11. Giselle
GISELLE
Ida and I sit in a corner booth. She looks amazing in a light blue dress that’s sharp at every edge and wearing a smile that could coax a confession from a sitting judge. She hasn’t changed since college: hair still black as a hangover, eyes still smokey with liner and grey eyeshadow.
The only giveaway that she’s now a partner at Hirst & Holloway is the manicure. Much better than I ever managed when we’d pre-game in my dorm room.
Iron Lounge is packed: investment bankers pretending to be blue-collar, off-duty NYPD in their weekend camouflage, and the bridge-and-tunnel overtime scammers strutting around like extras in a mob biopic.
My shoes make a muted sucking sound each time I shift, like the floor is trying to eat me alive.
Ida is already two drinks ahead of me, which is dangerous. I watch her knock back the rest of a Manhattan, tongue finding the cherry and rolling it around until the pit clatters against her teeth.
“Okay, spill,” she says, setting the glass down with a declarative thump. “Tell me every detail.”
I’m tempted to deflect, but Ida has a way of circling back to her prey.
“You really want details?” I say, and my voice comes out colder than I mean.
She leans in, a hand on my wrist to anchor the moment. “Yes, Giselle, I do. Because what else are friends for?”
So I lay it all out. The murders, the evidence, my name carved in the corpses. As I word-vomit the past five weeks onto the table between us, her mouth slowly drops into a near-comical frown. By the time I’m done, I’m out of breath and thirsty enough to drink half my beer at once.
“Giselle,” Ida says. “What. The. Fuck.”
That’s as good a summary of the situation as I could come up with.
“Too much for you? Little late to back out, now. Remember, we made friendship bracelets.”
“I’m…” she scans the bar idly, not looking for anything but the right words. But when she finishes her sentence, there’s excitement coiled in her voice. “Scared for you.”
I know she’s not done, so even when the silence gets awkward, I wait.
“It’s fucked up,” she finally says, her voice rising with every syllable. “But in some twisted way, that level of devotion is kind of hot. Like, who do you have to kill to get that kind of attention in this city?”
The urge to reach up and twist Serena’s earring is so strong that I do it without thinking, only to remember that they’re gone when I touch my naked earlobe. A prickle of self-loathing blooms in my gut.
Instead, I let my eyes trace the lines of the booth’s vinyl until I’m sure I can speak. I won’t tell her everything yet, but I need to tell her something. Just to test the waters.
“He’s also sending me pictures. Of me. In my own apartment. Through the window.”
Ida’s face goes still. “Jesus! Are you serious?”
“Yeah.” I want to laugh. Instead, I look out over the crowd. “I don’t know. I feel like—” I trail off.
“Like you’re being stalked? ” Ida supplies.
I nod.
She raises her glass, the last dregs of her Manhattan sloshing around as she does so. The more she drinks, the redder her face gets. She calls it her “man-bait” and claims that it gives guys a reason to tease her about it before she goes in for the kill.
“Maybe it’s fate,” she says, a little dreamy. “Maybe you finally found your nemesis.”
I scowl. “Homicide detectives and psycho murderers don’t mix, Ida.”
“Tell that to every woman who’s ever written to Charles Manson. It’s a thing.”
“Kind of wish that it wasn’t.” But her logic is unassailable.
We both look up at the same moment: there’s a shift in the room, a new pressure in the air. I scan the crowd for blue eyes, for a shadow that doesn’t belong, but all I see are drunks and grifters. Nobody is looking at us for more than a fraction of a second.
But the feeling sticks, and the hairs at the back of my neck are standing up like tiny barometers of doom.
“What is it?” Ida asks, voice low. “Is it him?”
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s weird. It’s like I can feel when he’s around, you know.”
She does that lawyer thing, turning her attention into a laser. “You have to stop pretending you don’t want this.”
“What?”
She leans in, dropping her voice even further. “You’re always chasing the most dangerous thing in the room. Remember freshman year? You told that football player you were saving yourself for Jesus just so you could see if he’d punch through a wall.”
“That’s not the same.”
“It’s exactly the same. Only now you’re hunting a guy who’s willing to kill for you.” She sits back. “You don’t want safe. You want sharp. You want dangerous. You want something that can hurt. Especially if that something can hurt you. ”
I chew on that, picking at the corner of a napkin until it dissolves under my nail.
We both watch as a pair of men at the bar look our way, then look away, then back again.
