Chapter Twenty-Six Sage
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sage
I’m surprised by the calm I feel this morning.
Well, maybe calm isn’t the right word. I feel energized by what we did.
The power of being able to make Eli follow me into that dark corner, knowing what was going to happen afterward, is intoxicating.
If I could do that for him, I can do that for countless other people.
I feel like something has awoken inside me. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined I would have a hand in something like this. Even days ago, I thought I’d want to run for the hills when everything was done, but I don’t.
Travis is still asleep when I wake up. That in and of itself should show that something has changed. I stare at his face and study just how serene he looks. For the first time since I’ve met him, there’s a weight off his shoulders. There’s a lightness surrounding him. He’s at peace for once.
He’s sleeping so soundly I’m tempted to poke his cheek just to see if he’s still breathing. Not that I’d want him to be dead—but if he were, at least I’d get to use my new crematorium skills again.
I tiptoe out of bed, being careful not to wake him. After everything we did last night, he needs his rest. It’s almost 8:00 a.m., and I know he’s going to be waking up any minute now.
In the kitchen, I pull out the ingredients to make a celebratory breakfast. I don’t care about Travis’s calories for the day. I’m going to shove bacon and eggs down his throat if it’s the last thing I do.
I hum to myself, practically dancing behind the counter as I crack eggs and mix them in a bowl. Bacon is frying on the stove, sending the salty and fatty aromas through the room. My stomach growls, and I realize I didn’t eat anything yesterday. I was far too nervous about the kill.
“What are you doing?” Travis startles me, and I nearly drop a bowl filled with shredded potatoes. I exhale a sigh of relief when I see it’s just him.
“I’m making us breakfast. And you’re going to eat it.
” I wave the spatula like a sword. “You have two options: scrambled or scrambled with a side of ‘I don’t want to hear it.’” When a fleck of grease hits the counter, I salute the mess with the spatula.
“Breakfast combat casualty. He died bravely.” Travis immediately grabs a paper towel and wipes it up.
He grabs another spatula while I’m in the middle of mixing the shredded potatoes with the seasonings and some freshly diced onions and flips the bacon in the pan. I keep humming under my breath as I sway my hips back and forth. Travis just watches me with an amused smile.
“What?” I ask as I dump the potatoes in a hot pan.
“You confuse me.” He shakes his head as he speaks, and I roll my eyes. “You’re not like most people.”
“Neither are you.” I nudge him with my elbow, and we stand in silence for a few minutes while we cook together. “How do you feel?”
He pauses and sets the spatula down before looking at me. I can see the heaviness creeping back into his face, and I almost regret asking.
“I feel relieved. It’s sort of like spending a day out in the heat, covered in sweat and dirt, and taking a cold shower. I feel fresh, renewed.” He pauses, and his eyes graze over me. “It feels good.”
“Is it normal to feel this good the morning after?” I gesture around me to the mess I’ve made in the kitchen while cooking. He laughs and shakes his head again.
“If you want to know about normal, I’m not the person to ask.”
“Is it always like this for you?” I idly stir the potatoes while I stare at him and wait for an answer. “You know, I want to know if this is the norm or if it’s an outlier before it happens again.”
“Again?” Travis wrinkles his eyebrows and leans against the counter, crossing his arms.
“Yeah! Look at what we did together. We worked incredibly well, and this doesn’t have to be the first and last time.
” I take the potatoes off the stove when they’ve fried up enough.
“Eli isn’t—wasn’t—the only internet creep out there.
I have hundreds of guys in my DMs telling me disgusting things, and I’m sure a lot of them have similar motives. ”
I pull out my phone and open the messages, scrolling through them so he can see just how many men write to me. His eyebrows rise, but other than that, I don’t see any signs of him eagerly agreeing.
“We can track other people down and eliminate them just like we did Eli. We’d be doing the world a favor. It’s a net-good situation, you know? You can get what you need by murdering people, but the people we’re choosing deserve to die.”
His eyes harden as he looks at me. “I’ve already told you, that’s not why I do what I do.”
“What difference would it make?” I feel myself getting a little defensive, so I take a deep breath to calm down. From what I understand, he targets someone without any reason. Of course, there are more transient people who might not be as easily missed, but that’s about it.
“This isn’t some game I’m playing. I’m not out to be some vigilante hero making the world a better place. There are bad people in this world, and I’m one of them,” he says. His voice is final, like he doesn’t want to hear any more of this.
I huff and finish cooking breakfast while he starts cleaning up the mess behind me. I can’t stop thinking about what I said. It’s the perfect situation. Travis can help me make the world safer. Would anybody really miss some internet troll hiding behind their keyboard and threatening women?
I whip my head around and stare at him with my hands on my hips. “What about us? What do you see in our future, then?”
Travis pauses and stares at me with a blank face. His eyes move around quickly as if he’s trying to compute the right answer.
“If you don’t want to help me, I’ll just use what you taught me and go off on my own.”
He raises his eyebrows and shakes his head slowly. He tries opening his mouth to speak, but no words come.
“I can do it. I’ll be a one-woman killing machine.”
“You’re threatening me to become a murdering team with you?” Travis is dumbfounded. I bet he never imagined this is what would happen when I accidentally knocked on his door the first day we met. Hell, neither did I.
I don’t know how to make myself more clear to him.
“Travis, I’ve seen how you operate. You plan everything down to the last detail. What’s your plan for me? I know your secrets. You told me how you kill and how you dispose of the bodies. I could be a danger to you.”
He backs away from me while trying to wipe the surprise off his face. Maybe I shouldn’t have told a serial killer I can potentially spill very incriminating information about him, but here we are.
“I don’t have a plan for you,” he finally says. His eyes lock on mine, and my heart tightens in my chest. “You’re unpredictable. I never could have planned on meeting someone like you.”
I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. All I know is that I care about him, and I don’t want to go off on my own. But after last night, I don’t know how I can go back to normal. He’s unlocked something inside me, and I’m going to find a way to use it to do good.
I drop the conversation for now. We’ll have to figure this out eventually, but we can at least enjoy breakfast.