Chapter 17 The Present #2
From the front door comes the rustle of paper, the soft click of plastic as Nathaniel unveils the props. Talon, velvet menace: “Of course, if there’s nothing to worry about, we’ll be gone in fifteen minutes.”
“Can I—should I call my husband?” Jessica asks.
“Please do,” Nathaniel says smoothly. “He’ll want to hear this.”
Here we go…
The crows answer my pulse with a high shriek. Branches scrape the glass. Somewhere, a neighbor whispers, “holy crap, look at that—” and a phone camera clicks.
Stairs creak. One, two. He’s coming down. Cassian slips into the utility alcove opposite the guest bath and bumps the laundry door with his hip. There’s a soft bang. He mutters something low, profane, something akin to the noise a man would make if Jessica invited one into the house.
Mark’s steps pause. Resume. He turns the corner.
I know he’s paranoid.
I flatten into the sliver of wall beside the bathroom doorway, heartbeat in my throat, mouth gone dry as chalk. The mirror is a rectangle of brightness facing me across the small tiled space, catching only the pale blur of the opposite wall. When he crosses the threshold, he’ll be in my view.
“Jess?” His voice floats down the hall. “What’s going on with—”
Cassian makes the laundry door bang again. The water lines knock.
Mark exhales once, and walks into the bathroom.
He reaches for the light.
I beat him to it.
The bulb pops alive and flickers, Pain’s hum kissing the filament so it stutters to my liking. Blink. Blink. Buzz. Mark blinks into the light, turns toward the mirror—
And sees me.
I watch it hit him like a silent car crash. His eyes widen. Calculation skipping a gear. His jaw twitches.
“Hi, Mark.” My voice is soft.
He doesn’t turn. Can’t. His gaze is pinned like a moth.
“No.”
From the foyer, Jessica calls, voice bright with brittle cheer:
“Mark? There are men here from the university. Something about a… burial?”
Burial ricochets down the hall and hits him dead center.
He swallows. His Adam’s apple bobs once, twice. A vein beats in his temple.
“This is not real,” he says to the mirror, to himself, to God. “You’re—”
“Dead?” My smile shows a neat, small bite of teeth. “Yes, I am.”
He finally moves. Not to face me, but to touch the mirror frame, checking for projector glass. The light flickers again, and the crows on the gutters chorus a shuffle that sounds too much like laughter.
Down the hall, Talon’s voice carries, calm and coaxing:
“—and if it’s nothing, fantastic. If it’s something, you’ll be heroes for reporting it.”
“Mark?” Jessica again, edges fraying now. “Should I…? Gods, what’s with these goddamn birds? Mark!”
“In a minute,” he snaps automatically, then winces like he didn’t mean to scream at her. Oh, right. The asshole in him was only ever reserved to me.
I lean my shoulder to the doorjamb and let the silence ripen.
“Trouble in paradise?” I murmur. “Heard there’s a corpse in the garden somewhere.”
His eyes flicker, the first crack of panic spider-webbing the ice.
His refusal to look away from the mirror starts to look less like control and more like superstition: if he faces the door, I’ll be behind him; if he blinks, I’ll vanish; if he breathes wrong, I’ll pour out of the glass and touch his throat the way he deserves.
“Jess,” he calls, voice strangled, “tell them to wait.”
“No,” I say, gentle as a razor. “Invite them in. Tell them how the ground feels soft under the willow after rain.”
He flinches.
Cassian coughs in the alcove and knocks on the laundry door again, harder. Water hammers through the pipes. Mark’s gaze skates over my shoulder in the mirror.
“You’re a trick,” he says finally, hoarse. “You’re… someone in a mask.”
“Mm.” I tip my head. “If it helps, pretend I am. But didn’t you get my message earlier? The mud must’ve left a lot of mess.”
His mouth opens. Closes. The second beat of panic comes uglier. The past reaches up and wraps both hands around his ankles.
Behind us, the crows surge, and the living room windows go dark beneath their bodies.
A neighbor squeals. Someone says holy God.
Jessica gasps like she’s seen the ocean climb the curb.
I lower my voice and let it slip under his skin the way he used to slip under mine when he needed me to be smaller.
“You’re done for, Mark Dilano,” I tell him. “You’re a dead man walking. You just don’t know it yet.”
