by Melissa Marr
I have to show him.
By the time I’ve poured my coffee and taken the first sip, Michael has followed me into his kitchen.
“I know what you’re doing, how you’re taking my words, my life, and making it a book.”
Michael says nothing.
“You want to understand her . . . me.” I drink my coffee and let him stand there in confusion. “You want to understand how I allowed someone to use me. Why I let him. Why I let you. You’re acting like you’re him, but you’re not writing about him, are you? You need to understand me.”
I drink the rest of my coffee as he stands there waiting for me to explain. He’s good at this too, at being told what to do. If I were a different sort of woman, I think I’d be enjoying this.
“Today, you’ll do whatever I ask of you,” I explain to Michael. “If you don’t, I’ll destroy you. I have proof, you know, of you hitting me. I like to keep videos.”
Michael tenses. “Videos?”
“The other night, when you fucked me until I was sobbing and begging you not to hurt me.” I wash my cup carefully. “I kept it.”
“You told me to do that. You said that you’d ask me to stop, but I wasn’t to listen. You told me—”
“International bestseller and rapist. It sounds so much different when you add the last word, don’t you think?”
He stalks toward me. “How . . . why would you . . .”
“If you’re a good boy, no one has to ever know. If not . . .”
Michael isn’t Reid. He takes several breaths. “What do you want me to do?”
I’m disappointed, but I’ll help him write a better book. He’s coming to understand Reid, but he still doesn’t know what it feels like to be me. I’m going to show him.
“Knees.”
He stares at me, and I open the kitchen drawer. There are a few knives there. Nothing terribly exotic, but a couple that are decent sized. I pull one out and place it on the counter with a quiet clatter.
“Knees,” I repeat.
When he obeys, I remove my clothes and lift one leg so my foot is on the edge of the counter. “Gently, as if I matter to you.”
“You do.”
I lift the knife and use it to direct him.
Once he’s there, doing as he has never done so very thoroughly, I lower the knife so the edge is resting against his neck. It’s not somewhere that would truly hurt him even if I slipped, but it’s still enough to make him falter.
“Do you trust me?” I ask again.
He starts to pull back to answer, and I push the knife down until it cuts his skin. He can pull away in order to answer me, but moving means bleeding.
“I didn’t say you could stop, Michael. I should be enjoying this. If you were good enough, I would be.”
There’s a right answer. There’s always a right answer. Reid taught me that all tests must have the possibility of right answers. It’s no use if you set someone up to fail. They can’t learn, can’t improve.
Michael’s attentions increase until I buck into his face.
The knife cuts him again as my hand presses down, and he whimpers.
“Shhh, you’re a good boy, Michael,” I reassure him.
His hands slide up, fingers entering me. He knows my body, knows I like it when he’s rough with my soft places.
“No. Mouth only.” I hate that I have to stop him, but he’ll fail the test if I don’t.
Blood trickles slowly from the cuts on his neck, and I trace them with my finger tips. Once the blood coats them, I slide them down, tracing my own skin.
He looks up, cutting himself further. He’s a good student.
Finally, he passes the test. He holds me tight enough that I can’t move, can’t cut him further as I shake and thrash.
When the pleasure passes, I pull the knife away. “Do you still trust me?”
He starts to stand. “That’s the lesson? To get cut? I don’t—”
I shake my head. “I can email the video or we can do this.”
He stares at me, still missing the point despite his body’s reaction.
“You like it, Michael.” I stare pointedly at the proof. “You like it because you trust me. You know that I won’t do anything so awful that you can’t deal with it because you trust me.”
“Tess . . .”
“It’s your choice. No one is making you do these things.” I dig my fingers into the cut on his shoulder, drawing fresh blood. “Every minute of today is one you are choosing to participate in.”
He glares at me. “Not entirely. You are blackmailing me.”
“You’re letting me.” I fold my arms over my chest. “You could give me your notebooks, and I’ll leave now . . .”
Michael stands. For a moment, I think he’s going to hit me or maybe even say he’ll let the story go. But he says, “I have limits to what I’ll do.”
I laugh. Everyone thinks they have limits until they cross them. I had limits. I had a lot of limits, and Reid took them all away.
“Come on. Come to my house. I need to pick some things up before we go out.”
40
Juliana
I can’t do it. Even when I know it means that there’s a growing chance that it will mean that Reid will torture me, I can’t.
He puts his hand over mine and forces me to press the tip of the knife into Andrew’s belly.
“It’s okay, Jules.” Andrew holds my gaze. “I love you. It’s okay.”
Reid lets out a sound of frustration and releases my hand. He steps back and stomps around the living room. He wants me to be someone I can’t even pretend to be.
I’m sitting beside Andrew on the ugly sofa. The knife is still in my hand. Without Reid holding it, my arm is limp. The knife rests on Andrew’s legs.
“You need to do what he says,” Andrew tells me quietly. “If you don’t, he’ll hurt you. Just go along with him. It’s the only chance.”
“I can’t kill you.”
“But you can hurt me, Jules.” He stares at me. “You’re here because of me. He’s not lying about me. I knew about the women. I knew what he did and—”
“Don’t.”
