Chapter 32
ROWAN
The sun is low against the horizon, turning the sky into a wall of flames.
I feel full and sated. Charlotte and I have just shared three kills between us, much more than I’ve ever done in such a short amount of time.
The blood is all over my clothes, and I know I ought to change before I go to Abi’s house.
But it’s already getting dark, and we’re nearly forty minutes outside of Rosado.
Charlotte says something, although I’m not focused on her right now. Everything feels more heightened after the mayhem of this afternoon. The buzz of the car’s engine as it vibrates up through my seat. The sound of insects outside, the rustle of wind. The thick scent of humanity in the distance.
I can’t wait to go to Abi like this. To smell her. Touch her. Taste her. Devour her.
“Rowan?”
Charlotte’s voice snaps me back, and I jerk my gaze over to her. “What?”
“I asked if you were okay.”
“I’m fine.” Fine doesn’t even begin to cover it.
When Charlotte told me I’m some kind of killer monster that can’t die, I thought she was crazy.
But now, I can feel it, this dark magic surging through me.
I’m powerful and inhuman and I can do anything I fucking want. “I’m just anxious to get back to Abi.”
Charlotte smirks. “Yeah, I bet you are.”
I know immediately what she’s implying, especially when she gives me a knowing little wink. Heat floods into my cheeks. “I need to watch over her at night,” I say stiffly.
That earns a full-throated laugh from Charlotte. “Look, I’m not judging. If Jaxon were here, we’d be fucking already.”
My face burns even hotter. “You’re my sister, right? I don’t want to hear about you fucking your boyfriend.”
“Half-sister. Estranged half-sister. I’m just saying, I get it.” She laughs and guns down the highway, flying toward the sunset. “It’s part of being a Hunter, I think. Killing gets your blood up.”
She’s not wrong. I can feel all that energy coursing inside me.
“Just hurry,” I mutter.
“She okay seeing you like that?” Charlotte asks.
I shift in my seat, not sure how to answer, even though the blood feels good on my skin. “She’s seen me kill someone before.”
“Oh, really?” Charlotte glances over at me. “Did you fuck her afterward?”
“No,” I snap, irritated. I just wish we were there already. “I had to dispose of the body.”
“Would she have fucked you?”
I squeeze my hands up into fists. “Maybe.”
It’s the wrong thing to say, because it makes Charlotte whoop out. The car veers around on the road.
“Jesus fuck,” I snap, bracing myself against the dashboard. “Watch out.”
“I’m just excited for you, lil bro. That’s all.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“What? Lil bro? You are. You think I didn’t find out how old you were before I came out here?”
“Yeah, but we don’t— we don’t really know each other.” That doesn’t feel true, though. Not anymore. Not after an afternoon of killing together.
“Yeah, well, we can change that, right?” Something changes in her emotions, like she’s becoming more serious. When I look over at her, she’s staring at the road, and her expression is thoughtful. “I mean, you don’t have to go through the world by yourself anymore. You’re a Hunter.”
“I’m not by myself,” I say softly. “I have Abi.”
As soon as the words leave my mouth, I don’t know if they’re true. I mean, yes, she didn’t run after I killed her attacker, but that was about saving her life. And as for last night—
Well, I haven’t seen her since then, have I? Maybe the daylight changed how she saw what we did. Maybe it turned it into a sin.
“But she hasn’t even seen your face,” Charlotte says suddenly. “Or, excuse me, she doesn’t realize she’s seen your face.”
I freeze. Charlotte keeps her eyes on the road.
“I told you,” I say darkly. “This is my face. This is who I am.”
But the words feel ashy on my tongue. For the first time, they feel—untrue. I’ve worn this mask since I killed Uncle Nash, since I started killing for myself instead of for him. Rowan was his weapon. Then Rowan became my secret identity. And now—
After today, after seeing all that bright red blood in the gleaming sunlight, the whole arrangement feels hollow.
“Rowan,” Charlotte says. “Can I give you some sisterly advice?”
I want to say no. Or rather, I feel like I should say no. But the word just doesn’t come out. So I don’t say anything.
