Chapter 28 Rowan
ROWAN
Istare at this woman, Charlotte, feeling as wary as a prey animal being hunted out in the open.
“What do you mean?” I finally say. “That I’m like you?”
Charlotte tilts her head. “You don’t know, do you?”
I hesitate. I certainly have my suspicions about what she means, but I know better than to say it aloud.
Charlotte sighs and rakes her hands through her hair. “Fuck,” she snaps. “Damn it. I figured you already knew, given all your little—activities around town.” She grins up at me. “I’ve never known anyone who makes them look like accidents,” she adds. “That’s clever.”
Immediately, panic tears through me like an out-of-control fire, and my blood pounds like an alarm bell. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do,” Charlotte says affably. “I get why you don’t want to say it, but trust me. I’m about as far from a cop as you can get.”
I curl my hands up, dart my eyes around the bathroom. I can’t let her live, that much is clear. But I need to know who she is first.
“I know a lot of things about you.” Charlotte gives me a sly, knowing look, which I don’t like one bit. “So as a show of good faith, I’ll answer some of your questions to even the score. What do you say?”
I stare at her through my killing face. I’m just going to have to kill her, as quickly and cleanly as I can. Then I’ll figure out the story. Same as what I did with Julian Bernet
“You’re thinking about trying to kill me, aren’t you?”
Charlotte asks the question in a mocking sing-song, and anger seethes in my chest. This is it. Time to act.
“I won’t try,” I growl, stepping toward her.
“You will try,” she says with a smile. “And you might even think you succeeded, if I let you. But I don’t feel like dying today.”
Not a single fucking thing she said makes any sense, and I suppose that’s on purpose, because it stops me in my tracks.
Charlotte winks and saunters over to the bathroom door and turns the inside deadbolt.
I just stare at her, my heart pounding, and hold Abi’s face in my head.
I have to get out of this for her. Charlotte is clearly nuts, and I know she’s not capable of killing me, but she could still ruin my life.
Namely, her dead body will go to Abi, and I’ll have to explain to her why I murdered a random attractive woman in a fucking beachside bathroom.
Fuck. I can’t kill her.
“Can we just not do this?” I blurt out.
Charlotte looks over at me. “Do what?” she asks. “Have a conversation?”
“What the fuck do you want?” I snarl, my patience wearing thin. “You said you don’t want to die. Well, locking me in here isn’t going to help with that, so just let me go and pretend you never saw me.”
Charlotte throws back her head and laughs. “I’m not afraid of you, Rowan.”
It’s the second time she’s said my name, and just like the first, it fills my head with a panicked rush of white noise. It’s not just about this woman knowing my secrets. It’s about Abi. Because even Abi doesn’t know I’m Rowan, and so this feels like I’ve betrayed her.
“Rowan Hanover,” Charlotte says slowly, her lips curling up even more. “Take off the mask. I know who you are. I know what you are. And I just want to have a conversation.”
The white noise builds to a heavy, pounding static, and in that static, I hear voices. My mother calling me a monster. Uncle Nash telling me he’s the only thing keeping me from death row.
And then I move without thinking, my vision banded with white. I fling myself at Charlotte, trying to grab at her neck.
She catches me by the wrists and flings me sideways.
For a second, my feet lift off the air. Then I slam into the sink, the ceramic cutting deep enough into my belly that it knocks all the air out of my lungs. I totter sideways, stunned and suddenly cold with something I think might be fear.
“You want to fight?” Charlotte says. “We can fight. Get it out of your system. Then, we’ll talk.”
“How did you do that?” I rasp as I turn toward her. She’s not that small, and she looks strong enough, but I’m still significantly bigger than her.
And yet she threw me into that sink with real force. Not even Uncle Nash was ever able to do that to me.
“That’s what I’m trying to explain to you,” she says patiently. “You and I, we’re not human.”
I stare at her, that cold rope of fear tightening in my belly. Not human.
I want to protest. What else could I fucking be?
Except my mother saw it. I gave birth to a monster, she screamed, and I stared at myself in the mirror as a little boy and told myself I looked human. But I knew there was something broken inside me, and so did Uncle Nash.
