Chapter 20
Garron
We lay everything out on the dining table.
The Kagekao mask gleams white in the overhead light, its painted grin wider than anything human.
Corwin’s skull sits beside it, high cheeks, jagged teeth, and eye sockets that look hungry even when no one is wearing it.
Mine goes in the middle. Matte black with a hard mouth plate, a shape that landed somewhere between a Purge mask and the Punisher logo.
Corwin paces while I check the edges on our knives.
Hopefully, there’s no need for them, but with Agatha, who knows.
He always paces when he is trying to talk himself into patience.
He says he is calculating angles. I know he is just fighting the urge to go over there, kick through the nearest door, and take what he wants.
Evander sits at the end of the table, a notebook open, drawing lines over a rough map of her place that he sketched from memory and photos.
I look through the pictures Corwin and Evander took yesterday when they let themselves in while she was at work.
Her window plants. Her altar in the spare bedroom with incense ash like gray snow under a small statue.
The way she leaves a book face down on the couch when she gets up.
The way the rug by the door has a corner that never lays flat.
“You documented everything,” I grin.
Evander grins. “We left everything where we found it.”
“We go tomorrow night,” I say, and I hear how steady I sound. “Not tonight. I want one more pass on the plan.”
Corwin stops, looks at me like I just told him to stop breathing. “We’ve gone over it five times.”
“Then we do it a sixth,” I state. “We show up. We let her see our faces. We give her the truth. If she runs, we take her. If she says no, we take her. If she thinks this is a vote, she learns otherwise. She is ours, and she will rule what we are, or she will end up our next victim.”
Evander’s pencil does not stop moving. “You keep saying ‘rule’.”
“Call it what you like,” I answer. “But she has the darkness inside of her to slash beside us; she just hasn't been given the knife to do so yet. She will, though. We're going to show her how easy it is to take a life. Especially when they've wronged you.”
He lifts his hands in a show of peace. “Then we give her one…or three. Just don't ask me to take it slow.”
“Tomorrow,” I repeat.
Evander taps the map. “Her bedroom window stays cracked, which is reckless, and she should get a spanking for. The kitchen window is dead-bolted with an old, wood bar. Front door lock is new, but not fancy.”
“We hide here,” I say, pointing at his sketch.
“Inside her bedroom closet. In the linen closet down the hall, she has nothing in there but towels and sheets. She likes scares that play fair, so we play fair. Nothing cheap. No jumps that read as lazy. The moment she thinks we are clowns, we lose her.”
Corwin points at the bed. “And when she wakes. When she turns on her light like a moth to its own fire, I want to be in the room already. She lives for the reveal. Let’s give her a taste of her own medicine.”
I nod. “Evander takes the hall closet. Corwin, I’m trusting you with the bedroom. I’ll show up later and slip in behind the bedroom door.”
Evander flips to another page where he’s written a list in his careful hand.
“No leaving marks until we get her to our destination.
No cameras. Gloves on. No names until we choose them or she realizes she knows us.
Bring the aftercare for her piercings. Clean them if they look angry.
Bring the salve. I don't want infection touching what we do.”
Corwin laughs under his breath. “Gentle.”
“Practical,” Evander remarks.
I pull a small box toward me and lift the lid. Inside sit a pair of latex gloves, a folded cloth, a narrow-bladed knife, a little glass vial with a pig’s-heart sliver floating in glycerin, and a short paring knife with the edge dulled on purpose. I hold up the paring knife so they can see it.
“For her hand,” I say. “I'm not asking her to cut anyone right away. I'm asking her to hold something that could cut and feel what it does to her pulse. She keeps it if she doesn’t drop it.”
Corwin’s mouth tilts. “You’re giving her a child’s toy.”
“I'm putting weight in her palm,” I growl. “When she feels the weight of the blade, she’ll realize what she’s really capable of. If she throws it at me, I’ll like her more.”
Evander closes the notebook and sets his pencil on top of it.
“We are clear on exits. Backyard fence route.
Front door, obviously, if no one is around.
SUV is fueled. Plates are clean. The phone we cloned is still mirroring.
Her calendar is open through next week. We saw the cemetery appointment.
That is a later game. We don't step on that yet.”
“Later,” I murmur. “We give her the courtesy of keeping a promise she made to fans. Then we make new ones she didn’t know she wanted.”
Corwin spins his skull mask on the table with two fingers, watches it wobble to a stop. “What if she screams the second the lights go out? What if she runs to a neighbor? What if she calls the cops before she even hits the kitchen?”
“Then we move faster,” I say. “We know the end game is to have her with us. She comes willingly or by force, there is no middle ground. This is not a negotiation for her. This is a stage. We own the stage.”
He leans across the table until we are almost nose to nose. “And we’re still positive that she's the one?”
I grind my teeth before I respond. “Yes, I am.”
“She’s the one,” Evander nods.