He doesn’t move. Cassian peels away and walks over. He’s slow and silent, until he isn’t. One second Mark is trembling in front of the mirror, paralyzed by the weight of his sin; the next, he’s knocked out cold. His head snaps sideways against the doorframe with a dull, satisfying thud.
I breathe.
It tastes like penny metal and wet soil.
Cassian catches him by the collar before he fully slumps and lowers him, neat as placing a bag of lawn clippings. He tilts Mark’s chin, checks pupils with a soldier’s indifference, then glances up.
“You good?”
I’m smiling. It feels carved on. “Euphoric.”
“Stay that way.”
He peels a roll of matte tape from his back pocket and binds Mark’s wrists fast, thumb to pinky, the kind that bites if you fight. Another loop for his ankles. Efficient. Ugly. Perfect.
Cassian hauls the deadweight upright. The tape squeaks once. I unlatch the bathroom window, and the crows press close enough to blot the light.
“Let’s go,” Cassian murmurs.
Down the hall, the foyer scene swells. Jessica’s shoes scrape the hardwood; she’s trying to sound gracious and flustered at once, her voice pitching glossy and high.
Nathaniel: “—so the state historic preservation office asked us to do a courtesy sweep before they send a team. Totally routine.”
Talon: “Routine, yeah. Like mandatory reporting when a financial advisor double-books client funds. Happens more often than you’d think around here.”
Silence. Jessica’s breath hooks. “I’m… sorry?”
Nathaniel’s papers whisper. “Ms. Dilano, I’m sure this is nothing. We just want to avoid the… headlines. You know how it goes when someone mentions burial. Or worse, misappropriation. People invent stories.”
Talon chuckles. “Especially when there’s already a whistleblower letter floating around about one Mr. Mark Dilano’s shell entities. Total coincidence, I’m sure.”
Cassian ghosts us through the kitchen. I slide the door open an inch. The crow-wall breathes and lets us out, like we’re passing through a lung.
We slip behind the hedges. Cassian carries him bridal-style for balance; Mark’s head lolls to the side like it will hurt later.
We couldn’t care less.
Pain is exactly what Mark deserves.
At the foyer, Talon is mid-velvet monologue. “—No one wants headlines, Ms. Dilano. Especially not the ‘money guy siphons neighbor fund’ kind. Folks get… testy.”
Paper sighs. Nathaniel, saintly: “We’re trying to keep this quiet for you.”
A brittle breath. “For… us? I’m sorry. I really don’t know what you’re talking about anymore.”
The window over the sink rattles. The crows shift, darkening the light inside the house to a bruise-color.
We pivot toward the garage door instead of the hall. Cassian shoulders it open just enough for us to slip through, easing Mark’s skull past the frame so he doesn’t leave a dent.
From the foyer: Nathaniel lowers the boom without raising his voice. “It’s not just the accounts, Ms. Dilano.”
A beat. Jessica’s heels stop their nervous tapping.
Talon takes over. “There was a woman living in this house before. She’s been missing for five years now.
There were rumors she got buried under that willow tree.
Imagine if someone hinted those two things might be related.
Imagine a state archaeologist and a local reporter both showing up on that pretty lawn. ”
I can feel Jessica go icy.
“W-what are you implying?” she manages. Her cadence splinters.
“We’re saying if there’s anything strange on your property, today is the perfect day to make sure it’s handled lawfully. Transparency protects you.”
Jessica whispers something like a prayer. Then: “Mark!”
The timing is clean. We needed her to break. She breaks.
Cassian’s mouth lifts a millimeter. “Move.”
We move. He drags Mark along the garage wall, props him on a shelf to regrip. I slip back into the house the way a spider slides into its web.
Talon spots me over Jessica’s shoulder and gives the smallest nod, then leans in.
“Where is your husband, anyway?”
“I—he’s working,” she says. “He—Mark?”
Talon tilts his head toward the staircase, his tone all sympathetic offense. “Wow. He hears burial and financial crimes and doesn’t even come say hello? If my wife were blindsided like this, I’d run.”
Jessica glances back up the hall, instincts tearing. Birds hit the front windows hard enough to make her flinch and yelp.
“Ms. Dilano,” Nathaniel says softly, “maybe call him.”