“Think about that, and it will help you do what he says. Whatever you do. I forgive you.” He leans toward me like he’s going to kiss me.
I lean away.
Reid laughs.
I hadn’t heard him come back, but he’s there watching us and laughing.
“Tell her about Tessie. Have you told her? Does she know?” Reid strokes my hair. “Do you, Juliana?”
Andrew stares at me intently, and I know he wants me to play along. I’m not sure he’s right, but this fiend is his brother. He obviously knows him better than I do.
“That he slept with Teresa?”
“Tessie.”
I nod.
“Do you think he pretended you were her when he fucked you?”
I look at Andrew, who is still staring at me as if willing words into my mind. I force myself to say, “Maybe.”
I’m still staring at Andrew when Reid adds, “I pretended some of my pretty things were you, too, Juliana.”
Against my will, my attention snaps to him.
“Either you cut him or you can become one of my pretty things.” Reid leans in and kisses the top of my head. “Shall I pretend you’re my wife? Shall I pretend to be Andrew the day he raped my wife? She fought him good.”
Whatever mess is in his head, Reid has twisted me and Teresa and the rest of his victims into a jumble. Serial killers often enact scenarios; they have rituals. I do not want to be any part of his.
“How . . . how do you want me to cut him?”
My hand shakes, but I lift the knife.
And then I do exactly what he says. Over and over.
I don’t know whether it’s an hour or ten hours. It feels like time is ticking by so slowly that this will never end. I’m sitting on Andrew’s lap, cutting his skin in strips.
“You can end it at any time. His throat?
His balls? What do you want to slice?”
“Nothing.” I’m shaking.
“It’s no different than an autopsy, Juliana. Steady cuts.”
“No.”
“It’s okay.” Andrew sounds like he’s choking on the sounds he’s trying not to make. “Do what he says, Jules. I love you. I forgive you.”
“I can’t. I can’t.”
Suddenly, Reid sighs. He leans forward, slices across Andrew’s throat, and says, “There.”
The blood splashes me. Andrew’s blood. I feel him die, smell it, see it. The man who has been my lover, who comforted me time and again, is dead.
I can’t move.
Reid pulls me up and leads me toward the bathroom. He points at the tub. “In.”
“Please . . .”
“In the tub, Juliana.”
“I did what you said.”
He lifts me. I’m scrambling to get out of his arms as soon as he touches me, so when he drops me in the tub, I flail. My head thunks against it. I’m in a clawfoot tub, covered in Andrew’s blood.
I’m going to die.
Like they died. Like my nightmares.
I try to get out. Push to my feet and throw myself forward. I’m not even clear of the tub before he has me back in it.
The water comes on, freezing cold and pouring from the shower head attachment. I shriek.
“Be a good girl.” Reid hits me along the shoulder with the shower attachment.
When I cry out, he aims the water at my face while he holds my head steady with a handful of my hair. I can’t make a sound because of gagging.
“Be a good girl, Juliana, and I won’t have to hurt you. Do you understand?” He loosens his hold just enough that I can nod.
“Hold out your leg. Over the edge of the tub.”
“Please, I don’t—”
The water hits my face again. I obey. I think of the things I know his victims endured, and I don’t think I can survive as long as some of them obviously did.
Reid turns off the water.
I’m soaked, shivering, still bloody from Andrew’s murder, bleeding from where Reid hit me, and terrified.
Reid lifts a restraint attached to a chain and fastens it to one leg. Then he stands and looks down at me. “Be a good girl, and I will take care of you. My brother took my wife, so once I deal with her, you can be my new wife.”
“I won’t ever—” My words die as Reid’s hand covers my mouth.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Juliana. I’ve been lonely. None of them understood me. Tess did. You do.” His hand stays over my mouth. “I’ve read everything you’ve said about me. You have questions, and I can answer them. I’ll teach you to be a good wife. Better than Tess.”
His other hand caresses my breast, my stomach. His fingers slide down and open the button of my jeans.
I try to squirm away. There is nowhere to go inside a tub. There is no way to get away from him.
“I won’t hurt you if you’re good.”
I pull my knee up to try to kick him. I can’t move the other leg because of the restraint, but I can move one. Maybe it’s stupid. I don’t know. All I can say for sure is that in that moment, I can’t just lie there and let him touch me.
Reid doesn’t react beyond smiling.
“I don’t mind hurting you if you like it. Some girls do. Tess did eventually.”
Then he stands. He gets a shirt and tears it. “I don’t have any coke. Usually that helps." He ties the shirt over my mouth so tightly that I can’t speak. “For now, this will have to be over your mouth.”
I stare at him.
"Later, after I handle Tess, I’ll go find some coke. It'll help. Once you get high, you'll enjoy our time together more. Once I take it away, you'll do anything to get a taste of it. I know how to train you to be good. I learned when I was a kid. That's what my mother did for me. She taught me to be a good boy.”
He wraps a hand around my throat. The other hand trails over my cheek, my chest, my stomach, and stops between my legs. He stares down at me.
"The pretty things were distractions." He sighs. "I had a wife out there somewhere. I couldn't marry again until she dies, but after today, I'll be a widower."
