Chapter Six
APRIL 30, AGE 26
A loud voice called over the crowd. T-shirts, jeans, cosplay, and the permeating smell of popcorn filled the air. Harsh, unflattering fluorescents hung forty feet overhead, washing out the throngs of attendees. There had been so much noise, so much commotion from the time the doors opened that I was shocked I’d been able to hear him. The single word pierced the air like an arrow to the heart, slicing through the cluster of people.
I flinched at the name, head whipping up. He repeated it, shouting the false identity over the heads of those around him. “Maribelle?”
God, I already hated these fucking conventions. This was my second May wasted on the tour circuit. A necessary evil, perhaps, but an evil nonetheless. I hated leaving my house long enough to get groceries, let alone to be swarmed by thousands of strangers, assaulted by their conversations and the smells of the deep-fried foods, repeating the same answers, forcing the same smile for hours. I did my best to be polite, but I was so overstimulated by the end of each convention that it took me five days of silence to recover. EG accompanied after I’d failed spectacularly at my first convention, growing so anxious that I’d made a woman cry and left three hours early.
They’d offered me attendants and security and handlers, but my bubble of trust was miniscule, and EG was the only person I wanted around me amid the hordes. She probably didn’t get paid enough to put up with my bullshit. Then again, I’d made Inkhouse a lot of money. I suspected she was doing fine.
I didn’t need another reason to hate events, and yet, I hadn’t even considered the worst-case scenario. The doors to the convention had been on their hinges for less than an hour before my nightmare personified descended.
If I hadn’t already been miserable, this new, fresh hell tore through me.
Hundreds of people pushed in around him, but he’d set his focus on my table. The warehouse was not big enough to contain the swell of my anxiety as fight or flight overcame me, little more than a mouse with her leg caught in a trap. The lusterless lights were suddenly too bright. The world was the wrong color. He seemed taller, somehow, more powerful than I’d remembered him being. Nothing looked right as I soaked in the too-wide grin of a man I distinctly remembered as the only date I’d walked out on.
Richard.
I pinked at the long-dead name, eyes shooting to EG, who was already searching my face for answers. My lips pursed into a tight line. My look communicated two simple words: Help me.
He bypassed the snaking queue of expectant readers who clutched their installments of Pantheon.
EG was a sharp woman, and she knew me well. Her eyes widened, darting between the rapidly approaching stranger and me as she asked, “Is Maribelle your—”
“Yes,” I hissed, and that was enough.
This man was shouting my escorting alias for the world to hear. I barely had time to answer her before the long-abandoned client was at my table. I hadn’t seen him in more than two years. We’d gone on half of a date, and it was one I’d hoped to leave in the past. He’d been a referral from one of my favorite clients—one who’d bought me my black strappy bag with the triangular platinum logo. The bag alone had cost him just shy of five thousand dollars. I’d considered bringing that exact bag today but had settled on a seven-dollar tote bag from my local bookstore.
I lived my life in extremes.
I’d been braced to see former clients at any number of restaurants, bars, or events. I’d kept my eyes peeled, relying on mutually assured destruction as my lone comfort, that even if I spotted a man from my past, he would be just as reluctant to admit where he knew me from as I would.
I’d never thought I’d see one at a convention for bookworms.
EG was on her feet in a flash. She moved around the table in the time it took to blink, attempting to intercept him. She put a hand on the man’s arm, and despite being half his size, she took control of the situation fully. She used her most authoritative customer service voice to usher him away, allowing me to stammer through my meeting with the next fan in line. If the heat pulsing through my face was any indication, I had to be a worrying shade of reddish purple. The girl in line fidgeted nervously at my obvious discomfort, and I winced as I misspelled her name in the signing. I doodled a butterfly and apologized profusely for my blunder.
Over the fan’s shoulder, EG and my assailant disappeared behind the shuffle of bodies, and I did my best to return to my job.
EG reappeared at my side. She offered the next in line a friendly smile while she leaned into my ear. “He left quietly and apologized. I think he understood his blunder. Would you like me to put security on him?”
