“You know,” she continues, waving her crooked fingers in the air as though imploring me to catch on. “Bob Foster. It seems like his kind of thing, sending someone like you. So uncreative and boring. Much like his muffins. He was always a one-trick pony.”
I withdraw a black case from my pocket. Though I don’t open it, the woman follows the motion of my hands. “I’m afraid I don’t know Mr. Foster.”
A rumbling cough builds in the old woman’s chest until bloody phlegm spills out of her lips. I offer her a handkerchief and she takes it, holding it to her mouth. Her attention remains on me.
I nod, understanding everything she doesn’t say. “It is good to accept death. Do not fight the will of God.” I step to the side of the bed and open the case to pull the first of three prefilled syringes from within. “Do you repent before the judgment of the Lord?”
“I do have regrets,” she says. Her eyes drift away to the corner of the room. I wonder if she feels Him here with us. I do. I feel the Lord’s will in my hand. He keeps the syringe steady in my grip. His presence whispers to me, guides every beat of my heart.
“Tell me,” I demand. “Confess your sins before His angel of death.”
The old woman sighs deeply. “I regret …” She trails off as her gaze shifts back to me. It is fierce with resolve. “I regret not having stolen the recipe for Bob Foster’s banoffee muffins when I had the chance. Fucker took twenty percent of my market share when he launched Bob’s Banoffees.”
My eyes narrow.
“I regret not having gone home with Spencer Jones after Marcie’s party when I was twenty-three. Jenny Bright took him home instead and said he ate her ass six ways to Sunday. She wouldn’t shut up about it at brunch at the country club for a solid month—”
“Lord thy God, I seek refuge in you from the devil—”
“—I met my Thomas shortly after and in sixty-two years of marriage he never once ate my ass. Took me nearly a year to convince Tom there were more positions than just me lying flat on my back like a dead fish.”
I give her a heavy sigh. A cluck of my tongue.
And then I turn to the IV pump and pause the medication drip. I pinch the tube to keep the solution trapped.
I stare at the old woman. “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled—”
“Define ‘undefiled’—”
“For God will judge the sexually immoral and—”
“Define ‘sexually immoral’—do threesomes count? Because there was this one time with Jenny—”
“Enough.”
My hand trembles with the urge to hit her. She grins, a devil satisfied. Satan has stoked my sin to consume it. But he shall have no more.
“By the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the other evil spirits who prowl through the world seeking the ruin of souls.”
I twist the protective cap from the port in the IV tube and push the saline from the first syringe into the port. I expect Ethel might try to fight. Perhaps she will pull the cannula from her hand. Though it would be futile, she could try to save herself. But she doesn’t try.
She only smiles.
Her eyes don’t leave mine. I feel them on my skin, even when I focus on the work of my hands as I remove the first syringe and exchange it for the second. This one contains lorazepam. Three times the dose for what I estimate her weight to be.
A thrill spikes in my veins. This is my calling, my mission from God Himself. He has granted me the means to avenge my brother, Harvey, and then He found for me a greater purpose—to kill the corrupt who protect His murderers and to destroy those who stand between me and the justice I seek. My God led me to stay in the same hotel as the Butcher and the Spider when I arrived with the hope of searching the wreckage of the house I grew up in. The police were so busy exhuming the bodies of Harvey’s victims that they didn’t put much effort into searching for who had killed him.
It didn’t take long. Not with a fake badge and a tight smile and God’s will.
A stolen blanket. An extra credit card charge. With a handful of questions, I had a fake name. And before long, I found a real one. Rowan Kane.
And now, as I remove the second syringe from the port and replace it with a final flush of saline, I feel Him within me, flooding my soul with peace.
“Some would say that my mother was a difficult woman,” I tell Ethel as I close the cap on the port and turn the IV pump back on. I replace the empty syringes in my case and pocket it. “But the truth is, she showed my brother and me the depths of the world’s darkness. She showed us its unforgiving nature. And she taught us how to survive. She showed us the other side of God. The reckoning before the light.”
“That sounds pretty ass-backwards, boy.”
I smile, then recite the words to the hymn I always sing to my offerings in their final breaths. My parting gift, one to usher their souls to judgment. “Abide with me—”
“I’d rather not.”
“—fast falls the eventide—”
“It would fall a bit slower if you hadn’t drugged me,” Ethel says, her speech slurred.
“The darkness deepens, Lord with me abide. When other helpers fail and comforts flee, help of the helpless, O abide with me.”
