Chapter Thirty-Nine Blue
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Blue
The front door slams so hard it rattles the chandelier. I’m halfway through explaining to Jay why having Saylor be sent away
is the only logical solution when the sound of her fury echoes through every floor of Maison Rouge. Her footsteps pound up
the grand staircase, each one a declaration of war.
“Blue!” A momentary pause. “Where the hell are you?”
Jay raises his eyebrows. “I’m guessing she found out about your plans.”
“Seems likely.” I down the rest of my whiskey and head for the door. “This conversation isn’t over.”
“Oh, it’s definitely over,” Jay calls after me. “Good luck surviving the next ten minutes.”
I find Saylor in the main hall with red-stained hands clenched into fists. Her dark hair is wild from the evening wind, her
cheeks flushed with anger.
She’s never been more beautiful.
“What. The. Fuck. Is. Going. On?” Each word comes out like a bullet.
“Saylor—”
“No! I’m talking now.” She starts pacing across the polished floor, her fury filling the space like wildfire. “What person
kicks someone out without even telling them? What psychopath tells other people and not the person actually moving? If you
wanted me out, you should have said something! Why did I have to hear about this from Duffy? What kind of person are you?”
“Someone who’s trying to keep you alive.”
She stops pacing to stare at me. “By kicking me out with no notice and no place to go? How does that work exactly?”
“I have a place for you to go. A plan.”
“A plan? Oh my God, you’re serious.” She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “You actually have been planning this? For how long? And is there some reason you didn’t let me in on this?”
“I have my reasons.”
She resumes pacing, her anger building steam again. “And if I say no to your plan? What’s next? Maybe I’ll just end up like the other seven women—a pretty picture on the wall and then a skull upstairs!”
The words explode out of her, and I can see the real fear behind her fury.
“If I don’t obey the mighty Blue, you’ll add me to your collection upstairs?”
“Do you really believe that?” I step closer, studying her face. “Do you honestly think I want to hurt you?”
Her certainty wavers for just a moment. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
“Then ask me what you really want to know.”
“The skulls!” The words burst from her like a dam breaking. “I’ve been trying not to bring it up because of Hans, but Jesus
Christ, Blue. There are seven skulls in your house!”
“I know.”
“You know? That’s all you have to say? You know?” She gestures wildly at the portraits above us. “Margaret, Eleanor, Vivian,
Catherine, Sophia—they’re all up there as skulls while their portraits smile down at us like some twisted fairy tale.”
“Yes.”
“And I saw Cordelia at the Dryad’s Dance. Alive. Breathing. Crying. But her skull is upstairs with a nameplate. How is that
possible?”
I wait for her to finish, letting her fury burn itself out. She needs to say all of this, and I need to hear it.
“Look, I know you kill people,” she continues. “I’ve never judged you for that. Hell, I’ve joined you. But keeping their bones
upstairs with name tags? What kind of person does that? What did they do to deserve death? Were they threats? Were they criminals?
Or did they just ask too many questions?”
“Are you finished?”
“No! I’m not finished! Because this isn’t just about murder, Blue. This is about trust. This is about all your damn secrets, about what you’re planning for me, about—”
“Follow me.”
I head for the stairs, not waiting to see if she follows. Her footsteps echo behind me, laced with anger but curious enough
to keep pace.
We climb to the third floor, walk through the hallway of skeleton keys that sway gently as we pass. At the blood-red door,
I pull out the raven key and unlock it.
“After you.”
Saylor steps into the room, and I watch her face as she processes what she’s seeing. She’s been here before, but now she’s
looking with different eyes, searching for answers instead of just recoiling from the horror.
“There,” I say, pointing to an empty eighth table. “That’s where your hunter would go.”
“My hunter?”
“Brutus Crow,” I say conversationally. “His intent is to kill you. When I finally get him, his skull will be sitting on that
table with your name on the placard. In due time.
“The skulls aren’t of the women—they’re of the women’s hunters. Each skull represents a man who was hired to kill the woman
whose name is on the placard.” I move to stand beside her. “I know it may seem twisted that I keep their skulls, but I like
to keep reminders. Just like my cemetery in the garden for all the souls I couldn’t save, or the portraits of the ones I did
to remind me of the good, I wanted to keep these to remind me of the bad, the darkness, the reason I’m trying to not be like
them. These are my reminders.”
