1
MALLORY
Bodiesby Drowning Poolplayed an endless loop in my head seconds after I walked into the kitchen and came to adeadhalt. Pun intended.
I wish I could say I was shocked—that I’d never seen a dead body before. Or blood spreading like spilled paint across tile. Or smelled the metallic tang in the air. But this? This was just another Saturday night.
My mom had a bit of a revenge complex. Totally justified, but some people would argue killing was killing, regardless of the motive. I hadn’t been raised to think like that, not after everything I learned about my mother’s past, at probably too young an age, but she hadn’t had much choice when, much like now, I’d stumbled into a scene so painfully familiar as this one in the middle of the night when I was seven.
Mara Hales was many things. Unapologetic. Meticulous. And terrifyingly good at murder. The world might label her a serial killer. To me, she was just Mom.
She straightened from where she’d been crouched beside the body, the eight-inch knife gripped in her latex-gloved hand. Sheworked the blade free with a twist and pull, the wet sound of it like boots sucking out of mud.
She didn’t flinch or blink, just stood there, breathing steady, while blood dripped from the knife and splattered all over the floor.
“Again?” I said flatly, letting my backpack slide off my shoulders and thud to the ground.
Mom used her forearm to push a loose strand of black hair from her face, careful not to touch her skin with the gloves. “This is the last one, Malibu,” she promised, almost apologetically. “Once we move, I’m done. I just had to tie up a few loose ends first.”
I glanced down at the loose end in question, a two-hundred-ish-pound guy with auburn hair and green eyes, which were still open, by the way, and wearing what looked like an expensive suit. His tie had been loosened around his neck as if he had a hard day and was looking forward to relaxing, probably with my mom.
The joke was on him.
The only men Mara Hales brought home left in the trunk of her ’67 Chevy Impala, wrapped in plastic and headed for whatever hole she’d dug in advance. She was nothing if not prepared. This guy never stood a chance against my mom. They rarely did.
Not that I blamed them. My mom wasn’t your typical mom. When people saw Mara Hales, they didn’t instantly get warm and fuzzy, motherly vibes. Her aura gave off sex. My mom was hot in a Playgirl way. She could have easily been the magazine’s centerfold bunny with her curvy, toned body. Killing men twice her size meant she was disciplined as fuck when it came to going to the gym and working out.
Me? Not so much. I despised the gym. Hell, I despised breaking a sweat, which was precisely why I stuck to yoga. Ineeded as much Zen in my life as I could attract. And Zen wasallI seemed to attract.
My gaze tracked over the scene, the defensive wound on his palm where he’d grabbed the blade, the arterial spray on the cabinet doors, the way his other hand clutched his phone as if it might save him. It hadn’t.
I met Mom’s gaze, needing her to say it again. “Promise?”
She smiled. “Pinkie swear,” she vowed, peeling off the gloves and tossing them into the garbage. She’d changed since this morning into black yoga pants and a dark tank top, with her hair pulled back. Herworkattire. The uniform of someone who understood that murder was messy.
She caught me staring and raised an eyebrow. “Care to lend a hand? Unless you have something more important to do.”
I rolled my eyes and went to the pantry, stepping carefully around the blood. The industrial plastic wrap sat on the third shelf, next to the contractor bags and the bottle of enzymatic cleaner that could break down organic matter.Normalpantry shit.
Grabbing the wrap, I unspooled the plastic while Mom rolled him, his deadweight making the motion awkward and graceless. The wrap crinkled loudly in the quiet kitchen, layer after layer until he looked like the world’s most morbid burrito.
“Could you, just once,” I grunted, grabbing his ankles while Mom took his shoulders, “kill someone who doesn’t weigh more than two hundred pounds?”
“Last one, remember?” She walked backward toward the garage door, moving smoothly despite the weight.
My arms burned, muscles screaming. “How could I forget?” What mattered was that she remembered. I was so tired of waiting for the cops to show up and arrest her or CPS to come knocking and take me away. Those were my worst nightmares. You would think my dreams would be haunted by the faces ofdead men. They weren’t, not after I learned what these assholes had done.
I worried about my mom more than I should. Sometimes it felt like I was the parent. Maybe it was our closeness in age, from her having me so young, and the two of us basically growing up and navigating life together.
Taking a break, we set the body down long enough for Mom to wedge open the door leading into the garage, and together, we hoisted him up and over the lip of the trunk. He landed with a heavy thump, plastic crackling. Mom adjusted his position, bending his knees to make him fit, before slamming the trunk shut with both hands.
“Thank God you remembered to close the door this time,” I said, wiping my palms on my jeans even though I hadn’t touched him directly.
Her deep blue eyes twinkled. “I don’t make mistakes.”
But she had. Once. I’d been ten, naive enough to still think monsters lived under beds instead of in the real world. She’d forgotten to close the garage door that night, and Mrs. Chen from next door had walked past with her poodle. The bloodstains on the concrete had stayed for weeks, no matter how much bleach Mom used. We’d moved three days later.
I’d learned then that most people only see monsters in shadows.
