CHAPTER ELEVEN

Determined Marie had a plan.

It can never be said that she didn’t love her little Aleta. She would do anything to put her rapist and murderer and monster away.

Anything.

It took a few weeks to get her courage up. She spent nights curled up in the corner of her room, shuddering and weeping. It didn’t seem right that she should seek comfort in her warm bed with her clean sheets. She needed to suffer as Aleta had suffered. Atone for what she did by sending her daughter out alone. She needed to descend beneath it all.

She visited her ex-husband one more time, to tell him of her plan.

“Will it work?” she asked him.

She stared at her hands, tiny brown things with neat cuticles. She had just cleaned and trimmed them, buffed and shined them, just in case. As pristine as pristine could be, just in case her plan worked.

“Marie, don’t,” Lyle said. He sounded worried. Genuine worry and concern. Marie nearly laughed. He hadn’t been concerned about her before, had he? Why did it matter now?

“This is too much to ask anybody to do. Especially you.”

“Why?” she asked. She had taken special care with her toes, too. They looked so fragile, so tiny and frail, polished in a soft pink. When had this happened? Where was her strength going? Why was only innocence shining through?

“What do you mean, why? Because you’re you. This isn’t you. You don’t just . . . you don’t do this.”

She looked at him, then. His gray eyes were clouded and sad. Worried. He wore storms in his eyebrows.

“You were fine when I was going to kill him.”

“That’s different. That’s vastly different.”

“I don’t see how.”

He fidgeted.

“That was only going to kill him. Maybe parts of you, but only small parts. Tiny little parts that would have also rejoiced in the bloodshed. Sure, Sweet Marie would have died, but Bloodthirsty Marie would have been born. And it would have been something . . . desirable. Something you wanted. Like putting your jaws to a bleeding throat. But this? This will kill all of you. It will kill your soul.”

“I don’t care about my soul. I want to know if it will work.”

“Don’t do it. Please don’t do it.”

If he carried storms in his eyes, she carried desolation in hers.

“Don’t you understand that I’m already dead?”

“Marie.”

“What else can be taken from me? You tell me that. What else can they take?”

Lyle squirmed on his chair. She knew he didn’t have an answer.

“So then help me. Please. Tell me what you think I should do to make sure this turns out like I need it to.”

He sounded sick when he spoke, his voice rusty and unwell, his worlds tilting and slurring like somebody so far drunk that they weren’t connected to earth anymore.

“From the way he reacted, I’d say it will work out exactly like you want it to. You just need to be the lamb to his wolf, that’s all. It should be easy.”

Her laughter hurt. It cut her throat and fingers like blades.

“A lamb in wolf’s clothing. A hunter in sheepskin.”

“Yes, Marie. Something like that.”

She sighed. It sounded like mist and relief and horror.

“Thank you,” she said. She picked up her purse. Stood up.

“I hope never to see you again,” she told him, and hung up her large plastic phone.