This woman, who was not a woman at all but something else . . . was his ticket off the planet.
After all these years, his death, which he had so often wished for, and too many times been denied, had finally crossed the threshold of his inner house and sat down in a chair.
To wait for the right moment.
The woman smiled, her blood red lips pulling into an expression of evil satisfaction. “You’re going to be mine.”
• • •
The rush of the ice bouncing off Rhoger’s immobile chest and falling into the sides of the tub was the kind of thing Mae was going to hear in her nightmares forever. And the tinkling sounds, so soft, so gentle, reminded her of how unhinged she had become. Even as she was able to dress herself properly and eat her meals and drive her car without disaster, she was chaos barely reined in, the undercarriage of all her seemingly a-okay really ten thousand volts of fucked-in-the-head.
“It’s going to be fine,” she told her brother as she crumpled up the dripping, empty bag.
Reaching for the next one, she tore through its plastic skin and then realized she’d forgotten to bang it on the floor first. It was a solid frozen chunk.
“Damn it.”
Grabbing a towel off the rack, she wrapped the bag up and dropped the thing on the bath mat a couple of times, the shattering inside too close for comfort.
Now the chips poured out, though.
When she was finished refilling things, she sat back on her heels and propped her hands on the slick rim of the tub. Staring at her brother’s face through the tesserae’d ice, she couldn’t recognize his features. But she wasn’t sure she would have anyway.
It had been a long time since she’d properly looked him in the eye, and not because he had passed.
“I’m so sorry,” she croaked out. “I didn’t mean . . . that night you left, I didn’t mean to yell at you. I really didn’t.”
There was no answer coming back at her. Which hadn’t been the way things were. Before Rhoger had taken off that night and not come home, they’d been fighting constantly.
Over such insignificant things—or so it seemed now.
God, she wished she had been more patient. Or maybe not have dug so deep with the criticism. Maybe if she hadn’t been so hard on him, he would have stayed home that night.
Maybe . . .
She thought of the summoning spell. And everything Tallah had told her the Book would do for her.
Yes, she wanted to bring Rhoger back. But the truth was, it was her wrong that she wanted to rectify. She had started the downward spiral that had ended in his tragic death: After that particularly brutal argument, he had stormed out . . . and then crossed the path of his murderer at some point.
With a curse, she remembered those terrible days of waiting, sitting in the hard chair in the kitchen, praying for a call from him. And then the nights, trying to work at her desk, braced for the door to open when he came home.
The latter had happened, eventually . . . nearly two weeks after he had gone missing. She had smelled the fresh blood first, and then heard the stumbling feet. Rushing out of her room, she had come down the hall just as he had collapsed inside the front door, his loose limbs and out-of-joint torso the most terrifying thing she had ever seen.
“Rhoger,” she whispered.
If he hadn’t come home to die here? She never would have found him. She would have spent the rest of her life listening for the door, stuck with this house because it was where he would know to find her, wondering and imagining and torturing herself with a thousand different bad outcomes.
“I’m going to fix this,” she told him. “I promise.”
Getting to her feet, she groaned as every muscle in her body hurt—except that wasn’t true. It was only her upper arms that ached, and for a moment, she couldn’t figure out why.
Then she remembered being on the doorstep of the cottage. With Sahvage. Shooting at a shadow.
“I’ll be back tomorrow night,” she said to Rhoger. “I have to make sure Tallah is okay. It’s . . . a long story.”
The fact that she paused for his response made her feel really unhinged. So she went to her room and quickly packed an over-day bag. The truth was, she couldn’t wait to leave the house—which made her feel guilty. But for godsakes, it wasn’t like Rhoger was aware she was leaving him all alone. Besides, it was better for her not to be around the body. If another one of those shadows showed up?
If she didn’t have him intact, she didn’t know what the hell she was resurrecting.
Holy hell, what kind of life was she living.