Richard. His name was Richard.
I thought of my date with the man and suppressed a shudder.
“You said he left?” I asked. I smiled at the next in line, asked her name, and signed her book. I added a few doodles of hearts and stars for embellishment while she gushed about the second book in the series, particularly loving how I’d portrayed Artemis’s character. I nodded along with the friendly fan. She thanked me and hugged her book to her chest. I wanted to give her my whole attention, but I kept one eye on my editor.
EG waited for a break between attendees before saying, “He was very polite. Do you think he’ll give you any trouble?”
I didn’t know how to answer her. Telling her that he’d technically done nothing wrong would require explaining why I was afraid of him in the first place.
I offered a smile to the next reader, but the joy didn’t reach my eyes. I saw it as she looked back at me with a mild disappointment. Of course, I wasn’t giving her my best self. I rallied my joy as I looked down, conjuring a grin from the depths of my belly before I looked up once more. I beamed at the fan, thanking her sincerely for reading the Pantheon novels. She recovered from her disappointment and asked if I could tell her anything about the third installment. I winked and repeated the only tidbit I was legally allowed to share: it would take place in South America.
“Mar—Merit?” EG corrected, calling me by my pen name. Her voice was low, but we were still in public. “Do you feel safe? Is there anything I can do?”
I appreciated her. She was my rottweiler.
“I’m fine,” I promised.
“I know you’re strong, so I’m not just asking about you. Is he going to be a problem?”
I shrugged, as much for myself as for her. “He wasn’t a problem two years ago. I don’t see why he should be one now.”
I finished out the sixteen-hour day, allowing the staff to collect the books, collapse the table, and do whatever housekeeping was necessary. EG offered to walk me to my car, but I was parked in a well-lit garage and walked with my keys on a swinging lanyard, ready to bludgeon anyone from a distance. I poured myself into my Mercedes, checking the back seat for goblins before I started the engine. The luxury vehicle was a flex I’d been able to purchase in cash after a monthlong booking with an inventor known for his fleet of yachts. He’d talked my ear off for thirty days straight and had been the lone reason I stopped doing vacation bookings. This vehicle was my swan song to sex work. After that, the advance for Pantheon came in, followed by the royalties, and the money I’d stashed in stocks and savings continued to grow.
Life with a full wallet wasn’t so bad.
I melted into the chair as punishingly upbeat music blasted on the radio. I’d been playing it at an unbearable volume to psyche myself up for the event. Now that the conference was over, it was the last thing in the world I wanted to hear.
I hit the volume button as if it were personally responsible for my inner turmoil and rolled out of the garage in silence. The quiet soothed me as I eased onto the interstate, falling into something of highway hypnosis as an internal GPS pulled me home while my mind remained elsewhere. The city lights disappeared, fading into something else entirely as I approached the warehouse district. The engine’s hushed purr and the consistent sound of rubber on the pavement occupied my mind, allowing everything else to drip from me like condensation from a tailpipe. It took roughly forty minutes to get from the convention until I could put my car in park in the safety of my parking garage. I’d left most of the toxicity on the freeway, and in its place, the drained husk of a human remained. I pressed the button to kill the car, closing my eyes and relaxing against the headrest as a headache bloomed between my temples.
Normally I was all too enthusiastic to escape back into my apartment, but instead of opening the door, I leaned forward until my head bumped against the steering wheel and let the stillness calm me. The sensory overload of conventions was an essential poison, and their necessity didn’t keep me from hating them. I allowed the silent moments to act like leeches, sucking the discomfort and suffering and misery of having to exist as a human in this world from my body. It took a while before I could take in a full, relaxing breath.
The day was over. I’d survived the crowd, the noise, the lights, the brush with fear and the brush with my past. It was time to kick off my shoes, unhook my bra, and eat ice cream directly from the tub while watching the unhinged professor on the History Channel tell the world about how aliens had built the pyramids.