They’re textbook: one tall and lean, the other compact, both with the posture of bankers trying to pass as bad boys. They raise their glasses in our direction, then turn to each other, laughing at some inside joke.
“Or,” Ida says, still appraising the men, “you can prove to me that good enough is good enough.”
I’m about to say something cutting when something shifts. A new pressure creeps into the bar, curling behind my ribs. It doesn’t come from the door or the windows—just the air itself, contracting, like there’s not enough oxygen to go around.
“Giselle.” Ida snaps her fingers in front of my face. “You want to have fun, or do you want to keep spinning inside your own skull?”
I don’t answer.
She grabs her purse and slides out of the booth and starts making her way towards the two guys at the bar.
“Come on,” she says. “Let’s go forget that killer of yours. Even if it’s just for a single night.”
While Ida laughs at something the taller man named Luke says, the shorter one—Nick, I think his name is—touches my hand. It’s an accidental graze, but I pull away anyways, pretending to reach for my phone.
“You alright?” he asks.
No.
“I need to use the bathroom,” I say, standing up so fast the stool topples over behind me.
A hard piercing gaze drills into the back of my head, and I know that my stalker is here.
Nick starts to say something, but I’m already gone.
I shoulder my way through the crowd, eyes up, scanning for blue and the impending threat. The hallway to the bathroom is dim, barely lit by a red EXIT sign that throws every shadow into sharp relief.
I enter the bathroom, and for a second, the relative quiet is a blessing.
But I know better.
I lock myself in the last stall, perch on the closed lid, and let my breath slow. My heart is tap-dancing under my ribs.
I wait for the feeling to pass.
It doesn’t.
I check my phone: no new messages. Of course not. If he’s here, he’s not texting.
The feeling of being watched has not dulled. It transforms into a physical pressure, as solid as if someone has their palm pressed to the back of my head.
The door opens. I hear the clack of the latch, and take a slow inhale as the hinges whine. Heels should sound like staccato clicks, but these steps are rubber-soled, deliberate, and heavy. One, two, three.
The footsteps stop outside my stall.
I look down in the dim light and see black boots worn to a shine at the toe and scuffed at the heel.
My breath dies in my throat and I try my damndest to be invisible, as if being still can make my heart stop banging against my ribs. The boots wait, unmoving.
Then, he speaks.
“I know you’re here, little viper.”
The sound is not muffled by the door. It’s amplified and booming through the empty tile until it reverberates, low, smooth, and rumbling against my collarbone.
Fuck!
I say nothing.
The boots shuffle, just once, then a pause.
“So be it,” he says. “Have it your way.”
There’s a faint click, and the world is instantly black as he kills the lights. In the darkness, the distant noise from the bar mixes with the rush of blood in my ears.
I slide off the toilet as quietly as I can onto my feet and brace myself, hands searching for anything to use as a weapon. The only thing I find is my own breath, hot and shallow.
The stall door swings open, so fast it cracks against the walls. Two hands reach in and close around my wrists. Before I can react they jerk me forward and flip me around until I’m pressed against him.
My back slams into his chest, hard enough to drive the air from my lungs.
Against the broad expanse of his hard muscular chest, I feel smaller than I’ve ever felt in my life.
A viselike grip holds one of my arms in place while his arm presses the other to my side.
His bicep flexes beneath my chest and my breasts tingle from the proximity between us.
The stall lock slides into place and before I realize what’s happening, a hand clamps over my mouth.
He’s taller than I remember from the subway. Six foot two at the minimum, broad-shouldered, and impossibly strong. He smells like a mixture of spices, sweet and cloying, and something that seems to reach the depth of my soul.
I’ve known his eyes, then his voice, and now I know his scent. It overwhelms me like a hit of cocaine, and I can’t help but close my eyes to taste its beautiful mixture on my tongue in a vain attempt to distinguish just what it’s made of.
An involuntary shudder rushes through me and he tightens his grip in response. The hand covering half my jaw is rough with callouses, and his thumb draws lazy circles against my cheek.
He breathes. A deep slow breath as if he’s memorizing my scent so that he can find me in the dark. The same way that I’m doing my best to memorize his.
It should be terrifying, and it is, but a pulse of heat starts in my chest and slithers down to my belly, unwelcome yet undeniable. Closing my eyes, I realize that my body is reacting to his violence the way it might to a caress.
No. That’s not true.
A caress never did this to me.