And that’s enough permission for Charlotte, apparently.
“You need to take that fucking mask off. Not right now.” She glances at me, and her features are getting hard to see.
The sun is already half hidden by the horizon.
I should be with Abi right now. Instead, I’m in this car, covered in blood and feeling alive while a stranger-who-doesn’t-feel-like-a-stranger gives me unsolicited advice. Yet I don’t protest.
“I mean, you should take the mask off in front of Abi,” Charlotte continues.
My skin prickles with something like electricity.
“If you want to be with her,” Charlotte says, fixing her gaze on the road. “She has to see all of you. She has to see you covered in blood. Has to know what you’re truly capable of doing.”
I shift, my chest tight. “What does that have to do with my killing face?”
“That’s my whole fucking point,” Charlotte says. “That’s not your face. It’s a mask. You wear it when you kill people, fine. We’ve all got our thing. Like I said, Jaxon does it. My friend Sawyer, he wears a mask, too. But you aren’t going to kill Abi, are you?”
“No!” I shout, horrified by the thought. I would kill every person in this world before I would harm Abilene Snow. Other people—
other humans
—Are for killing. But Abi is for protecting.
“Then why are you wearing your killing face to be around her?” Charlotte asks.
The question stuns me. Brings me up short. I fumble around for an answer, my tongue dry. “Because,” I say. “Because this is who I am.”
“Of course it is,” Charlotte says. “But you’re also Rowan Hanover. Rowan and—” She flaps her hand toward me. “This guy. The guy in the mask? They’re the same.”
I open my mouth to protest, but Charlotte surges on.
“You told me you’ve been killing people to talk to her,” Charlotte says, and I cringe, regretting ever sharing that with her earlier.
“Well, maybe you should stop murdering randos because you want to talk to the woman you love. Just fucking talk to her and murder the randos because you like it.” She looks over at me, and in the encroaching darkness, just for a second, her eyes seem to gleam like a cat’s.
“That’s what we did this afternoon. That’s what you’re meant to do. ”
I turn away from her. My killing face feels thick and restrictive, like it has all day. And I think about those times I’ve lifted it just enough to kiss Abi. To taste her lips and her cunt.
What would it be like to feel her hands on my skin? Or her mouth? To bury myself between her breasts and breathe in the sweetness of her flesh?
Heat surges through me, hot and sparking from all the death earlier. Violent, bloody, pointless death. Not clean. Not coordinated. Charlotte and I left a trail of destruction that can’t be anything but what it is.
And it felt right. It did. Just like it felt right the first time I looked into Abi’s eyes, certain she was the one person in the universe who would accept me. She had smiled at me that day at the funeral. A bright, genuine smile. The same smile she gives me when I’m with her as Rowan Hanover.
Would you still smile like that at Rowan, at me, if she knew?
“Just think about it,” Charlotte says. “Like I said, it’s just a bit of sisterly advice.”
“Fine,” I mutter, looking out at the dark highway. I can just make out the lights of Rosado up ahead. It’s full dark, but at least it’s not late.
“Now.” Charlotte presses down on the gas, and the car surges forward. “Are you going to want to clean up first? Or go straight to Abi’s house?”
I don’t have to think about it. “Go straight there. And hurry.”
Charlotte smiles. I can feel the wickedness seeping off her, and I think it’s the same as my wickedness. “Good boy. Seems like you can listen after all.”
Something’s wrong.
I feel it as soon as Charlotte pulls up in front of the funeral parlor. The night is wrong. There’s a scent that permeates the air, overly sweet like rotting roses.
Abi’s fear. But it’s faint. It’s old.
“Fuck.” I scramble for the door handle in a panic. “Fuck, someone was here. ”
“I feel it, too.” Charlotte’s voice is as cold as steel. She cuts the car engine and puts her hand on my bicep. “Rowan, stop. We need to take this slowly so you—”
“Fuck that! I need to make sure Abi’s okay.” I kick the door open, letting in more of that scent. It reminds me of the first night Abi saw me—saw the real me, with my killing face.
She’d already seen the real you.