Bones of steel. Stronger than you have any right to be. Let’s make full use of that freakishly good night vision, huh?
“Do you want to talk or do you want to fight? I’m prepared to do both.”
Charlotte’s voice jerks back into that damp, buzzing bathroom. I shuffle away from her, wary. My waist still aches from where I slammed into the sink.
“I wanna talk, ” Charlotte says. “So that’s what we’re gonna do. Sound good?”
“What is there to talk about?” I growl.
Charlotte arches an eyebrow. “Seriously? I just told you you’re not human. And I know you’re curious about how I know your name.”
The white static floods through my thoughts again. “That’s not my name.” A pointless lie. But it feels like the only response. I won’t want to acknowledge the other thing.
“It is.” Charlotte smiles. “Your mother is Maridel Hanover—”
The white static brightens until it feels like a migraine pounding behind my eye. That’s her. My mother. I haven’t spoken to her in ten years.
“And your father is Johnson Baldys.”
That brings me up short. I never knew my father’s name because my mother refused to talk about him.
She told me once, right before she sent me to Uncle Nash, that he was her biggest mistake, because he had given her me.
You’re just like him, she said, staring out the window in our living room with a cigarette dangling between her fingers. Same cold eyes.
Uncle Nash never talked about him.
“Your mother’s human,” Charlotte continues. “But don’t worry, I didn’t do anything to her.”
I don’t know what to say about that.
“Your father, though. He isn’t. He’s like us.”
I stare at her, my body shaking, and think suddenly about all those times I sensed Charlotte’s presence on the wind.
Not human. Not animal.
“What are you?” I murmur, a sick, dark feeling coiling in my stomach.
Charlotte looks at me for a long time before answering. “There are a lot of names for what we are,” she finally says. “But the one I learned is Hunter.”
The word buzzes in the stale, warm air of the bathroom, as loud as the fluorescent lights above the salt-streaked mirror.
“And what does that mean?” My throat is dry. I don’t like how this is making me feel. I don’t like how it feels right, the way fucking Abi felt right. The way it feels like I’ve found something I’ve been searching for my entire life.
“We kill,” Charlotte says. Any hint of mockery is gone. She’s very serious now, and her eyes never leave my killing face. “We have to kill, in fact. You can’t suppress it, or very bad things will happen.”
I think of my mother refusing to look me in the eye, the cigarette smoke curling between us. You’re a monster, Rowan. And a mistake.
I think of Uncle Nash sliding a gun into my hand when I was thirteen, one of his business associates lying bound and gagged on a cold cement floor. Just pull the trigger, boy. Easiest thing in the world.
It had been the easiest thing in the world.
“What kind of bad things?” I finally say.
Charlotte studies me. “You didn’t know,” she says carefully. “But you never tried to suppress it, did you? The killing?”
“What kind of bad things?” I snarl. My voice clangs around in the bathroom, and anyone else would have been terrified. But not Charlotte. She doesn’t even flinch.
“From what I understand,” she finally says. “It builds up. The need to kill. It builds and builds until it explodes out of you, and you’ll slaughter anyone and anything just to feel normal again. Even someone you love.”
Abi flashes through my thoughts. Standing on the porch, wreathed in light.
Strolling down the beach with the wind blowing back her hair.
Smiling at me from above the lavender latte I bought for her as Rowan Hanover, who, if he were real, would be the sort of man she deserves. Not an inhuman monster like me.
“But you’ve never suppressed it, “Charlotte says. “That’s good.”
We’re silent for a moment, the two of us staring at each other across the bathroom. I don’t know what to make of any of this.
For the first time in my life, I wish Uncle Nash were alive. If anyone could confirm what she’s saying, it was him.
But if I’m honest with myself, I don’t need his confirmation. I know she’s right. I can feel it clicking into place.
“You can sense things,” Charlotte says softly. “Emotions.”
The muscles in my body tense up.
“You can tell when someone’s nearby,” she continues, her eyes fixed on my killing face. “If they’re scared or relaxed.” She pauses. “You can hear things other people can’t. Like their hearts.”
