CHAPTER SEVEN
RAVEN
Iwatch her by the fireplace, the heat brushing her skin with soft tawny light, cradling the mug I made for her—hot chocolate—steaming between her fingers.
I can feel the heat radiating from her hand, into mine, even from across the room.
Her cerulean eyes are fixed on the orange and blue flames, and I trace its flicker across her face as we both stand in silence.
She knows I’m a killer, knows that I’ve got blood on my hands, knows I have no remorse whatsoever.
Yet it still doesn’t bother her. My mind churns, circling the question of her like an arrow searching for somewhere to land.
“You spend a lot of time out here,” she finally says, her soft voice breaking over the quiet. She must have known that I’d been watching her for her to notice. Or maybe she watches me?
“So do you,” I murmur, leaning against the back wall, not wanting her to feel uneasy by my closeness while she’s tucked away inside my house.
The leather of my jacket creaks against the wood paneling as I shift to get comfortable.
She turns, finally looking over at me, her eyes wide with intrigue and I shrug.
“It’s quiet. I spend most of my time alone.
You notice things.” She nods, seemingly satisfied by my answer, returning her gaze to the fireplace.
The room feels smaller with her in it, the shadows painting silhouettes across the walls like ominous finger puppets but it doesn’t do anything to distract my focus on her.
It isn’t out of the ordinary for a stranger to wander through this area, but it’s mostly farmers and local street riff-raff coming to blow the cobwebs out of the exhausts of their collector cars.
So why, other than in my graveyard, haven’t I ever seen her before?
I notice the faint tremor in her hand, the mug shaking slightly, yet I’m not certain that it’s from fear.
I know she’s aware of me standing here. Aware of the quiet surrounding us, but if she’s afraid, it’s hard to tell.
“Tell me where you’re from?” I push, needing to know as much about her as she’ll let me, but she doesn’t so much as look in my direction. When I’m convinced she’s not going to reply at all, I open my mouth, ready to apologize for being intrusive, but she speaks before I can get the words out.
“Here.”
Here?
Her shoulders shift, clutching the mug closer to her chest, the blanket I had draped over her shoulders earlier, falling away slightly, exposing the skin of her collarbone.
“This city?” I ask, tilting my head, watching as the firelight glistens across her skin.
She turns slowly, and for a moment, I wonder how easy it would be to keep her here.
To keep her locked away in the corners of my home, safe from the sharp, rotten teeth of the world.
But she wouldn’t be safe from me, and that might just be a far more dangerous thing.
“Something like that,” she answers, slowly crossing the room and placing the empty mug down on the sidetable.
She unwraps the blanket from around her shoulders, then folds it, neatly draping it over the armchair in the corner of the living room.
My eyes follow her as she moves, watching the amber lit skin across the hollow of her neck, studying her.
Is she being vague for a reason? Who is she?
“You know,” I say, clearing my throat, my eyes focusing on hers. “I wasn’t sure if you were real.”
“Sometimes I wish that I wasn’t,” she whispers, and my brows knit together. I push off the wall, shove my hands into the pockets of my jeans and step closer to where she stands in the center of the room. I don’t get too close for fear that she’ll flee the moment I do.
“And yet,” I murmur, “here you are.” Her eyes meet mine, wary and fragile.
“I’ve seen what you do to them,” she says, as if acknowledging a secret she’s been forced to keep.
She doesn’t move. She’s testing me with her distance.
An invisible barrier that keeps her safe.
But her eyes betray her indecision. Stay and dance in the dark with me, or run as far as she can away.
I choose both, though wisdom sides with the second.
“And yet,” I repeat, stepping a fraction closer, “here you are.” I tower over her as she gazes up at me, and I’m unable to look away.
Her beauty is rare, unlike anything I’ve ever seen, carved from some impossible dream I’m sure I’ve had.
We stand like this, letting the quiet wrap around us for a moment, before something in her expression snaps.
“I have to go,” she whispers, eyelashes fluttering as she spins around, facing away from me. She starts to walk away, and I fight the urge to reach out and stop her.
“Wait,” I say, almost panicked and I’m not sure where it’s even coming from.
“I don’t even know your name.” My voice trembles with sheer desperation, and it’s too late now to hide it.
My chest heaves as if my body knows that this will be the last time I ever see her.
Slowly, she turns back, lips pressed tight, the weight of indecision warring in her eyes.
Then at last, she exhales a single word.
“Snow.”
Snow…
The name settles somewhere in my bones, colder than the ice outside.
I close the distance between us before I realize I’m doing it, drawn there by…
something. My eyes search hers, a dark instinct stirring from deep within me rising to the surface.
A warning? A summons? There’s more to her than meets the eye, more than what she’s letting me see.
I can feel it. The hunter in me can also feel it, and I know that there’s something about her answer that doesn’t sit right.
“Why do I feel like you’re lying to me?” I say, my voice cracking.
I reach out, brushing the curve of her cheek, lingering like I’m trying to memorize her.
“Why do I feel like you’re so much more than that?
” Why doesn’t it fit her? The words leave my mouth, and something in my chest tightens, a pressure that spreads beneath my ribs until my heart starts to beat in slow motion, watching as she takes a step back, and then another, before she crosses the room and disappears down the hallway.
My body registers the change in space immediately, every nerve ending suddenly aware that she’s about to leave.
I move, but I don’t stop her, I just watch as she drifts farther and farther away from me.
Why do I want to stop her? To stop her from opening that door. To stay here.
With me.
Her hands curl around the handle, the old brass clicking softly beneath her fingers. Then, she pauses, turning just enough to glance over her shoulder at me.
“Am I?” she says, and before I can answer, she’s gone, leaving me in the silence she left behind.
The lingering feeling that something important has just walked away.
The woman I’ve watched from afar for years was not a distant figure moving through the edges of my life like she always has.
She stood inside my house. This untethered, strange woman.
I won’t insult myself by pretending I’m not at least a little bit thrilled that she’s a mystery to me. It’s a rare thing. My entire life, my entire purpose revolves around the quiet dissection of people. Learning the subtle language of movement and instinct.
I track them.
I anticipate them.
I know them.
Everyone reveals themselves if you’re patient enough to watch closely.
Their patterns, their habits, their weaknesses that always emerge like bones beneath thin soil in a rainstorm.
Everyone moves in circles they cannot see, and I have made a life out of mapping those circles until there are no surprises left.
They repeat themselves in small ways. Routes taken without thinking, words chosen in moments of pressure.
The subtle flicker of arrogance that gives them away long before they realize someone has taken notice.
It’s my job to notice. And I noticed something in my ghost. The woman equivalent to a whisper in the wind that has crawled under my skin.
She’s mystifying.
Sent down to earth to fuck with my head and twist the edges of my self control, because if there’s anyone capable of such a thing I’m betting on it being her.