“Answer me” I whisper.Then the floor drops out—full static, a swarm in my skull.
“Cassius?”I whisper.
No response.
“Cassius?”
Still nothing.
I reach into the tote bag beside me and double-tap the button on the communicator.Nothing but static.The ghosts tilt toward me, alert.Something in me swivels from trained to feral.
“Cassius, if you can hear me, I think something’s wrong with the signal.I’m going to come find you.”
No response.
I’m not supposed to leave her, but something in me shifts.Instinct or dread, I don’t know.I move quickly, barefoot, drying off as I go, heart pounding louder with every step toward the suite where he’s working.The ghost pace me.I don’t even look back to see if she ever came out of the bathroom.Red-blazer keeps pressure with two fingers on my wrist, counting my pulse.Alley man points left.I turn left.
The door is cracked.The carpet changes underfoot from plush to practical.My soles squeak.My mouth tastes like pennies.
Blood hits me first.Not the smell.The sound.The wet, slippery scrape of a blade pulling through muscle.
I push the door the rest of the way open.Cassius is crowded over a man.Or what’s left of him.His face is slick with sweat, jaw tight, shirt soaked in blood.His knife in one hand, the other holding the man’s head steady while he, oh God, scoops out the second eyeball.
L I N D Y /// G I R Lis lacquered in someone else’s life.The same knuckles that traced between my thighs are slick, red threading the letters like he wrote my name in blood.
I can’t breathe.
Cassius looks up, startled.“Lindy?—”
I take a step back.
He drops the eye.It hits the tile with a wet click I’ll probably never stop hearing in my sleep.
He rises slow, hands open like he’s approaching a wounded animal.“You weren’t supposed to see this.”
“I know.”The ghosts flatten back against the wall.
“It’s not who I am with you.”
But itiswho he is.Those are his hands.My skin knows them.My bones do, too.The mind can lie; the body doesn’t.I know why we came here.I know this was the plan the whole time.I know that I helped give him the window for this to happen.But staring at a man’s eyeball on the floor beneath his disfigured face makes what I helped him do way to real.
I can’t be in this room.“I need—” I swipe at my face, not realizing I’m crying until my hand comes away wet.“I need air.”I almost reach for him, automatic, then catch the shine on his palm and yank my hand back.
He doesn’t stop me.Doesn’t follow.He can’t, even if he wanted to.He’s covered in blood.I count the steps to the end of the hall, odd only.Thirty-five.Thirty-seven.Thirty-nine.I press my palms to the cold glass of the emergency stairwell and breathe until the numbers stop trying to eat me.
I’m not leaving him, just this room.I need to remind myself why I’m staying.I don’t hate him.I don’t even blame him.But I can’t unsee it.Can’t unhear the noise that came from that man’s eyeball hitting the floor or the look on Cassius’s face.
I need to breathe.To cry without him watching.To remember who I am when I’m not trying to be brave and strong.The ghosts go very still.The world does, too.And in the held breath between our heartbeats, I remember why I’m staying.
twenty-six
Uncle Leven was therethe first time I cut a man’s eyes out.
I threw up all over his shoes.He grabbed a fistful of my hair and shoved my face so close, eyeball gunk smeared across my lips.
“You are no longer allowed to be weak,” he told me.Hell of a fifteenth birthday.Today, I don’t flinch.I don’t even blink.
He’s still breathing, barely.His lips tremble around something wet and gurgling.His hands twitch against the zip ties.One of them is broken.Not the tie—the hand.Crushed bone, snapped tendon.His body jerks trying to decide whether to keep living or let go.
