5. Stevie
CHAPTER FIVE
STEVIE
Alight coolness floats across my face. The preparation room is chillier than usual as the clouds hang low all afternoon. I push a single corkscrew curl away from my eye with the top of my shoulder and refocus on Mr. Branson’s body lying peacefully on my table.
With Lana Del Rey’s “Gods & Monsters” playing in my earbuds, I trace my fingers along the vertical wound that runs down his sternum.
Nestled between his breastbones, the tissue is still raw from the recent open-heart surgery he had done while admitted to the emergency room less than a week ago.
Unfortunately, the team of doctors was unable to save him.
I purse my lips together, staring down at his lifeless body with somber feelings settling in my heart. Running the back of my gloved knuckles across his cheek, I whisper, “I’m going to take good care of you, Mr. Branson. I promise.”
Although I want to focus on giving him his final moments of serenity, I can’t help but stare at the strange marking on the inside of his thigh. There’s an X carved into his skin. Normally, I’d brush it off, but Mr. Branson is the third client I’ve seen with this X in just the last week.
“What is this?” I say under my breath, examining the slices in his flesh.
A warm pressure appears on my left shoulder.
Startled, I jump since I should be the only living soul in this mortuary at two in the morning.
My reflexes from the self-defense training my dad forced me to take for as long as I can remember engage, and I swing my right arm, slamming my elbow back.
As my body whips around, both earbuds fly from my ears, cutting off the music.
“Stevie!” I hear a masculine voice say as a muscular arm blocks my punch. “It’s me, Sebastian.”
“Sebastian!” I yell out of breath. “You scared the shit out of me!”
He’s standing so close to me, I’m sure he can feel the heavy beats of my heart from inside my chest. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
I quickly back away, catching my breath. “Think about that when you show up at my mortuary in the middle of the night without notice.”
He walks over to the corner of the room to retrieve one of the white earbuds from the floor and then picks up the other only a few feet away. “What are you doing here this late?”
I turn to face Mr. Branson’s body. “Nights can be lonely. I don’t like my clients being here unprepped and all by themselves.”
“While the world sleeps, you hang out with dead people?”
Irritation zips up my spine as I cover the body back with the white sheet. “While the world sleeps, I tend to the souls who are no longer with us,” I bite back, annoyed that he referred to my clients as dead people. “Besides, how is that any different from what you do?”
“What do you mean?”
My eyebrows raise. “You hang out with dead bodies, too.”
“What I do is completely different.”
I roll my eyes. “Not that I don’t enjoy your riveting company, but why are you here?”
“I came to talk to you about something.”
Dread settles in my stomach. The last time Sebastian wanted to talk to me, my sister Lux had been kidnapped by a sleazy hotel heir and his sex ring.
“Is everything okay?” I rush out. “Where’s Lux?”
Sebastian hands both of the small items to me. “She’s fine. I came here for you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah.”
“How did you get in? I have an excellent security system.” A sly smile crawls across the sharp features of his face, and suddenly I have my answer. “You know what? Don’t answer that. I’m sure you disabled the alarm.”
“Smart girl.”
I roll my eyes. “If that’s all, I have work to do,” I tell him, moving to return to my task when Sebastian pushes off the counter and saunters over to me, stopping only a few inches from my face, and I swallow hard at our proximity.
Sebastian has always had trouble respecting personal space. He has no filter and is a perpetual space invader. “Stevie.”
“Sebastian.”
“I need your help.”
I draw back. “You’re being a space invader.”
“Fair enough.”
“Why would you need my help?” I ask, putting distance between us.
“One of the guys found a card on Andrew’s body the night your sister, River, and I burned him in the forest…” he begins.
Quick memory of those few weeks flash through my mind. That night, only a couple weeks ago, still brings fear at my core. Which is a rough memory to relive because of how terrified I was for my sister, but I trusted the guys and their team to bring her home.
And they did.
“Yes?”
“It was for a secret society of serial killers.”
“Like a serial killer club?”
“Sort of.”
I rub my temples, still confused. “So? What does that have to do with me?”
“It’s complicated. And you’re the only other woman besides your sister who’s aware of what I do.”
Sebastian and his cousin both own Thompson Innovations, but at night they’re vigilantes who take down predators that have somehow evaded the system.
They have an entire operation, with their aunt acting as some sort of assistant, but she works mostly with their tech company.
And a night crew with highly skilled men who clean up after them.
