which means it’s brutally cold.
I’m thankful for that. Cold is the only thing that can clear this shit out of me.
I rip the mask off and gulp oxygen until my lungs start reluctantly pumping again.
My back finds a brick wall. I slide down it until I’m sitting on dirty asphalt with my knees drawn up and the white mask dangling from one hand, staring up at the thin, measly strip of starless black sky visible between the buildings.
Above me somewhere, Jillian is standing alone, wondering what the fuck just happened.
I wish I knew how to tell her:
I’m falling in love with you, little fox.
I have to kill you before that happens.