“So all the women on your wall . . .”
“Are alive and well, living under new identities far from whatever danger brought them to me in the first place.
“Margaret was running from an abusive ex-husband who had connections in law enforcement. Eleanor needed to disappear from a stalker who’d killed her sister.
Vivian got on the wrong side of a human trafficking ring.
” I point to each table in turn. “Catherine had evidence against a cartel. Sophia witnessed a political assassination. The sixth woman—Penelope—was a federal prosecutor whose family was threatened.”
“And Cordelia?”
“Cordelia was the first. Ten years ago. She was Brutus Crow’s girlfriend, but she got smart and tried to leave him.” I run
my hand along the edge of her table. “She came to me because she’d heard rumors about what I do. Begged me to help her disappear
because Brutus doesn’t let anyone walk away alive.”
Saylor is quiet, processing. “So you faked their deaths.”
“Your father and I gave them new identities.”
“So all these skulls are actually bastards?”
“Every single one. Men who threatened, stalked, or tried to kill the women I was protecting.” I point to the table labeled
Margaret. “That’s her ex-husband. Tracked her down three times before I convinced him to stop permanently.”
Saylor moves from table to table, reading the nameplates with new understanding. “Eleanor’s stalker. Vivian’s trafficker.
Catherine’s cartel contact.”
“Justice served with a little reminder of the darkness I’m fighting against.”
She stops in front of the table labeled Cordelia. “And this is?”
“One of Brutus’s lieutenants. I wanted Brutus himself, but he was too well-protected. This bastard had to do.” I shrug. “Took
me two years to track him down, but I’m very patient when it comes to revenge.”
“I saw Cordelia at the Dryad’s Dance. She was out of hiding.”
“Was teaching elementary school in Portland under the name Lisa Davies. Married to a nice accountant who thinks her first
boyfriend died in a motorcycle accident. She was at the Dryad’s Dance because Brutus found her. Somehow tracked her down despite
everything we did to hide her. She got away, but not before she heard them plotting. She came to warn me that they were planning
the attack, even though showing her face put her right back in danger.”
Saylor sinks into the chair I keep in the corner—the same one I sit in sometimes when I need to remember why I do this work.
“I would never kill an innocent on purpose. I am a serial killer. I just happen to be very selective about my victims.”
“All the women are alive and free.”
She stares at the empty table where Brutus’s skull will eventually sit.
Saylor is quiet for a long time, processing everything I’ve told her. When she finally speaks, her voice is soft.
She stands up, moving toward me with heat in her eyes.
“You aren’t the villain in this story, Blue. You’re the hero.” Her smile turns fierce as her fingers find my shirt buttons.
“Saylor—”
“Shut up.” She yanks my shirt open, buttons scattering across the stone floor. “I’m done pretending I don’t love every twisted,
beautiful thing about you.”
She shoves me back against the wall, her mouth finding mine with desperate hunger. When she bites my lower lip hard enough
to draw blood, I groan and flip us around, pressing her against the cold stone while the skulls of criminals watch from their
tables.
“Here?” I ask against her throat. “You want to do this here?”
“Especially here.” Her hands are already working at my belt. “With all your trophies watching. With the proof of what you
really are spread out around us.”
I slide my hands under her thighs, lifting her until her legs wrap around my waist. The stone wall is cold against my palms
as I brace us, but Saylor is fire in my arms, her body arching against mine like she can’t get close enough.
Saylor makes a noise like she’s been set on fire, and it lights up every molecule inside me. Her body wraps around mine, pulling
my hips to her as if she’s afraid any sliver of space will let the world slip in and ruin this. She tears at my shirt, popping
another button and scraping her nails over my skin hard enough to remind me what pain is meant to do: keep you awake, keep
you honest, keep you here. The taste of blood is on my tongue—hers, mine, I couldn’t care less—as the world narrows to the
pair of us pressed against a wall in a sanctuary of death.
Her legs tighten around me and I’m already bone-hard, the animal in me roaring at the rawness of it, the mess, the stench of acid and rot.
I push her panties to the side and she’s already soaked, primed from her earlier rage.
My cock is so fucking hard that I can’t wait another second.