She fumbles her phone. Talon watches her face while Nathaniel’s gaze flicks to me for half a breath: go.
I go.
In Mark’s office, a ridgeline of perfect binders guards a desk that probably cost enough to buy a kidney. There it is. His phone. Face-down. Tethered to its charger like a dog. I don’t touch it. Not yet. Talon will want the joy.
Footsteps hit the stairs.
“Mark? Mark!”
Downstairs, Nathaniel’s voice follows her up, gentle and relentless. “Ms. Dilano, we do need someone to sign a consent form if the state calls back in the next five minutes. It would be better if your husband—”
“Mark!” She’s at the landing now. She hurries past the office doorway, hair undone, eyes wide to the whites. She barrels to the guest bath, stops dead, and hisses like she swallowed glass.
He’s gone.
“Mark?” Softer. Then, to herself: “Where the hell did he go?”
I slip out of the office and melt into the master bedroom doorway, close enough to smell her perfume. She spins, almost colliding with me without seeing me, then catches the black smear of crows outside the window and staggers back, hands flying to her mouth.
“God. God. What is happening?”
Talon arrives at the top of the stairs a beat later, all worried-fake-ally. “Ma’am? If he left you with these questions, that’s not on you.”
Her eyes snap to him. “He wouldn’t. He—he wouldn’t leave.”
Nathaniel appears below. “Sometimes people run when they know the questions are bigger than the answers.”
A sound breaks out of her. It’s absolutely terrified.
“He wouldn’t.”
But she’s not sure.
The birds scrape the glass with hooked feet, a hundred little knives. A neighbor screams downstairs about omens. Someone yells to get back inside. The sky is a single black eye.
It’s a beautiful shitshow.
And technically, Jessica’s innocent. Technically, she doesn’t deserve this fear and pain. But this fear and pain can save her.
She won’t be in a relationship with a man she doesn’t even know anymore.
She’ll think he ran away.
And one day, she’ll get over it.
“Ms. Dilano,” Nathaniel says, “you should probably step out. If the state calls us back, the property will be busy. Cameras. I’d hate for you to be caught up in that when you have nothing to do with his… work life.”
Her expression crumples.
“His work life,” she repeats, dead and soft.
She looks past Talon at the guest bath, at the mirror that has nothing to offer her, then back at the window where the sky looks like a funeral.
“Okay,” she says. “Okay. I can’t—this is—”
She clutches her bag and moves like someone leaving the scene of a car crash before the sirens arrive. She goes down the stairs fast and when the front door opens, the sound of the crows swells, so she darts to her car. The engine coughs, and in a moment, she’s gone.
Talon’s shoulders ease half an inch. Then he looks at me with that fox-smile.
“Souvenir time?”
I tip my head toward the office. “Top desk, right.”
He winks and slides into the office.
Nathaniel’s eyes are on me again, asking a question he already knows the answer to. I tilt my chin toward the garage.
“Go,” he says, already moving. “I’ll buy him thirty seconds.”
He pads down the stairs and opens the front door like any polite visitor. The crows lean. The neighbors lean harder. He tells a woman with a stroller, “Better go home, these birds might turn dangerous!”
I slip back through the hall, down into the garage. Cassian has Mark trussed like a parcel behind the bins.
“Clear?” he asks.
“Jessica’s gone,” I say. “Nathaniel’s coming. Talon’s taking care of the electronics.”
Cassian nods once. He picks up Mark, and we ease the side door open.
Nathaniel slides in through the mudroom a breath later. He takes Mark’s ankles without a word. Talon appears last, late on purpose, wiping his thumb on his jeans.
“He does love a passcode like a birthday,” Talon croons. “I know a guy who will crack it in a minute.”
The four of us glide into the side yard. The crows fold in thick over the fence line, creating a moving curtain that shields us from most eyes.
We reach the car, and Cassian and Nathaniel lower Mark into the trunk. He thuds once like trash. Then we get in, and drive off.
Did I mention I feel like a goddess of crows?
I think I feel even better than that.
I feel like a goddess of revenge.
I close my eyes for a single breath, let it all rush through me.
Power. Grief. Relief. Hunger. The thick velvet satisfaction of justice.
And I think, wildly, honestly:
This might actually be the best surprise of my life.