“Something’s still bothering me,” I say as they’re getting ready to leave.”Why go through all the trouble?” I gesture vaguely at the walls. “Why paint everything in blood like you’re decorating for a satanic welcome party if you’re just gonna scrub it all off later? Feels kinda... inefficient.”
I don’t mean to relate to them. Grim Reaper’s honor, I don’t. But since I’m apparently stuck with these unhinged murder connoisseurs, I might as well try to understand how their twisted little minds work.
Foxface snorts, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Oh, Little Grim, you assume we kill just for the fun of it. Like we're mindless butchers with a hobby.” He tilts his head, looking at me like I'm some naive child, asking why the sky is blue. “But there's always a reason.”
“Uh-huh. Well, I don’t see it,” I deadpan.
Nathaniel, who’s been quiet this whole time, finally speaks up. “The man you saw on that table wasn’t just some random target for the big bad wolves you probably think we are.”
I blink at him. “Okay? And?”
“He was a killer, Skye,” he says.
My mouth falls open. Then I snap it shut before anything dumb escapes, because I genuinely don’t know what shocks me more: the fact that they just admitted tomurderingamurderer, or the fact that this guy somehow knows myname.
He dug up my grave. He took my bones. But nowhere under the willow tree was there a name, a date, or even a half-assed epitaph from my ex-husband. No indication that I had ever been laid to rest there.
So how the hell does he know my name?
I swallow down the questions clawing at my throat, narrow my eyes, and press my lips into a flat, unimpressed line.
“Oh, so this is what our Little Grim is called?” Foxface cocks a brow. “I never would’ve guessed.”
“As you shouldn't,” I deadpan. “But I guessNathanielhere pulled it out of my bones like some kind of unhinged necromancer playing Ouija with my femur.”
Foxface… is he laughing? Yes. Yes, he is.
Nathaniel tilts his head, unbothered. “I’d actually like us to work together on a more... personal level. Unlike Cassian, I see you as a person.” He tells me, voice smooth and infuriatingly calm.
My spine stiffens. My stomach does something weird and tight that I refuse to acknowledge. There’s nothing cooperative about this situation, and absolutely nothing should be personal between me and these psychopaths.
But, if Ihadto choose, I guess I’d rather be treated like a person than a haunted paperweight.
“Great,” I mutter. “That works. For now. But you still need to tell me how you know my name.”
“I will,” he promises. “But later. Right now, we have a job to do.”
I glance at the garbage bags in the corner. Right. Considering the circumstances, I figure by “job,” he means “disposing of evidence in a way that won’t get them all on an FBI watchlist.”
Foxface sighs, stretching his arms behind his head. “Come, little Skye,” he drawls. “Let's become ghosts.”
I stare at him. He stares at me. I stare harder. He raises an eyebrow.
“Wow,” I deadpan. “That was clever. Truly. Shakespeare is weeping in his grave.”
He just grins.
I hover close as he grabs the last of the trash bags, and we all make our way out of the basement of this forgotten warehouse. Nathaniel opens the door, and the three of them step outside into the alley. A pickup truck sits parked as close to the building as possible, looking exactly like the kind of vehicle you’d use totransport either a body or an extremely questionable Craigslist purchase.
Cassian tosses the bags into the truck bed while Nathaniel slides into the passenger seat. Foxface swings into the cab after him, then yanks open the door and motions for me to climb in.
“You want me to… get into the car with you?” I ask, dumbfounded. He looks at me like it's obvious, but it's not. Not really.
A car is a moving object. I can walk just fine on solid ground—most of the time—but this? This is a physics nightmare waiting to happen. If I mess up, I’ll phase straight through the floor while they drive off and end up stranded on the pavement like an abandoned couch.
It’s happened before.
Once, I tried to sit in a moving subway car. I got distracted for a second, lost my grip on reality, and whoosh—straight through the floor. Do you know what it's like to be stuck underground while the world blurs past you like a fast-forwarded horror movie? It sucks.