I choke on my sob and close my eyes.
"You'll learn to be a good wife, and I won't make the mistakes I did with Tessie." His voice catches. "I can't. My son is dead. I need a child, Juliana. And a wife to give me that child."
I open my eyes at that.
He confirms that Andrew was actually his son. Then he leaves me there, chained and gagged in a tub, and closes the door behind him.
41
Tess
Andrew is dead on my sofa. That’s the first thing I notice when I walk into the house, with Michael is behind me. A part of me thinks that I should tell him to go, but the rest of me knows that it’ll go worse for me if he does. Michael is about to discover how far I will go to survive.
I step to the side and reach back to lock the door behind us. “Reid’s here.”
“Reid? Your—”
“Husband,” Reid cuts in as he comes out of my bathroom. He stares at me, and for a moment, it’s not rage I see. He looks at me like he’s been too long without sight, like I’m something he’s coveted and been denied.
I can’t speak. I’d like to pretend it’s only fear stopping my words, and underneath there is a sea of terror churning. It's more than that, though. He trained me to never disappoint him, to please him, to feel guilt at my flaws. He taught me to love him more than I loved anything, anyone.
He trained me to belong to him.
But the fear rises up through the rest. I don’t think I could look upon him and not feel fear. Reid taught me the depths of that word in a way I couldn’t comprehend before I became his. I still wake screaming because of him. I turn on lights because of him. He is the thing that haunts me. I was essential to him, the air he needed, and I see it now in the way he studies me.
Maybe I’m broken in the ways people think. Maybe I’m weak after all.
“I missed you.”
He looks weary in a way he didn’t used to be. Tiny lines stretch from the corners of his eyes. Strands of grey hair twine into the darker pieces. Reid has aged since I left. He’s still fit. I can tell that even though he’s covered with a wet, bloodied shirt. A hunting knife is in his hand. It’s not one I remember, but it’s similar.
“Do you want me to wash that before the blood sets in?”
Michael reaches out to grab me, to pull me away or stop me from going to my husband. I’m not sure.
I look back at him. “I’m a good wife.”
Reid laughs. “You’re a whore. If you were a wife you wouldn’t have been hiding in this cesspool.”
“New Orleans is not a cesspool.”
“You’re still a whore.” Reid points the tip of the knife at me for emphasis.
I’ve never claimed to be an angel, even before I started at the Red Light, I had a list of sins attached to my soul. Now, there were a few more. I wasn’t about to waste my energy arguing over it. There are only a few ways things could go from here. My husband has found me; worse still, he’s found me with another man. My best hope is that he decides I’m too useless to drag home. The only other future that can exist is one in which he kills me.
Once, before the night of the Bad Thing, I thought I was special; I thought that, despite Reid’s flaws, he loved me in a way that kept me safe from dying. I know better now. I left him to stay alive, not because of the things he did to other people, not even because of the things he made me do. I left because I realized that if I stayed one of us had to die. That hasn’t changed.
“Who’s he?” Reid gestures with the knife.
“A writer.” I shrug. I care about Michael, but he’ll die faster if Reid doesn’t realize that.
“Are you fucking him?”
I nod.
Reid’s punch isn’t unexpected.
“Tess!” He come up behind me, hand reached out t
o my arms as if he wants to comfort me.
I had braced for the punch. That doesn’t mean the taste of blood is pleasant. I ignore Michael and tell Reid, “I don’t like you hitting my face.”
He scoffs, but then he narrows his gaze and peers at me like he can see inside me. "Did you know that someone was in our house? That my things were searched, that the woman I left there was taken away."
"I know."
"Was it you?"
I nod. I see no need to lie. “I stopped off there to kill you.”
Michael, behind me, makes a horrible noise. I don’t think he could ever imagine the story he’s a part of now. The book he could write if he survives would be incredible. He won’t survive, though. For a heartbeat, the sorrow of his death washes over me. I glance behind me and tell him, “I am sorry, Michael.”
He stares at me.
“You tell him you’re sorry?” Reid’s hand is on my forearm now, bruising me. The familiarity of it is enough to weaken my knees. “Who the fuck is he that you tell him you’re sorry?”
“He’s a novelist. I’ve been telling him about us.”
Reid stares at Michael, assessing him the way he weighs and measures everyone.
“I would write your story however you wanted.” Michael isn’t begging, but there is an edge of weakness in it that Reid undoubtedly hears.
I certainly hear it.
“Sit.” Again, Reid motions with the knife like it’s an extension of his hand.
Michael frowns.
“If you’re going to act like a bitch, you might as well take orders like one.” Reid points again to the sofa where Buddy’s body lists to the side. “Sit.”
Michael obeys.
A noise from the bathroom, a familiar clanging of chain on metal, rings out. Reid looks at me and smiles. “She looks like you, Tessie.” He points to Andrew. “His girlfriend.”
“I’m surprised it took this long for you to kill him.”
““Do you think my brother thought about you when he fucked her? I think of you. I stab them and pretend it’s you. I imagine that each of those pretty things is my wife. My loyal wife. Fucking my brother. Abandoning me. Should I do that to pretty little Juliana?”
