Pretty Broken Things

by Melissa Marr

  I stand, ignoring his outstretched hand, and brush myself off. “Henry could help you both into witness protection. You don’t have to—”

  “Tess isn’t an innocent, Jules. They wouldn’t let her go free, not if she spoke to the police, and I’d rather she and I both die than see her become a prisoner again.” He smiles. “I know you. You follow the rules. You won’t be talking about helping her once you realize the things she’s done.”

  He starts walking.

  “Wait.”

  Andrew looks back. “Come or stay. It’s your choice.”

  I picture Henry’s face. He’d likely be furious if he knew what I’m about to do, but I don’t want to ignore the best clue we have. The woman who has the answers to help us find and stop the Carolina Creeper is in reach, and she’s about to disappear.

  And Andrew? He knows far more than he’s admitted so far. He has information that he’s withheld. I’ll get it. Meet her. Suggest Witness Protection to her. It’s that or wait on Henry. My mind fills with the images of the dead women—and a small voice I don’t like to admit whispers that if I’d have been braver when I saw the signs that Darren was a threat to Sophie and Tommy, if anyone had been braver, my sister and nephew might be alive.

  I think about the people I couldn’t save, and I think about the women the Creeper hasn’t yet killed, and I follow Andrew.

  36

  Tess

  Returning to New Orleans after my pit stop in North Carolina has left me high on my own courage. I expected to feel relief, but I didn’t expect how proud I would be. I feel like I freed myself. I can live a life. I could even claim my inheritance.

  I texted Michael as I left the airport and we met at my favorite breakfast place: The Ruby Slipper. I came into their location over on Canal the first morning I was in New Orleans, and since then, it’s become part of my stabilizing routine. When I am at my worst, I go to one of their locations to eat.

  I’m home, at a beloved restaurant, and all is well. I was able to be Teresa for a good while. I hadn’t been able to be her for more than a hot minute since I left Reid. Neither Teresa nor Tessie handles life after Reid very well. We struggle. We remember, and the remembering isn’t good. Teresa wants to die because of the things we did, and Tessie wants to go home because it’s easier if Reid tells us what to do. Neither of those are okay, though, not if we want to survive.

  “You need to file a report, Tess.” Michael brings it up again on our first morning back in the Crescent City. He’s trying to create the lie that he is appalled. It’s what he should feel, and so he’s trying to do that.

  I don’t forget: he liked the feeling of overpowering me. Of hunting the lost lambs. I saw it.

  “Why would I go to them?” I don’t admit that I already have. That’s between me and my guilt.

  “Seriously?” Michael’s voice is horrified. “You know the identity”—he looks around—“of a killer.”

  “Who would kill me if he knew where I was. Do you think he wouldn’t come here?”

  Even now, Michael cannot understand. He thinks he does, thinks that writing down the stories I share will make the darkness make sense. People don’t understand, though, not unless you peel back their masks. Pain clarifies. Bleeding illuminates. I understood before I ran.

  Michael’s hands are too clean to understand. Even the best writer can’t say anything real until he has the right ink. That’s what he wants from me.

  “No police, Michael.” I smile at him, and it’s Tessie’s smile curving my lips. “Unless you want me to tell them things your agent wouldn’t like.”

  He stares at me until I take his hand in mine. My fingernails cut into the underside of his wrist, not enough to do anything other than twinge as I lead his hand to my thigh. Silently, I direct his grip to the edge of where I am still red and tender. “I am not a lamb, but I know exactly how to sound like one. I can be very convincing when I have to be.”

  He gapes at me.

  “There is nothing I wouldn’t do to survive. You need to understand that. Do you?”

  And I see that he’s still thinking like we are researching, like this is an exercise in storytelling. He nods, but if he understood, he’d be more fearful than he is. He’d look like Lucas did when he realized that I am always a little bit Tessie even though I try very hard to be Tess.

  “It’s self-defense. . . Let them know that you escaped.” He lowers his voice. “Tell them who he is.”

