Two #2
No one narrowed their gazes at him. No one stopped him.
No one even seemed to see beyond his mask of deference to the real, living person that wore it.
This was the way it always had been for him—as much a ghost in the day as in the night, ignored as thoroughly as the pigeons who surrounded him—but it felt all the weirder knowing that there was one person in town who had seen that ghost, if only in the shadows.
Cin slowed as he passed a pair of customers near the shop’s door, his mind fastening onto their hushed whispers as he gave one subtle glance their way.
They were Josua, the goat herder from the farm down South Hill Street, and Amelina, of all people, who had flirted unrepentantly with Josua's late aunt’s husband despite his very public disinterest. Cin had watched Amelina for a week three summers ago before realizing it was all a show and the two were avidly fucking in the Muller's barn most Sundays after church.
It was a rare break from the myriad of far more distressing one-sided relationships he normally uncovered.
The knife strapped to Cin’s back felt all the heavier, but neither Josua nor Amelina looked his way.
“—stabbed between the shoulder blades," Josua was saying. “They found three pigeon feathers stuffed into the wound!”
Amelina’s brow went up. “That would make him the Plumed Menace’s third victim this fall.”
Three in the same season, when that was as many as he’d extinguish during the first three years he slid steel into flesh.
With each escalation, Cin had been certain someone would catch him, even if he couldn’t seem to catch himself in time to stop the killing.
Now, perhaps someone finally had, though by the sound of it, that word hadn’t gotten out yet.
As he stepped out onto the street once more, he tracked the dozens of pigeons lining the sills, the rooftops, the street corners—despite those around him seeming to miss the way the birds would flock to him, part of Cin would always regret that first press of their feathers into a wound.
He could have been a quiet killer, not watched the price on his head go up, not kept his own legend alive.
But there was part of him, he knew, the tiniest, most reckless part, that thrilled to hear his title on someone’s lips.
Just not that day; not with Dorthe out there, knowing or not knowing.
Cin had a final shop to stop at, but instead his feet carried him the long way around town, quiet and unobtrusive. He passed more of the crown’s watch, but none of them so much as looked his way. No one noticed when he slowed near the Earharts’ home.
It had been dangerous to care this fiercely in a place so close to home—in the town he moved through nearly every day—but he had not been able to ignore Dorthe, not then any more than now.
The soles of his feet ached, to run for the truth or away from it; either would be better than this.
In the end, the street cleared for a moment on both sides, and Cin couldn’t help himself from swinging, grocery pack and all, onto the first story overhang of the Earharts’ home.
It was partially connected to the house to the right of it, their little barns sharing enough of a wall that Cin had an easy route over the top.
He focused on slow and steady breathing through the binding around his chest and followed the invisible steps he’d taken so many nights before, more careful than ever with the tear in his boot, along the lips of the second story windows and down to the small veranda beside the Earharts’ little kitchen.
As Cin pressed his head over the side of the roofing, he picked up a faint noise. Not a sob, not a racket—two sounds he’d heard often here—but the softest of humming. Happy. Peaceful.
Joy welled inside him, and for a moment, just one single moment, he let it overcome his shame and fear. Dorthe had never sung before. How could she, when she had to know the moment her husband’s shoes passed over the threshold? Even a house empty of him was not truly free of him.
Until now.
And for just that moment, the act of creating a living being’s last breath felt almost pious.
But then Dorthe’s humming faded as she moved to the other side of the house, and Cin was alone on a roof that didn’t belong to him, fretting again over whether or not the widow of his victim knew him; whether she’d turn him in.
The way she’d been singing, though, Cin hoped that maybe he didn’t have to worry so much after all.
Slowly, carefully, he lowered himself over the edge, sliding in through the unlocked kitchen door.
The torn side of his boot’s sole flapped sadly against the stone floor.
He listened for the distant shuffling of Dorthe’s work, the same way she must have stood there and listened to her husband’s for months or years, and as Cin did so, he portioned out a little of the sugar he’d just bought, leaving it in a bundle with a flower atop.
She could make herself something sweet tonight. Enjoy her newfound freedom.
Cin crept out the way he’d come, but as he climbed back up from the kitchen to the roof, the torn edge of his boot snagged on the same purchase he’d placed his weight a moment before.
He slipped. His hands found the edge of the veranda, and he caught himself mid-fall, swinging there as his feet scrambled for purchase.
Cin heaved his body back over the top of the veranda, his lungs burning with each chaotic breath.
He lay there, gasping, for what seemed like far, far too long, a shudder more emotional than physical working its way through him.
Cin finished the route with extra care, pausing to check the street before jumping down.
A watch member glanced over his shoulder at the sound of Cin’s landing, but his gaze skipped right past. From the rooftop across the way, one of his pigeons cooed.
Still, it felt like someone was judging him—God, or his mother, or the strangling grip of the future he was meant to have: one where he was the sort of person bright and lovely and pious enough to deserve a partner who’d carry him away from his life, instead of a family who clearly needed every ounce of usefulness he had inside him.