This is a bibliopegist’s heaven.
Rather, itwouldbe. If it wasn’t defiled by death’s odor.
My legs carry me toward the main workstation. Beside the medical gloves are several books in various stages of undress, including my untouched copy ofInferno.Nothing unorthodox.
Blowing out a defeated breath, I turn to leave.
But then I spy a hallway branching off from the main room, leading toward the unmistakable hum of exhaust fans.
“What are you hiding back there,monsieur?” I whisper, prowling into the dark.
The stench strengthens to a pungent punch before I round a sharp corner and push through a knobless door. Machines line the walls of another chamber. Above, the monstrous industrial fans whir, feeding the tainted air directly into the night. A heap of dry hide is stockpiled beside a suspiciously large chest freezer.
Brontë owns his own tannery.
Interesting.
I drift over to the leather. Some strips are dyed, others are natural pigments ranging from deep brown to pinkish white. I skim a palm over a slab.
Pause.
Ivory powder stains my fingertips. I rub them together, spreading the talc. Beneath it, the phantom texture of skin remains.
I’ve killed countless people. I know what human flesh feels like. Even treated beyond its original identity, it’s unmistakable.
Swallowing dread, I crack open the freezer.
And gag at the sight of half a dozen frozen bodies.
Brontë Bourbon isn’t innocent. He’s a killer.
Fury floods my veins. I draw my knife, spearing for the exit. I’m moving so fast, I almost miss it—the logbook lying on a workbench by the doorway. It’s open to a list of projects and names. Names of criminals, along with their transgressions. Many are familiar, as they aremyvictims. It spans the entirety of the last decade, since my early days of vigilantism.
My tongue clicks. “Stalker much?”
I flip forward, finding Sebastian Bonaparte fated for a rebind ofJane Eyre.Chuckling, I skip to the most recent log.
“Poppy Morgenstern.” I grin so wide, my cheeks ache. Tracing a fingernail over the loops of ink forming my name besideInferno,I muse, “Guess karma really is a cold-hearted bitch after all, Doc.”
If I possess any sense of self-preservation, I’ll go back upstairs and kill the man planning to kill me. It’d save me the headache later. Though I’d be forced to murder his brother, too. If there are no secrets between the twins, Dantë is aware of Brontë’s agenda.
There’s just one problem: I don’t slaughter the innocent. Although Brontë’s moral compass is as skewed as my own, we’re on the same side.
And if we’re on the same side…
I’m suddenly moving as fast as my thrashing heart. Grabbing the logbook pen, I scribble a note onto a blank page then tear it out. With bated breath, I plant it atop the book that had once been my escape from myself when I was a child learning how to be a monster.
HAUNTED
Brontë
I’ve been wrong about women plenty of times in my life.
There was the college girlfriend who dumped me when I told her I wanted to work with corpses for a living. The Tinder find who didn’t mind my career but had a furry kink I couldn’t quite bring myself to feed when she insisted I fuck her in a James P. Sullivan onesie while she wore a Wookiee suit. Then there was the Swifty fling, and the brief yet scarring blip with Quinn.
Never have I been so wrong about a woman as Poppy Morgenstern.
I tap my laptop screen to replay the footage of the little devil stalking through my house. Questions swarm my mind like hornets kicked from a nest.