  The server, a new girl with tattoos that speak stories if you study them long enough, stops by the table. I stare at her. I don’t like new. Not here. Not when I’m trying to be okay again.

  One of my regular waiters comes bustling over before the new server reaches her second sentence. He stands beside her, angling so he can push her away from me if he needs to protect her.

  “Sorry, Tess.” He gestures at the tattooed girl. “She didn’t know you were particular and—”

  “I’m good.” I interrupt.

  He nods. I think his name is River or maybe Storm. Hell, it could be Puddle for all I truly know. My memory is filled with gaps, and even those gaps have a few holes.

  “No pills even,” I tell River/Puddle.

  He beams. “Good on you, cher.”

  Michael watches in silence. He’s never seen me without any of my walls in place. I thought that if he did he’d run. I see the truth now. This is what he wants, and if he’s going to play this game with me, it’s what I need to share.

  I look at the tattooed girl. “You can be my waitress, but we need a minute. Grab us coffee while we look at the menu. Black.”

  She leaves, and River/Puddle follows her. We both know he’s going to give her warnings about me, tell her not to touch me, strongly suggest approaching only when I can see her walking toward me. That’s part of what I like here. They are okay with customers who are particular.

  “It wasn’t Reid I hit,” I tell Michael when they’re gone. “Lucas was not the first person. You know that, Michael. You may not be asking me the questions, but you know it.”

  The tattooed waitress returns with our coffee. It’s chicory coffee, which means I am in New Orleans. Like music in the street, the river at the edge of the city, this is a sign that I am in my city. I cradle my cup in my hands and sip it.

  “Three Little Pigs omelet, right?” the server asks.

  “Usually, but I’m trying new things this week. Let’s do the Bananas Foster Pain Perdu.”

  Michael orders something, I don’t know what. I’m staring at the top tendril of a tattoo on her neck. It looks like a tentacle, maybe octopus but possibly a squid. I debate asking, but tattoos are personal and I’m not sure what the price of asking for her story would be.

  Once she’s gone, Michael leans partway over the table. “Are you saying I saw you . . . that I understand what you did, but that it wasn’t Reid on the floor?”

  “Yes.”

  He stares at me. “Jesus, Tess.”

  I drink my coffee in silence as he lets this new part of the truth settle into his ever-shifting vision of me. He's been pulling threads of stories out of me like he’s a weaver trying to steal all my pieces for his new tapestry. I let him. As much as I want to be a good wife, keep Reid’s secrets so he has no new reason to come after me, I also want the things Michael dangles in front of me like cream for an alley cat who has been living on vinegar.

  As I study him, I see the worry, the questions he’s having, the doubts. I straighten my shoulders and meet his gaze. “Stories for action, Michael. You want stories; you can buy them . . . but there will be no police.”

  I stand and walk out, knowing he can’t follow me because they haven’t even brought the food. I walk to the door and keep going.

  Michael calls out, but if we’re going to play this way, I have to walk out. Even now, I’m not willing to betray Reid by speaking to the police. There are a lot of things I’d be willing to do, things that Michael considers wrong or “debasing,” but I’ve done them.

>   I walk along Magazine Street, headed toward Canal and back to the ever-open bars of the Quarter. It’s early enough not to be bothered by the tourists. Sometimes, I like them, foolish men acting as if New Orleans is still the city that she was in the 1800s. We have the strange honor of having the nation’s first legal—or pseudo-legal—Red Light District. In a city that was populated by prisoners and adventurers, it’s no surprise that being a whore became big business here. Bourbon Street, a stretch of gaudy blocks of neon and nonsense, is the modern location of that past. No longer Gallatin Street, or Basin Street, but the girls still wiggle their asses and free the tourists from their money. I’ve done a turn or two on Bourbon, both in the legal and less legal ways of it.

  This morning, however, I simply want cheap drinks and silence for a moment.