As soon as she says it, I’m aware of her heartbeat. Slow and steady. She’s not frightened at all.
“That’s how you’re able to kill so well,” she continues. “You’re stronger than they are. Faster.”
There’s a slight stress to the way she says they, and I know, instinctively, who she means. Everyone. The whole fucking world. All those people I watch at work: the tourists and locals alike, buzzing around on the beach with all the noise of their humanity.
Abi.
And I know, instinctively, that I’m not like them. I’ve always known it.
“Who are you?” I ask, and my voice startles me, how much it sounds like Rowan Hanover instead of me. “Not, like your name. Who are you? Why are you telling me all of this?”
Charlotte smiles, and there’s something sad about it. Something wistful. “I’m your half-sister,” she finally says. “Johnson Baldys is my father, too.”
Blood pounds in my ears. A half-sister.
“The parent who isn’t human,” I finally say.
“Yeah. A Hunter.” Charlotte steps up to me, and I search her features through my killing face. Even in the bad, sallow light, I think I can see Rowan Hanover, a little, in the shape of her eyes, the line of her nose.
No, not Rowan Hanover. Me. Myself.
“I’ve been looking for you for a while,” she says. “I only just found out what I am, after—” She laughs. “Well, it’s a long story. But my boyfriend, Jaxon—he’s like us—he thought I should know more Hunters. So I came looking for you.”
I don’t know what to say. The lights over the mirror pop and buzz. Through the cinderblock walls, I can hear the ocean. It reminds me of Abi’s soft, steady breath as she sleeps.
“And you found me.” It’s the only thing I can think of. “So now what?”
Charlotte frowns a little. “I feel like I need to teach you what we are,” she says. “The way Jaxon taught me.”
“And how do you suggest we do that?” I can’t believe I’m saying this, but at the same time, I’m curious. I’ve always felt detached from the world. Abi’s the only thing that’s ever connected me to it. And that’s not going to change, of course.
But if there are others out there like me—well, I should know about that. To protect her.
Charlotte grins. “I thought maybe we could go hunting together.”
It takes me a second to register what she’s saying. “You mean kill someone?”
My question bounds around the bathroom. Charlotte sighs.
“Yeah,” she says. “We pick a target and we hunt them down. When you do it with another Hunter, you’ll feel it. It’s different. And you’ll understand what I’m telling you better, I think.”
“Right now?” I shake my head, panic rising in my throat. “No. I can’t just—I have a process, okay? It keeps me from getting caught. Or killed.”
And I really don’t want either to happen right now. Not after the night I spent with Abi.
But Charlotte just laughs. “Oh, you don’t have to worry about dying. You can’t. Or, I mean, you can, technically. But you come back. It’s one of our many skillsets.”
“Bullshit,” I say.
“What?” She laughs. “Everything else I’ve told you is true. I’d give you a demonstration, but it takes a while to revive. But you’ll find out eventually.” She grins. “Come on, Rowan. You can live a little. I bet you never killed during the day, either.”
I scowl at her, even though she can’t see.
“What about without the mask?”
“It’s not a mask,” I say stiffly. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“I bet I would.” Charlotte smiles in a way that makes me nervous. “Or how about this. You know that woman at the funeral home? The one you’re always watching?”
My hackles go up immediately. Any wary interest I felt immediately vanishes. “Don’t fucking touch her,” I snarl, and I’m surprised by how vehement I am. How much I do sound like a monster.
But Charlotte is unfazed. She lifts her hands in a surrender. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” she says. “But she’s human. It’s hard when one of us loves a human. Two of my friends are doing it, though. So maybe I can give you some advice.”
I wonder how Charlotte knows I love Abi.
“Come on.” Charlotte steps up to me. “Come with me. Let me be a big sister for a day.”
I ought to say no. But my curiosity is burning me up. A half-sister. Another killer.
Besides, Abi should be safe. The presence I thought was stalking her is standing in front of me now.
“Come onnnn,” Charlotte says. “I’ll be enlightening.” Her eyes glitter. “And fun.”
Although I ought to know better, excitement leaps up inside me.
“Fine,” I say, hoping I’m not making a mistake. “But I need to be back before dark.”