“Not the same hole as you, relax. I’m not a complete psycho, I can take the other one.”There was a pause. A beat where everything just sat between us.
“You’re a fucking psychopath,”I said. He laughed, actually laughed. Like I’d said something funny. Everything around mefelt unreal, like I’d slipped into some kind of twisted dream. I tried to make sense of what had happened over the last few hours, but it all felt too far away to hold onto.
“I didn’t fuck her.”It came out more aggressive than I meant it to. He looked back at her, then at me again.
“Yeah?”he said, tilting his head.
“Then where is it?”I frowned.
“Where is what?”And then he looked at me properly, not amused anymore, not smiling.
“Your fucking semen, Rowan.”
And that’s when it hit. My stomach dropped so hard it felt like my body lagged behind it. Her throat. I could feel it again, the moment, the heat, the way I hadn’t even thought about it, hadn’t cared. If someone found her, it would lead straight back to me.
“Don’t tell me you were that fucking stupid,”he said quietly.
It wasn’t yelling, and he didn’t sound angry either. That would’ve been easier to deal with. This was worse. Disappointment.
He exhaled slowly, dragging a hand over his face before looking down at her again, studying her like he was already solving something in his head. There was a stretch of silence before he looked back at me.
“You know what we have to do.”
“No.”It came out fast, steady, and set in a way that didn’t leave room for anything else.“Don’t you fucking dare say it.”
He scoffed, shaking his head like I was being difficult on purpose.
“What the fuck else are you gonna do, Rowan?”His tone shifted, and I could hear the irritation in it now.“Leave her here? Let someone find her like this?”
I didn’t answer. Because what the fuck could I say?
I didn’t have an answer to this, no solution, and he didn’t exactly give me time to come up with anything. He stepped closer.
“You already know,”he said, quieter now, like he was reminding me of something I’d forgotten.“You’ve read it. You’ve learned it. All that hunting shit you buried your head in? This is what it was for.”
My jaw tightened hard.
“Now you just have to do it.”
There it was. Clear and simple, no way around it. I hated that he was right.
We didn’t argue after that, not really. There was nothing left to argue about.
He found her keys first, of course he did. Zwierek always had this fucked up way of being calm and having everything under control. Quick hands, already going through drawers, surfaces, everything with this strange kind of focus, like he’d done this before or had always expected to.
I grabbed the bedsheet, didn’t think about it too much, didn’t look at her face again while we worked. We wrapped her carefully. Like covering something that shouldn’t be seen anymore. Like turning a person into an object you could carry without thinking too hard about what it used to be. Her body was heavier than I expected. Dead weight. That’s what people call it; it’s accurate.
Getting her out of the apartment sounded wrong, every little movement too noticeable, and I was getting paranoid. Every step, every shift, every second I expected a door to open, someone to step out, to ask questions I couldn’t answer. The hallway was empty, the air stale, the kind of silence that feels like it’s watching you. We moved fast after that. Down the stairs, out the building. The night air hit different, colder and cleaner. Like it didn’t know what we were carrying. He opened the trunk, I lifted, we didn’t speak. Just a brief moment where we both stood there, looking down at what we’d just placed inside, and then he shut it. And just like that, she was gone from sight.
I got into the passenger seat without thinking. He slid behind the wheel, engine turning over like nothing had changed, like this was just any other drive, another night. The city blurred past us in streaks of yellow and shadow. I kept my eyes forward, didn’t ask where we were going, didn’t need to.
You already know where we ended up, don’t you, little Ghost? Of course you do. There was only ever one place it could go from here.
We reached the cabin long after the road had stopped feeling like a road. You know that kind of place, the kind where the trees grow too close together, where the headlights don’t really cut through the dark so much as smear it around. The engine sounded louder out there. Everything did. He killed the lights before the car had fully stopped.
For a second, neither of us moved. Just sat there with the engine ticking and cooling under the hood, the smell of damp wood and something metallic still clinging to my clothes.
“Out,”he said finally, like we were late for something.