  Being in my bed is an invitation to look into the darker parts of what Michael could be. He’s tiptoeing toward darkness, but whether he slides or runs, he’s still headed that way. Instead of being grateful to Reid for making this trip possible, Michael wants me to betray him. He’s asking me to invite police into my life. Nothing else would so clearly lead to my death—and once I sought that. I wanted death because it was the only freedom there was. Now, I have other things. I have a life in this city. If Michael pays attention, I’ll have a future with him.

  I’m in a bar with my second gin in hand already when Michael finds me.

  “You left me there,” he says as he comes to stand beside me.

  “There are rules, Michael. I don’t know how else to explain that. There are rules I can’t break, not for you, not for anyone.”

  “Because you’re afraid,” he supplies in barely a whisper. “He’s not here. You’re safe.”

  I laugh. Maybe it’s wrong of me, but I can’t help myself. I’m never going to be safe. One day Reid will find me. If I go to the police . . . he’ll find me faster. I’m not sure how, but he will.

  “I won’t go to the police,” I say in a level but loud voice.

  The bartender looks my way, not obviously, but I’ve spent a lot of nights in bars. The best bartenders notice everything, hear everything, and know when to pretend not to recall most of it.

  “You shouldn’t have followed me,” I add, sounding increasingly lamblike, not that Michael notices.

  “Seriously? I know where you live, Tess. We’re going to sort this out.”

  The bartender comes over, hearing things in Michael’s words that aren’t there.

  Michael barely acknowledges the bartender. “Vodka, rocks.”

  I meet the man’s eyes and smile. “I’m good. Thanks.”

  There’s a part of me that finds it sweet that Michael can’t even hear the subtext, doesn’t see that his words sound alarming. He’s so used to being fawned over these days that he forgets that people everywhere are listening. I never forget. Even when I’m falling down drunk, there are things I won’t say. Reid’s secrets are buried in a place that no amount of liquor or pills can reach.

  He’d be proud of me if he knew.

  Well, after he hurt me enough to make sure I wasn’t lying. Pain is the only way to know for sure if you could trust people. If you hurt them enough, if you make them think that they might die, if you let yourself be willing to kill them, they’ll tell you the whole truth. If Reid found me, he’d have to ask if I kept his secrets.

  I didn’t want to have that conversation.

  “Did you kill someone there? Is that why you’re afraid? Just don’t tell them that part.” Michael keeps his voice low after the bartender walks away.

  “You’re missing the point.” I swirl the ice in my glass.

  I keep my silence until after the bartender brings Michael’s drink. I nod at the man as he asks again if I’m okay. It’s cute that he worries—or maybe he sees that same spark in Michael that excites me.

  “She stopped hurting because of me,” I explain.

  “She was a person.”

  “So am I.” I poke my finger into my drink, stir it around, and then suck the gin off my skin.

  Michael watches, as he should.

  “I hated her,” I say conversationally. “Not her specifically, but all of them.”

  Silently, Michael drinks, listening, watching, trying to understand. He can’t. He cannot imagine what it’s like to hurt so much to want to die. I envied them. I hated them because they got to be free after only a few days.

  I toss the rest of my drink back. “Does it matter? They’re dead. They all died.”

  When Michael finally speaks, he says only, “Why not you?”

  That’s the question I used to ask myself. It took me years to answer it. There’s no way for me to explain it easily right now, not yet. Michael is still trying to understand why he wants these answers.

  “I killed, not all of them, but sometimes I killed them. They stopped crying, and it . . . I can’t explain it. I just wanted them to be done, to leave. I wanted it to stop.”

  Michael stares at me.

  “I didn’t think he’d kill me, not really. For two years, I thought I’d find a way to make him happy. That he’d get better, that I’d be enough. He said if I was good he’d stop hurting them. I survived so much, so he wouldn’t catch another lamb. It never worked. He got worse. He hurt me more and more. Did things. Made me do things. I wanted to die—and he wouldn’t let me. He was going to kill me sooner or later. Maybe an accident. But first . . . first he would keep hurting me.” I shake my head. It’s hard to understand; I know that. “He hurt them worse than he hurt me, and when I wasn’t good enough he made me watch all the ways he hurt them. If I cried or looked away or looked at the wrong thing, if I wasn’t good enough, he hurt them more. I hated them. They all got to stop hurting. I didn’t. I healed. Then he did it all again.”