I shove the thought aside and tear across the lawn, sniffing at the air. I feel like I can’t get at anything, though. My killing face is in the way, making everything smell like rubber. There’s the trace of Abi’s scent on the air, but the face—the mask—is like a barrier between me and her.
So I yank it off and breathe deep, the air shuddering into my lungs. I take it all in: Abi’s fear, the salt of the ocean behind me, the dry dusty scent of the cemetery. And something else. A tang of adrenaline.
Footsteps patter behind me. “There’s no one here,” Charlotte says.
I whirl around on her, and her eyes widen when she sees me without my face. But she doesn’t say anything.
“I told you I needed to be back before dark.”
“We can find her,” Charlotte says. “Don’t worry.”
I scoff at that—right now, I’m nothing but worry. I bound across the yard and up to the front porch and stop, my heart slamming around in my chest.
The door is hanging open, letting out a sliver of inside light like a knife blade.
“No,” I whisper, pushing the door in with the toe of my shoe. Light floods the foyer of the funeral parlor, as if Abi were trying to keep the darkness at bay. My chest knots up, tight and choking. Fuck, I should have been here.
For a moment, I just stand in the entranceway, hating myself. The scent of Abi’s fear is stronger inside, although it still feels faded, like a lingering cloud of perfume. That other scent is stronger in here, too. Human, I can tell that much. It doesn’t have the wildness that Charlotte’s does.
“Rowan!” Charlotte’s voice rings in from outside. “I’ve got something!”
Terror lances through me, and I race back out into the yard, my thoughts all in a panic. There’s no sign of Charlotte, and for a second, I think this is all some terrible trick. But then I feel her. She’s around the side of the house.
I jump off the porch and move into the shadows to find her standing beside the big oak tree where I spent so many nights watching Abi through the window.
The light is on in her living room window, and for a moment, I can almost pretend that she’s in there, the TV turned low, and I’m nestled in the branches and she’s safe. Everyone’s safe.
But no. Charlotte is kneeling at the base of the tree, holding something.
“I found a gun,” she says.
I stalk toward her, my throat dry with fear. She stands up and shows me a basic hunting rifle. I snatch it out of her hands and check the chamber. Empty.
“It hasn’t been fired,” she says. “You would smell the gunpowder. But there’s something else.”
I jerk my gaze up to her, my blood pounding in my ears. This is her fault. Her fault for talking me into that third kill, even though I was already antsy to be back here with Abi.
“What?” I bark. Anyone else would have flinched away from me. But Charlotte doesn’t even blink.
“You don’t smell it?” she asks.
I want to strangle her. I’m about to, in fact, when the scent hits me. Coppery. Sweet.
Blood.
Abi’s blood.
“No,” I gasp out, throwing the useless gun aside. As dark as it is out here, I’ve always been able to see at night. Just like Charlotte, I suppose.
And I see it now: a smear against the tree trunk. I press my fingers into it, and they come away wet. I can both see the red of Abi’s blood and smell the fear in it. The air buzzes around me, hot and unforgiving. My eyes are wet like my fingers. I blink, and a tear falls.
I wipe it away before Charlotte can see.
“Rowan,” she says softly, putting her hand on my shoulder.
“Get the fuck off me!” I whirl around on her, throwing out my arm to hit her. She catches me by the wrist, unbothered, and wrenches me away. “This is your fucking fault! I told you I needed to be here before dark, and you—”
“I know,” she says, which brings me up short. “I’m sorry. Truly. I should have brought you back earlier, okay? But we can find her.” She swallows. “You can find her. That blood is fresh, which means they can’t be far.”
My heart races. The wind blows through the oak tree and stirs around Abi’s scent.
A trail, I think suddenly. How many times have I tracked prey through the night, waiting for them to step into my trap?
Charlotte’s staring at me, grim and determined. I think she knows what I’m thinking.
“How do I do it?” I say. “Show me how to fucking do it.”
“You already know how to do it,” she says. “Rowan, we’re called Hunters for a reason.”
I take a deep breath, desperately trying to latch onto Abi’s scent.
“It’s time for us to go hunting.”