I thrust into her, one hard stroke and then another, no hesitation, no foreplay—her dripping wet cunt tells me she doesn’t need it and neither do I.
Sliding into her tight pussy with one brutal movement, her breath catches on a gasp that’s half pain and half laughter as I moan out her name.
She clings to me, clawing at my back, her teeth finding my shoulder and biting down just enough to make me see white at the
edge of my vision. I fuck her hard against the wall, the edge of the stone catching her hips and marking her, her glorious
mess of hair tangling in my hands. The ghosts in the room see everything: my hunger, my need, the way I can’t distinguish
lust from grief from relief.
Wet heat pulses around my cock, every thrust met with a sound from her that gets louder, more ragged.
“Fucking love you,” she hisses in my ear, and it tears something open. I rut in deeper, driving her into the stone hard enough
that her spine will remember it. My hands find her wrists, pin them above her head—a little leverage, a little violence, the
old language we speak best. She fights me, because she wants to, because she can, and that resistance is pure fire. Her thighs
squeeze so tight around my waist it hurts.
She cocks her head back and grinds into me, meeting every thrust with more. The wall thuds, and I realize, distantly, that
the friction of her ass against the stone might be scraping her raw. I don’t stop. She doesn’t want me to stop. There’s nothing
gentle to this, nothing that could be called loving by any sane definition, but we were never built for sane.
I want to devour her, and I almost do, kissing her hard enough to bruise, biting at her jaw as I piston deeper. She meets
me, thrust for wild thrust, grinding down to chase the pressure just right. Her hands fight my grip and I let go, just so
she can slap me, once, across the face. It’s not even a slap, more like a wake-up call, and I want to say thank you, but I’m
too busy breathing in all of her.
She comes first, sudden and violent, the muscles inside her clamping down on my cock like a vise.
Her whole body seizes and she screams, actually screams, so loud I hear it bounce off the stone and down the hallway, a call to every ghost in the building.
I lose my grip for a second and she bites my jaw, hard, leaving a wet patch of blood.
The pain brings me over, and I bury myself in her and fill her up, shaking with it, every ounce of control gone.
She milks me with her aftershocks, writhing and cursing with every jolt, squeezing me dry before I let go of her wrists and
drag her mouth back to mine. The first time I come it’s half rage, half relief, and all of it inside her. I want every one
of these corpses to watch, want the past to see what it can’t have. I fuck her through the end of it, cock softening just
enough to keep going, the salt-bitter mess of her and my blood slicking our bodies together like paint.
When I finally pull out, she drops her feet to the floor and goes slack against me, panting like she just ran ten flights
of old stairs. For a minute we just cling together, silent except for the sound of skin and heartbeat and Saylor’s breathing.
“Jesus Christ,” she finally says, pushing her hair out of her face.
She looks around the room, taking in the tables with their grisly displays, then back at me with something between amazement
and horror. “This is officially the most unhinged thing I’ve ever done. And I poisoned a man, so that’s really saying something.”
“The poison thing was fairly tame compared to this.”
“Right?” She laughs, but it’s slightly hysterical. “Most people have sex in beds. Normal people. But no, I decide to jump
you in your creepy death museum because apparently that’s who I am now.”
I start buttoning what’s left of my shirt while she smooths down her dress.
“But I’m still fucking pissed at you.”
“About?”
“The move, Blue. Trying to get me to leave without asking me.” Her anger is returning, sharpening. “How the hell do we let
all of Grimlock know this is false info? Everyone is just getting to know me, and now I’m going to look like a flake, or there’s
going to be rumors of trouble in paradise or . . .” she pauses. “I know you don’t care about reputation . . . clearly. But—”
“You’re still leaving.”
She stares at me. “What?”
“You heard me. You still aren’t safe here. You’re moving as planned. Just like these women before. You’ll be safe far from
here so I can go after Brutus.”
“The fuck I am. We are going to come up with a plan on how to handle Brutus Crow together. You and me. I’m not one of those girls on the wall. I don’t need to be protected. I’m staying by your side to take the man down.”
“No,” I say quietly. “You’re not.”
“Excuse me?”
“Hans is dead.” The words come out flat, final. “I no longer have him by my side to help. I can’t protect you from the Crow.
Nothing has changed in my plan. The move is happening whether you like it or not.”