I check on Chloe one more time, tucking the blanket tightly around her shoulders. Sniff the air to get a sense of what a contained fire is supposed to smell like.
I leave through the front door, not the back, so I don’t risk waking her. When I pull the door open, a foot of snow is piled up in the doorway, and for a moment, all I can do is stand there, letting what little warm air is in here out. The last time I saw this place was the night of the killing moon, and now it’s transformed into something beautiful and completely unrecognizable. An unmoving, alien landscape carved out of ice.
I plunge into the snow, dragging the door shut behind me. The cold damp immediately soaks through the jeans, but I have my wits about me now, and I’m prepared for the burn of the cold. I also have a mission.
I trudge through the calf-high snow, blinking at the glittering expanse. The air is very still and very cold, and although it’s nighttime, everything is far brighter than I’m used to. A nearlyfull moon hangs overhead, and the snow reflects its shivery light, bathing everything in silver.
Not a killing moon, though. Not even close.
I make my way to Chloe’s neighbors, my first victims from that night. I had been in a blood haze when I rowed across the lake, and their pier was where I landed. Chloe’s house had felt dark to me. Empty. But this one, it was full of life I was meant to snuff out.
There’s no life here now.
I break the door down. Inside is empty and echoing, not a single piece of furniture in sight. I do a half-hearted search but don’t want to waste my time, so I move on. Not to Oliver’s house, but to the house on the other side of this one, which has a stale whiff of humans about it.
This onedoeshave furniture, old and mismatched and covered in a fine layer of dust. In one of the upstairs closets, I find a rain jacket and a pair of boots, both a size too small. I put them on anyway. In the garage, I find a tank of propane, and that I cart over to Chloe’s back porch. Then I continue my search.
I move from house to house, as silent as the ghost I’ve always pretended to be. In each one, I breathe in the old scent of the humans who used to live there, and I can’t stop myself from wondering about this most recent killing moon. Do they have a name for it? They name them, sometimes. I’m curious how they reported on it, how they described me. Usually, that’s one of the things I look for while I do my salvage after a revival—newspapers. Clippings for my trophy box back in my cabin.
But this time, I don’t feel the urge to read the story of my murders. It felt different, this killing moon. Maybe because I wasn’t really doing it for me.
I was doing it for Oliver, even if Chloe can’t understand that.
Perhaps that’s why I skip Oliver’s house as I make my way along the lakeshore, my breath puffing out in the frigid air. Ikeep hearing Chloe’s voice in my head —You killed his fucking family!
I did. And for some reason, I don’t want to know what the aftermath looks like, if anyone came and cleaned the blood off the walls and out of the carpet. If Oliver’s things are still inside.
He’s in foster care! They won’t even let me speak to him!
I wrench the lock off a house a few doors down from Chloe’s. Foster care. That was not what I wanted for Oliver when I did this. I thought he would be able to stay with Chloe—that she would take him someplace far away, yes, that I’d never see them again—but I thought he’d be safe. With her.
I shove the door in, letting out cold, stale air. Another house still filled with the detritus of human life. I really don’t understand them, I’m starting to realize. Humans. I don’t understand why more of them aren’t like my mother, or like Chloe. After all, my mother loved me even when she knew there was a chance I would turn out to be a monster. There’s no risk of that with Oliver, and yet his parents treated him like a monster anyway. Of course they had to die, along with his cruel older brother. But why not let him stay with Chloe?
That was what I wanted. That was the gift I wanted to give her before I went into the ground. And it was humans who fucked it up.
These thoughts trail around after me as I methodically make my way through the house, finally ending up in the garage. And that’s where, finally, I’m rewarded: a portable generator sits in the corner, covered with a fine layer of cobwebs. I breathe out.
My original gift failed. Maybe she’ll like this one better.
I hoist the generator up in my arms and go back out into the strange, glowing night. I’m not used to the lake being so quiet. There are always animals and insects singing their songs to each other, always the constant rustle of leaves and the soft lapping of the lake against the shore. But the snow silences everything.There’s just the starry night overhead, the bright blanket of snow beneath, and the frozen air.
I set the generator on Chloe’s back porch, next to the propane tank. I used to have a generator like this, many years ago, before I learned how to siphon electricity off the power lines still dangling around the remains of Veritas. A much quieter solution, to be sure, and one that didn’t require me to constantly steal fuel. But as I hook up the propane tank, it comes back to me easily, and within a few moments, the generator rumbles to life.
I shut it off, then clear a path to the back door and slip inside. Chloe’s still asleep, and the fire is still where it needs to be, well within the frame of the fireplace. I go into the laundry room and switch off all the breakers, then go back outside and clear another path to her electrical panel and connect the generator directly into her house.
It won’t run everything, of course, but it’s enough to run the heater. Enough to give her a little bit of comfort.
I crank the generator until it’s rumbling again, melting the snow into the patio. Then I slip back into the laundry room, take a deep breath, and switch over the breaker that controls Chloe’s heater.
Athumpechoes through the house, followed by a faint electrical buzzing that I’m sure only I can feel. A second later, the heater kicks on, smelling faintly like electricity.
I don’t know if it’s good enough. She’s human, after all, and I felt her rage at me earlier, even if it was intertwined with lust. I don’t know if this will be enough to calm that rage, but at least I know I tried.
37
CHLOE
When I stir awake, I can tell something’s different. At first, I think the power has come back on, because the house feels more alive somehow. And warmer, too.
