CHAPTER TWELVE

She used a soft lipstick that added bare color and shine. It didn’t add authority or boldness or blatant sexuality. It didn’t turn her into any sort of femme fatale. She didn’t need that.

The Wolf wouldn’t want that.

Her stomach ached in ways that reminded her of Aleta in her womb, of the hollowness after she was birthed, of the barrenness of her soul now that she was dead.

She felt something strange in her eyes. Not tears. No, a glitter. Something feral and dangerous. Her teeth pulled back from her lips in a snarl until she caught herself and coughed demurely. She pulled her sunglasses over her eyes to hide the predator’s shine.

She sat on the bench, trying to look fresh and plump and swollen with youth and soft, sensual things. Something to be crushed. Scented with blood and bone meal.

“You’re back,” he said as he took his seat beside her.

That voice. She’d never forget it. It spoke to her at night. It called her darling and lover and Aleta and whore. It whispered and screamed the most beautiful and obscene of things.

Once it told her where she could find the rest of her daughter.

“In gullets,” it had said. “Building the bones of strong animals. Feeding the universe. Decaying with the leaves.”

“That’s lovely,” she had told the voice in her dream, and then it wrapped around her neck like a lover’s hands and tried to strangle her.

“I’m back,” she answered him now.

“You ran off so quickly before that I wasn’t sure I would see you again.”

Casual. Nonchalant. Simply a murderer unknowingly talking to his victim’s mother, after all. A warm sunny day in the poor district of the city.

Marie wished that she had brought something to feed the pigeons and sparrows. Snacks. Small pieces of bread. Bits of The Wolf’s eyeballs when she was finished with him. This thought warmed her and her lips curved up.

“Ah, you are happy,” he said, and she heard the pleasure behind his words. Pleased to see him? Yes, in a way.

“Yes, I suppose I am. I was hoping you would be here, if I may be so bold.”

Truth has a way of lacing your words. Marie let the truth speak for her, louder and with delicate, venomous tendrils that wove around her words in the most delicious of ways.

He heard that truth, heard the gravity of it. It filled him. She watched him grow and puff and bow under the possibilities of her need.

“Hoping I would be here, my little bird?”

Her stomach wrenched again.

“Yes.”

She thought of Aleta’s eyes, which could be so warm and so terrified that it was like her body was inhabited by two different people. Aleta’s red converse, so worn on the bottoms but so cherished. She thought of her hugs, her dimples, her tears, her anger. Her shouting, her begging, her whispering, “I love you, Mom,” her promising to kill herself one day, her lovely, shy singing in the shower.

Her daughter. Her life.

Her killer.

“Yes. I was hoping to see you.” She turned to him fully and pushed her sunglasses up on her forehead. There was no longer a shield. She was nose to nose with him, so close that she could lick his mouth, bite his bottom lip off.

She raised her chin just a bit, and when she spoke, his eyes widened and then narrowed at her breath across his lips.

“Take me home. Just once. But make it good.”

“You want this?”

His eyebrows were up, his pupils widening in arousal. She could see his confusion, his wariness, but she could smell the lust on him.

No more little girls, she thought. No more Aletas.

She let him drink in the truth of her words.

“I want this so much that I can’t even tell you,” she said.

He watched her lips move. Heard her truth.

He stood up and took her hand, squeezing it far too hard.

“Come on,” he said, and pulled her roughly down the sidewalk.

She slid her sunglasses back over her eyes and followed.