by Melissa Marr
I lifted the box, unwrapped it carefully so as not to rip the paper or the bow. Inside, a thin chain for my ankle nestled in a box. “May I wear it?”
“Not yet.”
“Yes, Edward.” I stayed where I was.
The last time I made him unhappy, he took away my clothes and locked me in the shed for a day. There was no toilet. No furniture. No water. No food.
But when I did a good job, he treated me like I was made of spun glass. Really, what did it matter that he picked out my clothes? Was it actually important to earn money when he provided everything we could need? I hadn’t ever had a burning career passion. I simply hadn’t wanted to be trapped by Sterling’s whims.
Edward smiled at me. “We could get married. That way you’d never need to worry about anything. I’ll take care of you.”
It wasn’t a proposal in the way that I’d expected as a girl, but Edward made me happy. He took care of me.
“I love you.”
“You don’t want to marry me, Tessa?” The edge was there, the one that I knew could lead to things I didn’t like.
“I do, but—”
“What? You want to whore around? You want other men to look at you? To fuck you?” He threw his plate.
“I’m sorry.” I was frozen in my chair.
“I offer to take care of you.” He stood. “And this is what you do? You aren’t working any more, not at some menial job, not at a job where you act like a whore.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry that you don’t get to act the whore? Is that what this is about? Are you not satisfied?” He grabbed my hair and jerked my head back.
“I want to marry you.”
He stared at me. “You need something to do? Fix it.” He knocked the rest of the dishes onto the floor, shattering them. “There. You have a job.”
He watched me clean. I picked everything up, washed the floor, and eventually, I stood in front of him. I was bleeding from several small cuts, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought that the ways he watched those cuts was scarier than being locked in the shed had been.
“Shower, and put on the blue dress with the little flowers. We’ll go out to dinner.”
I nodded and walked away.
“You need to do a better job, Tess,” he called after me. “I’m patient, and I know you don’t mean to make mistakes . . . but if you want this to work, you need to trust me completely.”
I turned back to look at him. “I do.”
“We can pick out a ring tonight. My brothers are coming over tomorrow. You’ll be a good wife, won’t you?”
“I will.”
Edward stared at me, looking for something in my expression. If I knew what he wanted, I’d have given it to him. When he was like this, I didn’t know what to do or say. There was always something, though, some word or act that would make him forgive me. When he did, he was amazing.
“I love you,” I said.
I did. I really did. I just didn’t know if I loved him enough. I screwed up, and he got mad. Mostly, being mad meant embarrassing me or sex that was a little rougher than I enjoyed. Other than the shed incident, it wasn’t so bad.
“You’re not going to see your mother,” he announced. “We’ll get married that day instead. Isn’t that a better plan?”
“Yes, Edward.”
“No one will ever tell you what to do again, Tess. No one will ever touch you again without my permission. I'll take care of you.” He stood and walked toward me. “Come on. Let’s shower before we go out.”
And just like that, he was sweet again. He took my hand, led me to the oversized shower in the master bath, and knelt before me. He kissed me, licked me, nuzzled me. After the first orgasm, he slowed, but he didn't stop. After the next, he smiled at me. I stroked his hair while he lavished so much attention on me that I couldn't imagine being anywhere else.
Edward treated me like I was everything he could want until I could barely stand. He stared up at me while I was still trembling with aftershocks. I saw awe and love in his expression, and in that instant, he looked like every fantasy a woman could ever have.
“I love you, Tess. No one will ever love you the way I do.” Even then, even feeling as sated as I did, his words sounded like a threat and a promise, but they were true either way. “You’re mine.”
"Always."
18
Michael
I call Elizabeth as soon as it’s a decent time in New York. Maybe things with Tess won’t continue to develop like I hope, but already I have more of an idea for a book than I’ve had in years. The draft is going well, and every tidbit I learn, I revise into the pages I’ve already written. I see it glimmer more and more each time.
“She’s the one,” I tell Elizabeth.
“The one?”
“Look at your email,” I explain. I’d sent her a picture of Tess. “She’s the one. Tess. The woman in New Orleans is the one.”
There’s a brief pause before my agent lightly prompts, “To marry or write about?”
“She’s the character, a young woman with a dark secret. She’s running from something awful. I don’t know exactly what yet, but she’s a mess of scars and tattoos. Mostly, she’s lucid, but the word in the square—”
“The what?” Elizabeth sounds vaguely charmed.
I slow down, explain that I’ve been mingling with the locals in New Orleans to set the world of the story and to gather information on Tess. It’s a heady thing, this early stage of writing when the world and characters are so close but still elusive. I know the pieces will coalesce. I’ll make them.
“The story will be tragic, redemptive, and Tess is the lynchpin.” I try to sound calm, but not bored. With most people, I need to hide the excitement of the process, but agents are like bloodhounds. They want to have the scent to chase. There’s an excitement that they seek as much as writers do. The difference, I think, is that they do it for the money, for the acclaim of having the project—or author—their contemporaries covet.