I locked my car, flinching at the horn’s chirp of confirmation, regretting shattering my newfound silence. Even the click of my heels was too loud. I craved nothingness, and every noise infringed on my need for reprieve. As the door to the garage closed, I held my breath and hoped my favorite receptionist was working so that I could avoid idle chitchat while crossing the lobby. My eyes stayed down as I replaced my building card and fished through my tote for my phone. In case someone else was on shift, I wanted to have a faux conversation at the ready to hold up an apologetic finger and halt any further small talk in its place. It was a selfish thing to hope, but then again, I was allowed to be greedy about my desire for peace.
A tingle started somewhere between my shoulder blades, spreading out like wings as it filled me. I abandoned my search for my phone, hand lowering from my purse. Something felt different even before I turned the corner. My steps slowed, ears straining for a noise, a smell, anything unusual.
I turned the corner to see…nothing.
In three years, the desk had never been left unattended. Even if the on-duty receptionist needed something, they would grab someone from security to wait by the door. My steps slowed as I stretched out my intuition, allowing its instinctual fingers to prod the space around me. I stopped, a sliver of adrenaline piercing me like a needle. I scanned the atrium but saw nothing out of the ordinary. A few careful steps toward the desk showed a perfectly normal, tidy station. A half-eaten cup of noodles sat by the computer—evidence that the receptionist had been there only moments prior. I stared at the vacant chair for a while, allowing the quiet classical music that was always piped through the building to cover my uncertainty. I peered at the sleek computer to see half of its screen dedicated to live footage of the building.
Nothing moved.
I dismissed the chill as paranoia. It had been a stressful day, and I’d arguably been watching too many horror movies. I couldn’t help it if fear was better than boredom and I enjoyed the schadenfreude of watching stupid people die. After all, if they expected to survive, why did they always run up the stairs when a killer entered their house?
The gratuitous violence slipped from my mind as I let go of the irrational nagging sensation. I blew out a breath, expelling lingering anxiety as I abandoned the room and headed for the elevator bank. I hit the button and frowned as the red digits lit up to display its quiet descent from somewhere up above. I’d been so spoiled to have an elevator waiting on ground level each night that even the smallest inconvenience made me feel disenfranchised. It was the first-worldiest of problems, but I was tired, and tired people are grouchy no matter how spoiled they are.
I stepped into the elevator but couldn’t keep my forehead from creasing as my eyebrows met in the middle. I couldn’t justify the frown that plagued me.
Generally, the toils of the day bled from me with the gravitational pull of the earth, each ascending floor shedding new layers of exhaustion as I drew closer and closer to home. Tonight, my nerves thickened as the numbers ticked upward. When the metallic doors opened, I stayed in the elevator. I couldn’t explain my reluctance to leave the safety of the rectangle.
Nothing had happened. There was nothing wrong. Nothing.
I stuck my palm out just as the doors began to close. They bounced harmlessly off my hand before I stepped into the hall. Six steps to my door. Two long breaths. Three seconds of allowing my rose-gold card to hover above the pad before I pressed it into the door. The mechanisms released and the door eased open. I gave it a gentle shove and allowed the light from the hall to pour into the dark room.
In my hand, my phone buzzed.
(Kirby) Hey, when you get home can you send me that song? The really sad one that gave me like three new reasons to be depressed?
I hit the dial button, and Kirby picked up on the first ring.
I could hear the sounds of cooking and party chatter in the background as they came on the line. “Listen,” they said through a short, annoyed sigh, “I don’t know the name of it if that’s why you’re calling. If I knew it, I would have searched for it myself.”
“No,” I said, “I just had a weird feeling and thought it would be better to be on the phone.”
On the other end, Kirby quieted. “Where are you?”
“Home,” I said.
Their relief was palpable. “Jesus H. Christ, don’t worry me like that. Did you hear a ghost?”
I wished it were anything that logical. I was still shaking my head before realizing I hadn’t answered. “No, I just have an uncanny feeling. I’m standing in my hallway.”
