Chapter Twenty-Seven Blue
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Blue
“So,” Jay says before I’m even through the door, “I have to ask—was the corpse centerpiece a planned part of the evening’s
entertainment, or did you just wake up that morning and think, ‘You know what this dinner party needs? Dead people decor’?”
I settle into my chair while he frantically searches through desk drawers like he’s looking for something stronger than his
usual coffee. “You seemed to enjoy yourself well enough. I saw you having quite the conversation with Dame Gothel.”
“I have to admit,” he continues, finally locating a hip flask buried under a stack of case studies, “I’m still processing
the fact that you used Samuel Crow as a floral arrangement. Very artistic, by the way. The blue flowers were a nice touch.”
“Thank you. I thought the color coordination was important.” I cross my ankle over my knee, settling in for what’s clearly
going to be a longer session than usual. “And before you ask—don’t worry, I didn’t fall off the wagon. Hans did the killing.
Although that’s not why I’m here today.”
“Oh god.” Jay sets down the flask without opening it. “What happened after I left the party?”
Jay blinks. Once. Twice. Then he uncaps the flask and takes a long pull.
“It’s ten-thirty in the morning, Jay.”
“Your sessions have completely destroyed my relationship with normal business hours.” He wipes his mouth with the back of
his hand. “So let me get this straight. You’re telling me that retirement lasted exactly . . . what, forty-eight hours?”
“Retirement is overrated.”
“Blue, we spent three years building your exit strategy. Three years of anger management, meditation techniques, finding healthy
outlets for violent urges.” Jay gestures wildly with the flask. “And you threw it all away for gift giving?”
“I prefer to think of it as targeted problem solving.”
“With axes.”
“Hans’s axes,” I correct. “There’s a difference.”
“Oh, there’s a difference?” Jay’s eyebrow arches dangerously. “You can’t just have your staff handle all the killing and think
that makes you murder sober, Blue. There are loopholes, and then there’s . . . whatever the hell this is.”
“It’s called delegation.”
“Delegation.” Jay takes another swig from his flask. “Right. Because being murder sober doesn’t mean you stop orchestrating
deaths, it just means you outsource the actual stabbing.”
“Hans’s axe is just a tool, Jay. Like your pen, or your little stress ball that you keep hurling at the wall.”
Jay retrieves said stress ball from behind the filing cabinet where it’s apparently taken up permanent residence. “My stress
ball doesn’t decapitate people.”
“Your stress ball is also significantly less effective at eliminating threats to the people I care about.”
“And there it is.” Jay stops mid-squeeze, his attention sharpening. “The people you care about. Singular person, really.”
“Peter was my friend—”
“We’re not talking about Peter anymore, and you know it.” Jay leans forward in his chair. “We’re talking about the fact that
you came out of retirement not because someone killed your friend, but because someone threatened his daughter.”
The distinction shouldn’t matter, but somehow it does. Peter’s death was a tragedy, a failure on my part to protect someone
I cared about. But the thought of anyone hurting Saylor? That’s something else.
“Fine. Yes. Saylor matters to me.”
“How much?”
“Enough that I’d rather not see her tortured to death by criminals.”
“Blue.” Jay’s voice takes on that patient tone that means he’s about to make me say something I don’t want to say. “How much
does she matter to you?”
I stare at the chaos of his office, buying time while my brain tries to formulate an answer that doesn’t sound completely insane. Books scattered across every surface, coffee rings on important documents, that motivational poster about change that’s hanging crooked behind his desk.
“She’s different,” I say finally.
“Different how?”
“She’s not afraid of what I am. She should be, but she’s not.” I think about the way she looked at the Crow’s corpse, the
hunger in her eyes when she asked me to teach her violence. “She sees the monster and asks for more instead of running.”
“That’s concerning from a mental health perspective, but continue.”
“Most people either want to fix me or use me. Saylor just wants to understand me.” I pause as I realize the strength of my
words. “She doesn’t try to make me into something I’m not.”
Jay makes a note in his pad. “And how does that make you feel?”
“Like I might actually deserve to be understood.”
The admission hangs between us, and I immediately regret saying it. This is what happens when Jay gets me talking. Somehow
he always manages to excavate thoughts I didn’t even know I was having.
Jay clears his throat. “So how are those murder lessons going? Last session you mentioned she wanted to learn how to kill
her father’s murderers herself.”
“She’s really bad at it,” I say finally.
“Bad at what, exactly?”
