"I can’t have you, Evie, don’t you understand?" he snarls, angry, but not at me.
"No." I don’t. My fingers dig into his wrist, needing to hold tight to whatever part I can reach.
Shadow closes his eyes, breathing in deeply. "I must go. They will be coming for me."
My body goes cold as I step back, releasing him from my grasp. The pinch on my insides hurts as much as it ever has.
The rejection, the denial. He keeps taking everything from me, while giving me only glimpses of his desire, never fully surrendering.
But he’ll be back. He always comes back.
Though he keeps bringing me to orgasm, I somehow feel used. Or like he’s placating me.
Give the crazy girl an orgasm to shut her up so she’ll leave me alone.
But it only brings me to the edge of hysteria of my need.
Shadow disappears under my bed, dragging the corpses of my neighbors with him.
Despite him leaving me yet again, I am different now.
My humanity has burned away and I’m new. Different. Monstrous.
Soon enough he’ll see we are the same, and we are inevitable.
2 Days Later
The insistent knocking on my door jolts me from my thoughts of my now empty food cabinet as I clean up from breakfast. Each thud against the wood feels like a drumbeat, echoing the hammering in my chest.
I open the door to find two police officers, their faces stern masks of authority. "Evangeline Smith?" one of them asks.
"Yes," I reply, my voice a thread of sound in the heavy air.
"Do you know why we are here?"
My heart thuds painfully against my ribs.
They know about Elijah and Caroline.
It’s been two days, but the police somehow found out that they are dead and I’m the reason why.
My brain races hotly, trying to figure out how they know. Shadow took their bodies with him. Did someone hear something?
After all, the reason Elijah and Caroline snapped and came for me was because I was too loud. It’s not hard to believe someone else in the complex had come to the door to tell me to shut the fuck up before hearing the massacre inside and backing away to call the police.
But then why would it take so many days for the cops to come?
"We need you to come with us for questioning regarding the incident at the restaurant with Mr. Miguel Acevedo," the officer states, his hand resting on the handcuffs at his belt—a silent threat of what's to come.
The bile that had been creeping up my throat calms back down, only to be replaced with the heavy weighted rocks of guilt whenever I think of Miguel lying in that hospital bed.
The world beyond my apartment has been creeping closer, a tightening noose of suspicion and fear, and now it seems it has finally arrived on my doorstep.
My heart plummets.
The stale air of the precinct clings to me like a second skin, cold and unyielding. I sit at an interrogation table for the third time in my life, a harsh light overhead casting stark shadows across the room. The walls seem to close in with every passing second, the clock on the wall ticking away.
Detective Larson sits across from me, his expression a mix of professional skepticism and reluctant duty. "Ms. Smith," he begins, folding his hands on the table, "do you understand why you're here?"
