She looks up at me, and I don’t know how to answer. The truth is, I don’t need to sleep. And if I pretend, what good will that do? It won’t convince her I’m normal.
“For a little while,” I finally say, and it doesn’t seem to upset her.
She falls asleep easily, nestled up against me. I stroke her hair and listen to her breath and her blood and wish I could fix all the things I broke when I succumbed to the killing moon. Because I know something’s broken. It seems the same, on the surface. Eating with her. Fucking her. Staying with her while she sleeps. But my senses can feel her turmoil underneath.
I have the thought then that I wish I weren’t what I am.
By midnight, I leave her. I brush my lips against her forehead, and she stirs a little toward me but doesn’t wake. She could be one of my victims, vulnerable there in her bed.
For a single, terrifying second, I wonder ifshe’sthe one the killing moon really wanted.
No. I don’t think so. The thought of killing her—really killing her—gives me a hot, sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
I leave her instead, going downstairs to pull on the boots and the coat I stole before stepping out into the cold, windy night.
When I was doing my scavenging yesterday, there was a boat still tied to the dock of one of the houses, a few doors down. That’s where I go now, following the slushy trail of my own footsteps. I need to assess my territory for the damage the cops no doubt did to it. They always sweep in and steal my things away, especially my weapons. I ought to do a better job of hiding them, like I do the newspaper clippings. But weapons are easy to get.
The boat is covered in snow and ice that I scoop out with my bare hands, not caring that it burns my palms. The water is choppy when I push off, the wind buffeting me around, but I manage to make it ashore without capsizing. Thank god for that: the last thing I want is to go into the cold depths of the lakes. With all this unsettling tightness in my chest, I might just stay down there. Hook my ankle on some rope and die again.
Maybe then Chloe would leave.
The tightness clamps down as I drag the boat ashore. Her still being here was a surprise I hadn’t hoped for in the void. But I don’t think it’s fair to her. I can sense her sadness and confusion every time she looks at me, and I keep replaying her tearful voice:How can this work?
She was supposed to save Oliver, that’s how. She was supposed to gather him up and run far, far away from here. That was how I wanted to save him. How I wanted to save both of them, really. From me.
I don’t like it, all these churning, stormy thoughts. I don’t like trudging through the foot-high snow drifts in the woods, the icy water soaking through my stolen jeans. The graveyard is covered in glittering snow, my gravestone completely buried. I look at itfor a moment, the way the snow hides everything and reflects the moonlight. Then I keep going to my cabin.
From the front yard, it actually looks nice. The snow hides all the peeling paint and rotting roof shingles. But I can tell the cops were here, and not just because the bastards left yellow caution tape across the porch steps and aCONDEMNEDnotice on my front door. I can smell them, faint and stale, even before I break the shiny new padlock on my doorknob and burst inside.
Evidence of their meddling is everywhere: the couch is shoved up against the far wall, my kitchen is cleared of the meager provisions I left behind. My fireplace has been smashed open, and my weapons box is gone, the brick dust still piled on the floor.
I don’t feel much, seeing that, though. It’s what I expected.
What sparks the fire in my blood is when I go into my bedroom and discover that they took Oliver’s two drawings of Chloe off my wall.
The idea of some grubby cop’s hands smearing all over the paper makes my muscles tremble in rage. The anger burns in the back of my thoughts, and I stumble backward, curling and uncurling my fists. I want to kill again, the desire coursing hotly through my body. I want to steal a car and drive to the Pinella County sheriff’s office and cut my way through every single person in that building until I get my drawings back.
And what would Chloe say about that?
So instead, I tear into the closet, where I find that the floorboards are undisturbed, which calms me a little. I claw them back until I can see my lockbox, completely untouched.
Only then do I feel like I can breathe. I take it over to my bed and flip open the lid, and there, at least, are the rest of Oliver’s drawings, stacked neatly on top of my old newspaper clippings. The clippings I leave, but I lift the drawings out and flip throughthem carefully. There’s the ice cream shop. There’s his BJJ class. There’s a scene with his favorite dinosaur toys.
When I’m done, I put them back in the lockbox, covering up the newspaper clippings, which don’t feel important the way they used to. Then I shuffle back into my living room and blink at the rearranged furniture. The idea of attacking the sheriff’s office feels absurd now. I would just get myself killed again, and I don’t want to go in the ground again. I want?—
I want things to be like they were before. When Chloe didn’t feel confused around me. When Oliver was still here, bringing me his drawings.
But I also know they can’t be.
I slump down on the couch, hanging my head down between my knees until my breathing slows and the fire leaves my blood completely. I stare at the floor—dirty, scuffed, ancient. This is my place. This cabin. This peninsula. I protect this little patch of land because that’s what I’ve always done. Because?—
Because you couldn’t protect your mother.
I squeeze my eyes shut. My chest feels tight, tighter than it does around Chloe. But it’s true, isn’t it? My mother did everything she could to protect me, even knowing I might turn into a monster. And I went and died, and then I lost her.
Sixty years later, I couldn’t protect Oliver, either. All the advantages I have—the strength, the heightened senses, the constant, underlying urge to spill blood—and I couldn’t make things better.
All I really did was make things worse.
