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Anyway, Emma is having a hissy fit over a mask I never actually agreed to wear. I just so happened to wake up one day to her making them upstairs in her “killroom” like it was the most normal thing in the world, like we didn’t kill a man six months ago and take his house and all his belongings.

The memory flickers at the back of my mind, ugly and quick, but I shove it aside.

I draw my attention back to the man.

Helpless. Ugly. Fat.

He’s on his knees, mouth forced open while I stand towering over him with a pair of pliers that just so happen to have one of his teeth caught in the metal jaws. I lift it closer to my face, admiring the pearly whiteness of it as blood glistens wetly at the root.

One down. Fuck knows how many to go.

How many teeth does a person even have?

I don’t actually care, nor does it make the slightest difference when I toss it to the floor and bring the pliers back to his mouth, pulling another tooth free with a hard, sickening twist. The sound is sharp, the kind that seems to vibrate in the air for a second too long. I bend down and grab the duct tape next to myself, ripping a piece off with my teeth. I slap it over him—followed by a strangled scream trapped behind the tape. Sweet mother of God, this is amazing. Why did I never become a dentist? I would have fucking loved this.

His whole body shakes now, shoulders jerking, tears and sweat running down his face in equal measure. Blood pours over his chin and soaks into the front of his shirt, and still, I can’t stop staring at the ruin of his mouth, at the ragged red gaps I’m leaving behind. There’s something almost hypnotic about it, the way pain strips a person down into something animal, something desperate.

Emma comes back over, still pissed, the air suddenly shifting the second she steps into the room. I don’t even have to look at her to feel it—that cold, simmering anger rolling off her in waves. She stops beside me, takes in the blood on the floor, the tooth near my boot, the state of him, and lets out a slow breath through her nose.

“For fuck’s sake,” she mutters.

I grin without looking away from the man. “What?”

“You’re enjoying yourself too much.”

I shrug, gripping the pliers tighter as the man whimpers.

“And?”

Emma says nothing for a moment, just stares at him like she’s trying to decide whether he’s worth the mess. Then her eyes slide to me, hard and unreadable.

“Finish it,” she says.

And just like that, the room shifts.

The laughter dies in my throat. The game is over.

I look at the man again, really look at him, at the way he’s folded in on himself, shaking so hard his shoulders knock together. His eyes are wide, wet, glassy with pain and terror, and for half a second, I can almost see him as something human instead of a thing kneeling in front of me. Almost.

Then it passes.

Outside, the sky has gone darker than I realized, evening pressing itself against the windows in thick blue-black shadows. My watch glows when I lift my wrist, the numbers bright and sterile in all this filth. How long have we even been here? Long enough for the blood on the floor to start drying at the edges. Long enough for Emma’s patience to burn down to nothing.

We were only meant to kill two people tonight. Quick in, quick out. That was the plan. But plans have a way of falling apart the second I get bored.

Before I can decide what to do next, Emma moves.

She crosses in front of me so fast I barely register it, one sharp step and then another, and suddenly the hammer is in her hand. I don’t even remember where she picked it up. The man looks up just in time to see her swing.

The crack is awful.

It lands against the side of his head with a dull, meaty thud, and his body drops sideways as if someone cut his strings. One second, he’s whimpering and twitching, the next he’s crumpled on the floor, unconscious in a heap of blood and sweat.

“Fuck’s sake,” I snap, staring at her.

“What the fuck?”

“You were taking too long,” she says.