That’s not what drives me. The money is nice, but I have plenty of that. The acclaim is nicer, but I could have quit after the first book, preserved my reputation, and spent years riding on that success. That would’ve been safer. I needed more.
“The critics who dismissed me will eat their words when they read this,” I promise.
“As they should.”
I can’t help but cringe at her tone. Elizabeth is precisely the sort of woman that I’m expected to marry: cold, cultured, and conveying most emotions with only the slightest hint of actual expression. She’s every woman I’m supposed to want.
I shudder at the thought.
When I disconnect a few minutes later, I admit to myself that I’m loathe to leave not just Tess, but New Orleans itself. There’s something gorgeous about New York, and I’m not trying to abandon the literary world or the polish of that far more familiar city. But there’s something alluring about New Orleans, her secrets and her characters.
And, increasingly, Tess has become a character to me, perhaps she already was before I met her. I know all books have that disclaimer that announces that everything under the cover is a lie.
That’s pure legalese.
Surely, I’m not the only writer teasing stories out of shop girls or drunks in bars. Truth be told, they’re getting something out of it too. What use does Tess have for her secrets? She pays her rent several months in advance when she can because she knows that she’s as likely as not to go off on one of her “episodes” and forget.
When I’m not with Tess, I’m studying her, collecting the bits of stories about her, and trying to understand her world. It’s no different than the research in the depths of archives or museums. Writers study and sort. We gather the pieces to assemble a tale. I am assembling the pieces of Tess—and adding my own to make the story better.
On my way down Royal Street, I’m stopped by a man who lowers his horn at my approach.
“You’re Tess’ writer,” t
he trumpet player, a man whose name I can’t recall, says.
It’s amusing to be Tess’ anything. My name opens doors in a lot of places. My reputation does, too. Here, though, with the people who exist on cash-under-the-table or change-in-a-bucket, I am no one.
“How is she this week?”
“Fine.”
“Don’t be too sure.” He shakes his head. “Clovis says the girl’s done paid up her rent for the next four months.”
I don’t know what to say. There’s the Tess I see, and there’s the Tess the locals know, and the Tess I write, and I’m not sure how much they have in common sometimes. One or all of them is an illusion.
He lifts his horn and plays, knowing in some seemingly innate way that the tourists coming toward us are likely to drop money in his open case. There’s an art or science to busking that I can’t figure out.
Like a lot of the people I meet because of Tess, he’d be a fine character himself. He’s a modern town crier, a newsman with a horn, a person who distracts and distances himself by putting others in my path. In a way, I trust him more because of it.
Too many people want to talk to me when they hear what I do. Most of them tell me about their cousin in Baton Rouge or their auntie clear up North—and you can hear the capital letter when they pronounce North just as you hear it when they say South—who wrote a storybook for kids or their dentist who wrote a romance using a woman’s name to do it. Everyone’s an author or wants to write a book. Nevermind that they’d scoff if I decided to wield a dental pick or a trumpet with no experience whatsoever and call myself a professional after a few moments of well-intentioned practice. I learned when A Solitary Grave released that pointing that out resulted in surly looks, so I nod and hold my tongue as I gather the pieces they will share with me.
“Poor Tess,” the trumpet player laments when he is no longer distracted by the sweet couple from somewhere in the Midwest who lingered to hear maybe a half a song. “Sometimes I swear the devil hisself is chasing after that girl.”
I wait. That’s the trick with people this far in the South: they’ll tell tales as long as you stand still, buy a whiskey or a joint to share, drop a few bills in the hat. They do it well. I’ve been listening to stories in a lot of cities, a lot of bars, and quite a few planes and trains. There’s nowhere quite like the South for tales. Maybe it’s the humidity. Everything feels more languid when the very air insists that you slow down.
“The devil?” I prompt after a moment.
He laughs, a husky sound that seems to rattle and scratch in his lungs before finding its way into the air. “I don’ have the answer you’re trying to con outta me, boy.”
I don’t bother trying to deny that I want answers. These aren’t people who are easy to lie to. They live in a way I don’t understand, and in some way, they only tolerate me because of Tess. I simply nod.
He lifts his horn to his lips again, but before he starts to play, he adds, “All I’m gonna say is if you poke a hornet’s nest long ‘nough, you don’t got no room to bitch when you get stung. Tess might be crazier than a box of magpies when she’s off in one of her spells, but those spells always end . . . and what you don’t see is that Tess . . . she simply ain’t right. Whatever trouble sent her here cracked something in that girl, and broken girls are dangerous.”
I don’t laugh even though I disagree. Tess is unpredictable. She’s embarrassing at times, but that’s the worst of her. She’s a victim. I don’t know of what yet, but I’m sure of that much.
I toss another twenty into his hat. “Thanks.”
He nods his head at me and starts to play. It’s not a song I know, but my jazz repertoire is fairly lacking. The best I can do is recognize the song as one I’ve heard in the streets. Maybe that’s progress enough. I know it’s not one of the handful that are played constantly for tourists with as little jazz or blues knowledge as I have. My familiarity with the city, the music, and the streets is all coming together a little at a time. People say hello, nod at me, but all of it is the result of being here with Tess for several weeks.
