Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
HIM
Iwoke with a start. My hands digging into the seat’s interior to keep the rest of me upright as I cracked my neck. Trying to shake that feeling you got when your brain insisted you were falling but you were sitting perfectly still. Fuck.
“Def Xannies,” I grunted to myself before shifting into drive and propelling the Wagon out the gates at the end of the twisty road that led to the main building.
It was leading away from it right now. The towering silhouette of Briarwood Sanitorium getting smaller and smaller in my rearview while the rose emblem on the lab coat I’d tossed beside me stayed the same size.
I should have known better than to pop so many pills with a long night ahead of me. But the waiting had had me on edge. Had my knee bouncing and all that pent-up energy bubbling over.
I’d done it to myself. Truth was, I didn’t need to wait.
I didn’t need to follow Nurse Keller home to know where I was going.
I’d gotten her address from the employee files.
But I enjoyed doing it. I enjoyed watching ?em in their natural habitat for a bit.
I enjoyed fantasizing about that first encounter.
Imagining how they’d taste. How they’d feel.
That moment between life and death. How long I could keep ?em suspended there.
Like picking out a lobster from a fish tank before the chef boiled ?em alive.
Except, in this instance, I was both serving up and eating my meal.
Thirty minutes later, I was pulling up to a modest little townie.
Lower-income with the kind of neighbors who were good at minding their business.
It was the only one without a string of Christmas lights and sat nestled between two houses off one of the busier streets.
Which had me rounding the block until I found a spot to park.
I wasn’t worried about a ticket. Shit wasn’t registered in my name.
That didn’t mean I wanted the inconvenience of having my Wagon towed.
By the time I was creeping up the front steps and slipping a hand into the flowerpot where Juliet’d stashed a spare key, the entire house was blacked out.
Minus one window, where a stream of light peeked out from underneath the blinds that I knew likely belonged to the only bathroom.
The residents on this street weren’t keen on remodeling these older buildings and plumbing was fucking expensive.
The front door creaked when I shoved it open, and I held my breath as I crept up the stairs, careful to keep my steps soundless as I glided my feet from one to the next.
Bracing myself on the banister as the scent of her bubble bath got stronger the closer I moved towards the door.
I reached out an arm, using the tips of my fingers to slowly guide it forward on its hinges.
Pausing in my tracks when the soles of my shoes splashed against the tiled floor and soaked into the carpet on the other side.
I shifted from one foot to another, as my brain tried to keep up with what my body was feeling. And then I looked over. At her. At the tub. At the bubbles cascading over the lip. At the unnatural color of the water. I knew that color. I saw it in my nightmares. In my dreams too.
What. The. Fuck.