“The killing. She’s an awful student, to be honest. Can’t see blood without throwing up.”
Jay blinks slowly. “And you’re . . . persisting with this approach because?”
“Because she asked me to.”
Jay sets down his pen very carefully. “So you’re continuing to traumatize your girlfriend who clearly isn’t cut out for violence
because she asked nicely?”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“What is she, then?”
I don’t have an answer ready for that. What is Saylor? My houseguest? My responsibility? My obsession?
“She’s mine,” I say finally. “I don’t know what that makes her, but she’s mine.”
Jay reaches for his flask again. “Okay, we’re definitely going to need to unpack that statement, but first—give me specifics.
How bad are we talking?”
I think about Saylor in the basement with Julian, how she accidentally killed him and then threw up. Then later at dinner,
the way her hand shook before she drove the knife through Leroy’s palm. How she fainted when she saw the blood.
“She wants to kill people but can’t handle the mess.”
“She can’t actually go through with it.”
“She’s getting better. Last night at dinner she managed to stab Leroy Crow through the hand before the nausea kicked in.”
Jay stares at me. “You brought dinner guests home just so she could practice stabbing them?”
“I thought it would be a good learning opportunity.”
“Jesus Christ, Blue.” Jay downs the rest of his flask. “A formal dinner party? With place settings and everything?”
“Wren made braised short ribs. It would have been a waste not to use the good china.”
“I’m not questioning the menu, I’m questioning the fact that you’re treating murder like a dinner theater production.” But
there’s almost amusement in his voice. “Don’t get me wrong—I’m still on board with giving her agency back. Teaching her to
defend herself is the right call. But did it have to be so . . . theatrical?”
“The Crow aren’t going to attack her in a convenient location. She needs to be comfortable with violence in any setting.”
“Fair point.” Jay refills his flask. “And she actually went through with it? Stabbed him at the table?”
“Through the hand. Then vomited and passed out, but yes.”
“But she did it.” Jay considers this. “That’s progress, right? First time she couldn’t even hold the knife steady. Now she’s
actually drawing blood, even if her stomach protests.”
“Exactly. She’s learning.”
“Learning.” Jay shakes his head with a slight smile. “Only you would consider ‘stabbed someone before fainting’ as educational progress. But I have to ask—is this approach really working? Because it sounds like she’s forcing herself through something she’s not ready for.”
“She asked for this.”
“I know. And I think she should have the choice. That’s why I supported this whole murder mentorship thing in the first place.”
Jay leans forward. “But maybe there’s a middle ground between helpless victim and dinner party assassin? Something that doesn’t
involve traumatic vomiting?”
“You might be right.” The admission surprises both of us. “The dinner party was probably overkill.”
“Literally.” Jay’s lip twitches. “But hey, at least Wren got to show off her culinary skills.”
“She does make excellent braised short ribs.”
“See? Silver lining.” Jay caps his flask. “Just maybe dial back the production value next time. Save the formal dinners for
people who aren’t on the menu. And be careful . . . she isn’t like you.”
“I know she’s not like me,” I say quietly. “She won’t become what I became.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because she still throws up when she sees blood. Because she asks questions about whether killing is right instead of just
doing it. Because she—” I stop, realizing what I’m about to say.
“Because she what?”
“Because she makes me want to be better than I am.”
The admission comes out before I can stop it, and Jay’s entire demeanor shifts. He sets down his flask and actually focuses
on me with attention that makes me want to leave.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” he says softly. “Tell me about that.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“Blue, you just admitted that someone makes you want to change. In three years of therapy, you’ve never said anything like
that.”
“I’ve changed plenty. I retired, didn’t I?”
“You retired because you were tired of killing. That’s different from wanting to be better for someone specific.” Jay picks
up his pen again. “What is it about Saylor that makes you feel this way?”
I stare at the motivational poster, wishing I were anywhere else. “I don’t know.”
“Try.”
“She trusts me.” The words come out reluctantly. “Not because she’s naive or stupid, but because she chooses to. Even after
seeing what I’m capable of.”
“And that’s important to you.”
“No one has ever just accepted me before. Not the sanitized version or the useful version. But Saylor sees all of it and stays
anyway.”
“How does that make you feel?”
I consider giving him some therapeutic non-answer, but something about the way Saylor looked at me last night makes me want
to try honesty for once.
“Like maybe I’m not completely irredeemable,” I say finally.
“And now?”
“Now I think maybe I want to find out.”