She’s becoming the face of the city to me, the body of the lush woman that is New Orleans, and I’m figuring her out. I’ll walk these streets and trace the planes of her body, and turn it all into a bestseller.
Then everything will fall into place.
19
Juliana
Andrew has been absentee for several days now. I’d say he’s avoiding me, but it feels like more than that. I do my job, handling the preparation of an eighty-three-year-old man whose family reminds me a bit of the vultures that swoop down on road kill. Some people make me wish for the ability to go back in time and show a stranger the love that we all deserve.
The truth is that I think most of us could stand a little more love, a bit more hope, and a lot more peace in our lives. These are, also, the sorts of thoughts that come from too long alone with the dead.
Between the location of my work and Andrew’s absence, I am forced to admit that my complete lack of a social life is exceedingly apparent. There is, literally, no need to leave the house. So, I’ve been using it as an excuse to lose myself in my research.
I’m haunted by the Creeper’s victims. Every flat surface of my room is littered by growing stacks of files—unsorted and sorted cases, my years of notes, and newspaper clippings. Coffee cups are scattered throughout the organized chaos. The worst are the photographs slipping out of their manila folders. I absently tuck them back in every time I notice one. Seeing them without warning, even though I’ve seen them many times before, hurts in a visceral way.
When my research is interrupted by a call from my college roommate, Sharon, I’m excited in ways that might be atypical of a woman my age. A distraction is a welcome thing right now.
“Hey!”
“It’s her, Jules. The missing woman. I know where she is . . . or at least where she was.”
“Who?” I can’t assume. Just because my mind is on this case, I can’t expect it to be at the forefront of anyone else’s mind.
“The one you were looking for last year. Teresa. I saw the articles, too. Another body. Not her. She’s alive, Jules. Your missing woman. Alive.”
“Are you sure?” I’m only awake thanks to the mixed blessings of caffeine and willpower, my stress levels high enough that I float between insomnia and nightmares.
“It’s her, Jules. I looked up old pictures of her before I called.”
I close my eyes in something akin to relief.
So many dead women.
So many lives I can’t save.
I just want to make a difference in this world. I want to do something good, an act of strength against the tide of monsters out there. I know my family worries. Uncle Micky doesn’t comment beyond offers to cover my dark circles and none-too-subtle remarks on the absence of clean coffee mugs. We don’t discuss the fact that both of my parents have called. My mother suggested that therapy might be wise. My father asked if I’m still going to the range.
We all cope in our own ways. I need to try to stop the Carolina Creeper. I need to help these women.
I need to save myself.
Despite all of that, I can’t decide if the call from Sharon is a good thing.
“Jules? If it’s not her, it’s her twin,” she says, calling me away from my worries and weary thoughts. “The heiress.”
“She was an only child. No twin.”
Sharon’s voice softens as she adds, “I’ve seen her pictures often enough, Jules. You’re not exactly subtle in your obsession with these women. It’s her. Her pictures were sent in to the office. It’s her.”
Sharon is an intern at some New York literary agency. She’s wanted this job for as long as I knew her, but I think she hates it. It's nowhere near as glamorous as it looks on television.
“I thought about telling my bosses, but . . . if it is her, she needs someone who doesn’t want to exploit her.” I hear the pause as she flicks a lighter. She quit smoking at least a ye
ar ago.
I’m not sure what she’s withholding, but I know there’s more.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “Whatever it is, I’m sorry.”
I can hear the crackle of burning paper and tobacco through the phone. She’s somewhere quiet enough to speak privately—which means she’s violating several rules on smoking. New York is on the long list of cities where cigarette bans and restrictions are the norm now.
“I can’t tell you why they have a picture of her because of an NDA I signed.”
“She’s an author?” I try to imagine how the woman I’ve been thinking of as either dead or hostage to the Carolina Creeper could be living a secret life and writing books. Maybe she wasn’t connected to the case at all. Maybe we were wrong about her.
“No.” Sharon lets out a sound that’s laugh-like, but has no humor in it.
“But you’re sure it’s her?”
This doesn’t make any sense. NDA or not, I’m going to find out what Sharon knows.
“Tess. That’s this woman’s name, Jules.” Sharon inhales again. “Fuck. Do you know how hard it is to get into an agency like Wells Literary?”
“I’m sorry.”
I know what she’s about to do before it happens, but I’d bet we both knew what she’d do from the moment she saw the picture. She wouldn’t have called if she wasn’t going to tell me more than she should.
“Check your phone,” Sharon says. “That’s her. She’s in New Orleans. It’s her. I’ve spent enough time looking at this stuff with you. I know it’s her.” .”
“I won’t tell anyone that you told me,” I promise.
“It’ll come out. I can’t tell you why. That part, at least, I won’t tell you, but it will come out . . . and once Ms. Wells finds out I knew who Tess is and didn’t tell anyone, she’ll fire me.” Sharon’s lighter flicks again. “Christ, I hope it’s not even her, but Tess . . . this Tess at least . . . she’s in trouble.”
“I love you,” I tell her.