  Michael keeps staring at me. He doesn’t take out his pen. He doesn’t ask questions. He listens, and I know he’s horrified.

  Teresa was too.

  I look at Michael, catch his gaze, and will him to understand. “The memory you saw? I killed a girl because it was that or we both died. Reid watched, and I killed her.”

  Michael looks at me, opens his mouth, and closes it without saying a word.

  “You watched me kill. That’s what you saw me remember. I killed her in front of him.” I toss back my drink, and take his hand in mine. “Let’s go.”

  He stands.

  “They all died. When Reid picked them, they would die. I’m alive, Michael. You’re alive.” I try to sound like it doesn’t haunt me. It does, though. I wake screaming. I tried to save them—first by being strong enough and then by ending their suffering. I was trapped in ways no one will ever understand. Sometimes I feel guilty for surviving, for wanting to survive, for wanting a life. Maybe that, at the end of it all, is why I want Michael. When he writes his book, Reid will know I talked. He’ll come at me then, and one of us will die. Maybe we’ll both die for our sins.

  I’m ready to leave and Michael is unmoving. “Michael?”

  Michael still doesn’t move. “How many?”

  There’s no way I can answer that. I used to try to remember them all. I can’t. They fade and roll into a single image. Their faces blend into people after I left Reid, faces of men and women I spoke to when I shouldn't, strangers and the lovers. I have a lot of blood on my hands.

  “I’m alive, Michael,” I say again. “Come with me.”

  Finally, he lets me lead him out of the bar, and we drown ourselves in drink. The more of my secrets he knows, the more he suffers. If Reid were here, Michael wouldn’t be strong enough to endure. He’s lucky my husband didn’t target men. If our lives had been reversed, Michael would’ve died years before I reached the point of fleeing.

  37

  A Girl with No Past

  When I decided to leave Edward, I was terrified. There was no way around it, but every fear I’d had was writhing under my skin. I considered taking a knife to my arms to let my fears bleed out.

  Everything had changed. Noth
ing I could do appeased Edward since I’d started helping him. I flinched too much. I didn’t smile right. My tears fell too often.

  I wanted to die. They were luckier. They were free . . . and I was never going to be free. Several years had passed. I was still his. I started out a girlfriend, a wife, and I’d been his victim for years. I had so many scars that I couldn’t remember all of the reasons. I couldn’t remember all of the things I’d survived or seen or done.

  The others he brought here were only here a few days or maybe weeks. I’d endured his fists and knives and . . . other pains . . . for years. Not even the drugs he gave me to make me sleep or hurt less were enough.

  I couldn’t continue to live like this, and he refused to let me die. The others got to die. They got to be free. Sometimes, I set them free. And I envied the dead.

  After the only time I tried to kill myself, he was in the sort of rage I didn’t think would end. Several women died. One every few days. It was only the beginning of my punishment.

  I needed to try to escape. Even if he caught me and finally killed me. That, at least, was freedom.

  “Do you like me?” I asked Buddy as he drove me home from the store one night.

  He drove me places more and more since Thanksgiving the year before. I think Edward began to trust him when he didn’t act different after raping me. I trusted him too, but because I saw what Edward missed: Buddy liked me. He liked me more than anyone had for a very long time—and that was how I could get out of Edward’s house.

  Buddy glanced over at me. “Sure, Tess.”

  “But really, do you like me?”

  “What do you mean?” He refused to look away from the wheel this time. That alone told me to keep going.

  “If I were a good woman for you, a really good woman, would you help me?”

  Without a word, Buddy pulled his truck to the side of the road, cut off the engine, and turned to stare at me. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m afraid of him.”