“A new project?” I rest a hand on the prep table to steady myself. “I thought Lux wasn’t taking on anything else.”
I knew my sister would be involved in more of River and Sebastian’s nightly activities, but I had hoped she’d take some time off to recover from being at the center of the last one.
“They aren’t taking this on. I am.” Sebastian squares his shoulders. “But if I want to infiltrate this group, I need a girlfriend.”
“Excuse me?”
“The Society thinks I have a girlfriend,” he tells me. “So, Stevie, will you pretend to be my girlfriend so I can infiltrate a secret society of serial killers and take them down, one by one?”
Girlfriend!
Suddenly, the muscles in my legs give out at the thought of being involved with Sebastian and his cousin again. I lower to the floor, but before my body comes into contact with the cold, unforgiving tile, I’m hoisted up again by two brawny arms.
“What are you doing?” I shout as Sebastian sets me on top of the counter. My legs, like jelly, dangle over the edge.
“Are you okay?” he asks, keeping one warm hand on my bent knee, bracing me.
My thoughts are in a frenzy. He wants me involved?
“Absolutely not.” I comb my fingers through my hair because the room temperature has surged. “What happened to Lux was terrifying, and you want me to do it all again, but with myself?”
Sebastian’s face softens as he rests a steady palm on the top of my hand. “I’ll be there with you.”
“No,” I protest, yanking my hand away, ignoring the heat radiating off his skin. “How do you expect us to work together on something with such high stakes? We don’t even like each other.”
“Who said I don’t like you?”
“Stop playing,” I retort. “You annoy the shit out of me, and it’s clear I do the same to you.”
He shrugs. “Probably just sexual tension.”
I arch a brow. “Oh, is that what it’s called?”
“It’s clear we have no choice but to fuck in order to work together effectively.” He folds his arms across his chest. “I’m ready when you are.”
I fight a blush. “You can’t be serious?”
“I’m kidding.” He chuckles. “But if you want—”
“Sebastian!” I slap his arm.
His expression sobers. “Look, I know this is a crazy ask, but you’re the only one who knows about what we do.” But a slight chuckle escapes before he continues. “And you don’t seem to be fazed by it.”
I pull my mouth to the side, feeling exposed. I may find what Sebastian and his cousin do to be insane, but there’s a part of me, like my sister, who craves the thrill. And not that I want to give Sebastian any sort of admiration, but I respect his take on justice, because I have it, too.
But I also have immense respect for death itself.
“I may not have reacted the same way a normal person would, but that doesn’t mean I want to be a part of it.”
Sebastian wanders to the opposite side of the prep table, his eyes casually taking in the covered body of Mr. Branson. “Do you enjoy what you do, Stevie?”
“I do.”
“So do I,” he says, meeting my gaze from across the table. With an impatient slow blink, I wait for him to continue. “I know you have that drive and curiosity for darker things in you, too. I’ve seen it.”
At the mention of curiosity, my mind jumps to the strange markings on Mr. Branson’s leg and how they could have gotten there. I wonder if Sebastian would have any idea where they could have come from. He deals with nefarious things all the time—maybe this is something more within his expertise.
“Can I show you something?”
“Uh, sure?” he mutters, startled by my sudden change of subject.
I roll up the white sheet on Mr. Branson’s body, enough to show Sebastian the carved X. “Do you see this?”
He bends to get a closer look. “Why is there an X carved into his leg?”
“My question exactly. This is the third body I’ve found with a similar marking on in the last week and a half. Same place, too.” I lean in closer, pointing at the top of each line to show the sharp puncture made as if writing the letter on a piece of paper. But it’s in the skin.
With his eyes narrowed, Sebastian stares intently at the marking. “And you haven’t seen anything like this before?”
“No.”
“And this is the third?”
“In just over a week, yes.”
He straightens, turning away to think. “Christian didn’t find much information on this group, but apparently they choose different cities every couple of years to conduct their business.
When I spoke with one of them earlier, he mentioned their masquerade ball on Friday would be the first event of the season…
” he trails off, thinking out loud. “If these markings started showing up this week, I wonder if they’re connected somehow? ”
Like a waterfall of information cascading through my brain, I take it all in. “Like, these could be their victims?”
Sebastian turns back to face me fully. “Not sure. I’m hoping to find out more at the ball on Friday. I also need to find out why they assumed I have a girlfriend. Maybe they were expecting someone already, but we found the card instead?”