“Do you want me to come over?”
My face fell. This was the question I’d needed to get me to stop being a pussy and enter my apartment. Kirby was a good friend, and I knew their offer was sincere. Even if I’d wanted them to come over, would I just stand in the hallway for thirty minutes until they arrived? Besides, they were clearly entertaining guests. I exhaled dramatically and crossed the threshold, closing the door behind me. I kicked off my shoes and tossed my purse onto the island that separated my living room from my kitchen. I rallied my energy as I grinned mischievously into the phone, asking, “Wait, is today Outlook calendar night?”
The one night per week that their synced calendars matched up with everyone else’s in their polycule.
“You know it,” they practically sang from the other end. “Just making pasta before…”
“Don’t tell me.” I laughed, not needing to hear the detail of how they’d synced their schedules to make their unicorn life work. “Also, don’t get too full. Go have fun, you freak.”
“Group sex is not freaky. You’re just boring.”
“Go to bed, vet. You have to get back to the horse-pital in the morning. I wouldn’t want a hungover party surgeon digging in my livestock’s guts.”
“I’m a veterinary surgeon. Fuck you.”
I grinned. “Whatever, horse girl.”
“Horse person,” they corrected, a smile in their voice.
“Bye, Kirby.”
“Wait!” they urged. “Jokes aside: are you sure you’re okay? You feel safe?”
I rolled my eyes. They were nearly a year younger than me yet somehow always the parent. “I’m fine. I was just being paranoid. Try to talk me out of getting drunk and binging another slasher marathon. Go have enough fun for the both of us.”
“Love you,” they said cheerily as the line disconnected.
I went directly to the refrigerator and grabbed a twist-off bottle of beer and took a swig, savoring the gratifying pop of bubbles after a taxing day. I’d trade horror films for alien conspiracy theories. I hummed to myself as I looked for the remote. I swore I’d left it on the counter. Maybe the island? Or the coffee table?
A small light went on in the corner of the living room.
I jolted so hard that beer splashed from my bottle onto my forearm. Eyes wide, I stared at the figure waiting in the corner. Lurking near the television, just on the dark side of the curtains, was one face I’d hoped to never see again. Nausea roiled through me. The coppery tang of fear filled my mouth.
“Richard,” I breathed on an exhale.
Black pants. Black shirt. Gloves. Oh god, gloves.
“Maribelle,” he replied coldly. “Or, should I call you Merit? Or Marlow?”
Ice pumped through my veins as I remembered the first—and last—time I’d seen him. He’d passed the background check. He’d put a thousand down on the evening. He’d booked for three hours: dinner, drinks, and date. The three-hour minimum kept the client list short, wealthy, and worth my while. I’d even liked some of my patrons…
Except with him. He’d made one seemingly innocent comment within the first hour that I’d been unable to shake. Even two years after the date, the minor exchange sent a shudder down my spine.
The dinner flashed through me.
We’d finished drinks when he’d said, “So, shall we go up to the room?”
No. I informed him politely that the second hour was on me, so there was no need for reimbursement, but that I wasn’t feeling well. He’d been visibly disappointed but hadn’t seemed angry.
Prior to that, the meal had gone well enough. We’d chatted about our favorite movies, his life as a neurosurgeon, his very strong feelings on the Star Explorer franchise, and his upbringing in a tiny town. I usually didn’t mind dates with doctors, as they often had interesting stories that made fantastic party anecdotes. I hadn’t been thrilled at the way he kept referring to his job as cutting into people, but then again, my clients were often odd. It came with the territory.
The date had been utterly standard until he mentioned in passing that his childhood home had burned down. I’d frowned and reached across the table to touch his hand, apologizing for his loss. I had perfected the empathetic pout and loved the opportunity to use it. Endearing exchanges like this generally earned me several hundred in tips.
“I’m so sorry you went through that,” I’d said.
“I’m not,” he’d responded, a distant twinkle in his eye.