He waits for me to blink. I don’t give him that. After a moment he drops back into his chair and scrubs both hands over his face.
“I’m still on board, I just wanted to check.”
We go over it again. Door. Windows. Hiding points. The order we step into view. The order we speak. Corwin will go first because he likes dramatic entrances. I will go second. Evander will go last.
The room quiets around us. The masks watch from the table.
I try to imagine what she will look like the exact second she sees us in her room.
Will she have that little tilt to her chin like she had at the barn?
Will she whisper something for the camera out of habit?
Will she laugh first just to show us she can?
“Tomorrow,” I say again.
We check the blades and sharpen them. We test the cuffs and the padlocks. We wipe prints. We wipe again. We fold dark clothes into a neat row and line up boots like soldiers.
When we finally step back from the table, it looks like someone emptied their pockets and laid their life out for inspection. I pick up my mask and hold it against my chest. It smells like resin and sweat.
“She’s going to run,” Corwin’s tone is flat. “They always run when the lights go out.”
“Then we'll teach her how to run toward us,” I answer. “Or we teach her not to run at all.”
Evander looks at me, eyes steady. “And if she chooses neither.”
“We are not a church,” I snap, leaving no room for argument. “We don't need anyone to kneel. We need her to look at us and see exactly what is in the room. If she can't see it, we take her somewhere quiet and teach her how to look.”
Corwin snorts. “You say that like you won’t choke yourself out if she tells you to leave.”
“I’ll choke on my own breath if she lies,” I answer. “Not if she speaks the truth. I can work with truth.”
He opens his mouth, then closes it. He hates when I sound older than him. He hates when I'm right.
We break for a few hours to eat and to stop vibrating like live wires. Food goes down without taste.
Sleep comes in pieces, and in it she smiles up at me from a pool of red, like she’s finally in on the joke. I wake with my hand clenched around nothing.
When morning comes, my skin feels too tight.
I volunteer to watch her errands because if I stay in the house any longer, I will start moving the furniture to bleed off my excess energy.
Corwin and Evander nod. They want to be in place early, anyway.
They want to breathe her air before she gets there and claim the corners like dogs.
I dress in black, and I keep my mask in the passenger seat with its empty eyes turned toward me.
Her routine unfolds right in front of me. I trail her like a shadow that remembers how to smile. She never looks in the rearview long enough to notice.
I watch her push a cart down the grocery aisle, pretending she hates takeout even though we both know she lives on it.
Then it’s the Halloween store, where she spends money like it isn’t real on way too many decorations I’m sure she plans to use as props.
When she parks outside the nail salon, she tilts the mirror down and checks her lipstick, then laughs at herself and flips it closed.
She’s easy to watch when she thinks she’s not performing.
It feels like I'm stealing minutes that don’t belong to me.
Now I’m staring through the window while some stranger files her nails.
She’s letting another man hold her hand, filing her pretty black nails.
I sit in the car, watching his fingers on hers, and my teeth ache with anger.
I want to snap his file and stuff it down his fucking throat.
But I don’t move. She likes her nails black.
If I ruin that, I ruin the part where she looks at her hands and thinks of herself as the kind of woman who can claw her way out of anything.
At the counter, she pays with a smile, then slips into the dusk sky.
I watch as she walks to her car, just two spaces to the left of mine, and slides into it, tossing her bag carelessly onto the passenger seat.
The second the engine turns, the stereo blasts so loud I hear it through my windows.
Dracula by Bea Miller. Of course. Our little horror blasting an anthem about monsters and blood.
It rattles her speakers, probably rattles her bones, and she looks like she wouldn’t care if it deafened her.
She doesn’t notice me slip out right after her.
I keep a steady distance, headlights tucked far enough back to look like any other car.
Through her rear window, I catch glimpses of her—hair bouncing with the beat, shoulders moving, one hand drumming the wheel while the other keeps her steady.
When the chorus hits, both arms fly up, and for a second I see her silhouette throwing herself into it like the music belongs to her alone.
I can’t hear her, but I can imagine the sound—raw, how it’ll break apart when she’s screaming for me instead.
Not once does she look back. Not at the mirrors, not at me. I could ride her bumper, I could cut my lights, I could pull alongside and she wouldn’t notice. She’s too far gone in her little concert, too high on the sound of her own fun.
She pulls onto her street, still singing, still moving with the music.
I drop farther behind before she notices the same set of headlights following too long.
When she turns into her drive, I roll past and cut the engine a block down.
She climbs out of her car and pauses just long enough to glance up and down the street.
Nothing stirs. No one watching her but me.
She heads up the steps, keys in hand, door swinging open like she can’t wait to get back inside her own little world.
I kill the engine and sit in the dark. Corwin and Evander are already waiting, tucked away inside her walls, biding their time. All I have to do is wait for Evander’s text that she’s asleep. Then I’ll go in. Then we’ll strip away every illusion she still clings to.
Soon, Little Horror. You’re going to get everything you crave and more.