That had been it. Nothing more. The food from our dinner had turned to ice chips in my stomach. My gut had forced three words to the forefront of my mind in a way I couldn’t ignore.
The Macdonald Triad was what all the true-crime podcasts I listened to while cleaning my house or wasting time on a plane had called it. The triad was composed of three ingredients: cruelty to animals, bed-wetting, and arson. Of course, he’d never come to dinner and tell me that he’d beat a neighborhood cat with a hammer or mention chronic childhood incontinence, but something about the sparkle in his eye communicated all I needed to know. I wasn’t ready to justify it, nor did I need to. The triad was of one the only warning signs one had when looking into the eyes of a serial killer.
I could, of course, never know if I’d been insane or paranoid, but I was lucky to have Taylor in my life. She’d hammered it into me before my first date: I held all of the cards. I could end a date for any reason; whether he made an off-color joke or wore pungent cologne, dates were at my discretion. For all I knew, he was just a well-paid brain surgeon who liked movies about space a little too much. But it didn’t matter. I’d offered my most convincing condolences and gathered my purse. The abrupt end of our date was public enough that those sitting at the bar around us had turned to watch the poor man’s failed attempt at romance.
He’d furrowed his brow as if trying to decide whether or not he should walk me to the door. He looked up over our empty glasses and asked, “Can we reschedule when you feel better, Maribelle?”
“Of course,” I’d agreed, blocking his number before I’d even walked out of the restaurant.
I’d rushed home from the restaurant, crashing into strong, unseen arms. Caliban hadn’t believed me when I told him nothing was wrong, which was fair, as I was lying. I didn’t want to worry him. Or perhaps I was the one who didn’t want to face that I’d either put myself in danger or that I’d been acting paranoid.
But my gut had been right.
“Richard,” I said again, eyes darting from his dark shape to my phone. I’d left it on the island near the fridge. I calculated the time it would take me to lunge for it, to dial the police, to call for help. My mind flitted to my options. Knife? Possibly. Running for the elevator? He’d get to me before I hit the front door. My fingers tightened around the beer bottle, grateful for any blunt object as I stared twenty-six years of horror movies in the face. My eyes watered, heart thundering. Finally, I asked, “Where is the receptionist?”
“Out” was all he said, mouth pulling wide in a slow, evil smile. There was something not quite human about the way his lips turned upward, almost as if he were borrowing the smile from the wide jaws of a panther.
My stomach rolled. I had to do something. I couldn’t stand here numbly until he moved. In the flash of a few pulsing seconds, my memory paged through hundreds of hours of slashers, thriller novels, and murder podcasts searching for a solution.
Placate. The surviving victims had mollified their attackers.
“You look good.” I smiled, keeping the tremor from my voice. I put on Maribelle’s confidence like a mask, shifting into her skin. “How have things been in the surgical wards?” I asked, slowly shifting my weight to the balls of my feet. It wasn’t yet wise to bolt, but I needed to be ready to run.
“Oh, you know,” he said, rising from my corner chair with glacial slowness, “cutting and dicing, slashing and hacking, this and that.”
An unfaltering smile remained on my face as I took a step backward into the kitchen. I knew I was corning myself, but if I put the island between us, I might be able to create the space I needed to get to the door. I’d still have to make it to the stairwell and sprint from the building. And then down the empty streets of the warehouse district. And if there was no receptionist or security guard…
Richard was fit. I wasn’t ready to stake my life on outrunning him.
Another backward step. Perhaps I could distract him. I fought to keep my voice level as I did my best to offer a charming, apologetic half-smile. “I’m sorry we didn’t get to reschedule our date. Would you like to catch up now?”
His eyes shone black as if his pupils had swallowed his irises. His smile widened further, almost as if small strings were responsible for tugging it into the most sinister grin as he said, “You know how I found you?”
I swallowed as high, loud fear rang in my ears. My clammy palms nearly forced me to drop my beer bottle. I didn’t know what kept me from trembling, aside from shock. He took another step forward. I mirrored it with a backstep.
“Do you know that little bookstore on Main Street? The one that always hangs those pride flags in the window? Guess whose smile I saw. Merit Finnegan, bestselling author of the Pantheon series, followed by the grinning face of the prostitute who stood me up. I just had to see it for myself.”
It should have been the least of my worries, but a small part of me died at the word. No one shouted your alias for the world to hear with camaraderie on the brain. No one broke into your apartment in the middle of the night with good intentions. No one referred to sex workers as prostitutes unless they swung to hurt. I’d been doomed from the start, but now I knew: there was no way this night ended well.
I trained my face to remain calm. Keep him talking, the voice in my head screamed, clawing at the scraps of information that had been drilled into my brain. Survivors humor their captors. “I’m so sorry, Richard. I haven’t been taking dates since I began writing. I’ve been busier than I could have imagined. I’m so blessed that my dating life was able to set me up—”
“I would have stopped then, you know.”
I calculated the distance between myself and the knife block, only half listening as I tried to form a plan. My eyes drifted casually over it to see…
“Are you looking for these?” He made a sweeping gesture to the knives he’d set on the small table beside the corner chair. Renewed fear pulsed through me, filling me with deeper dread as each second passed. He’d preemptively collected anything I might use against him. He wasn’t open to bonding. There would be no placating.
I marked each utensil as he continued. “Maribelle, Merit Finnegan, they were both lies. You’re not real. Nothing about you is real. That’s when it occurred to me that it didn’t matter whether you’re a whore. You were still a liar, Marlow Thorson.”
My full name. The final, chilling nail in the coffin.
Our game had come to an end. My eyes darted. His teeth glistened.
He lunged in the same fraction of a beat it took for me to make a move. Rather than turn my back on him, I jumped forward and to the side toward the table of knives. Richard snarled and spun on me as I wielded my only weapon. I swung the beer bottle as hard as I could. It made contact, but he barely registered the blow. I lost my grip on the glass, and it shattered to the floor.
Each tooth in his grin remained manically feline as he glistened with feral delight. He dipped and picked up the shattered bottle. I dove for the knives. My knees smacked the marble with bruising impact, stealing my breath. I didn’t have time to be consumed by the pain-fueled stars that filled my vision. I knocked the table to the side, its glassy surface shattering into ten thousand pieces as I wrapped my hand around the steak knife that clattered to the ground, gripping it by the blade. I scarcely felt the spike of pain as it bit into my skin, struggling through the free-flowing blood to adjust my hold and find the hilt. I tightened my grip, distantly aware of a sharp, high crunch that sounded like blade on bone.
A guttural, animal scream tore through me.
The sound didn’t come from pain but the sudden, horrible fear that erupted from my belly as hands wrapped around my calves and yanked me backward. The high squeak of flesh on marble rang through the apartment as he reeled me in like a fish. He grabbed my forearm and squeezed until the tendons became too useless to hold the blade. The knife clanged against the marble floor as fresh blood rained down around it. I whimpered against the hold and thrashed, desperate to remember something, anything helpful.
Richard wrapped his hands around my neck. He grunted, eyes bulging as he sank his gloved hands into me. His face turned red, forehead vein popping as vitriol and power coursed from him into the hands crushing my windpipe.
Rather than tear at his hands for release, my fingers flew for his ears. I tugged as hard and fast as I could on his sensitive extremities until he yelped in surprise. It scarcely bought me the time to draw a fresh breath before he recovered from my swipe. He raised a hand and hit me so hard my jaw nearly popped out of place. My ears rang. Pain and panic devoured me as my vision vignetted. Richard’s malevolent shape towered over me. I rallied to claw for his eyes when he struck me again. I clung to the outer edges of consciousness like it was a metal bar lathered in oil. A vein in his forehead throbbed as he went in for the kill. This time when he wrapped his fingers around my neck, I scarcely had the ability to scratch at his arms.
My last thought before unconsciousness began to pull me under rang through my mind as clear as a bell:
Be sure to get skin under your fingernails so they can avenge your death.