I slowly pull the bloodied handkerchief from Ethel’s clenched fist. It’s like a magic trick. It will be the only material evidence of our encounter that I will take from this room. A reminder that magic is an illusion. Death, an illusion. Life, a fleeting moment of time in God’s will.
My eyes lock with the old woman’s. Her rasping exhalations are desperate, but she shows no fear. Only defiance.
“Touch my Lark and he’ll kill you,” she whispers.
I smile as I fold my handkerchief and slip it into my pocket.
“I’m sure hoping he’ll try.”
And then I watch until the last breath leaves her lips like a final, unanswered prayer.
LAST DEFENSE
Lark
“I’m happy for you,” Rose says. My eyes lift from the two plates of pastry crumbs that sit between us and Rose’s grin widens beneath my scrutinous gaze. “I can tell things are different.”
“What do you mean?”
“With Lachlan. You just seem different from a couple of months ago. You looked like you wanted to murder him at Sloane’s wedding. And look at you now.” Rose’s arms spread wide and she nearly gut-punches a barista who strides past our table. “You were murdery before and now you’re all sexed-up and glowing.”
I cough around a sip of coffee. “Um … yeah. Thanks.”
“Is it good?”
“Is what good?”
“The sex. Duh.”
My cheeks heat as a memory from last night flashes through my mind: Lachlan’s face buried between my legs, my fist gripped tight in his hair as I pushed his sinful mouth against my pussy. It’s been just two weeks since our lives and desires finally aligned, and now each day we’re stitched closer together. Every night he fucks me until I’m ready to collapse, exhausted but sated. Every morning I wake up less able to imagine the days before Lachlan’s presence in my life and my bed. Sometimes his touch is all I can think about. His hands on my flesh. His kiss on my neck. His cock buried deep—
“That good that you can’t sit still, huh?” Rose asks as I shift on my seat. She grins as my blush grows hotter. “I’m happy for you, Lark. You deserve it.”
Though I give her my thanks, there’s an edge of sadness to my gratitude. I know I can’t say the same to Rose. And with the way we both look down at the table, she knows it too.
“How am I going to keep track of you?” I ask as Rose sips the last of her coffee and sets the empty mug down as she leans back to regard me with a melancholy smile.
“I do have a phone. Silveria Circus might have a nostalgic vibe, but it also has modern technology.”
“I know, but you’ll be all over the place. It’s going to be a little harder to meet up. But I’ll come see you as much as I can, whenever you’re nearby.”
“I’d love that. You and Sloane.” Rose shakes her head and swallows, her smile faltering. “You’re my girls. My bally broads.”
“I still have no idea what that means, but I kinda like it.” I smile and take a sip of my coffee. “How long before you meet up with Silveria?”
Rose glances down at her watch and gnaws at her lip. “About an hour.”
“And Fionn?”
“He’ll drop me off. And then I guess that’s that.” Rose shrugs. Sadness etches itself deeper into her features, even though she tries to hide it. I reach across the table and take her hand in mine. I know how it feels to try to maintain a mirage for someone else’s benefit while you crumble behind the illusion. But Rose wears her heart wide open for everyone to see, and it’s only a second or two before tears well in her eyes.
I don’t tell her it will be okay. I don’t know if that’s true, and I don’t want to pretend that comments like that are anything more than platitudes. Not anymore. Not for myself nor for anyone else. So instead, I hold Rose’s hand across the table and tell her what I really feel. “I’m going to miss you.”
Rose nods. “I’m going to miss you too,” she whispers. Her smile is brittle and my chest aches in reply. “You know what they say about the circus.”
“What, that the show must go on?”
“No,” she says. “That the show can’t begin until you jump.”
I’m caught in Rose’s words and her shimmering dark eyes when her phone vibrates with a text to break the spell between us. With a glance at the screen, she slides the device off the table and pockets it.
“Doc’s here. Guess I’ll see you around. Don’t be a stranger.”
We both stand and crush each other in a hug. The tremble in Rose’s shoulders cracks my heart and fills it with both pain and anger on her behalf. I know whatever is happening with Fionn is none of my business and she doesn’t seem willing to get into it in detail, but I can’t help but make a dig at him. “Maybe Lachlan wasn’t the asshat of the Kanes after all,” I whisper, and Rose laughs in my arms.
“Yeah. Maybe not,” Rose says as she places a kiss on my cheek. “Take care of yourself, Boss Hostler.”
With a final, weak smile, Rose turns away and leaves the coffee shop. I watch as she opens the door to a car waiting at the curb and disappears inside.
It’s a short walk home and I use most of it to text back and forth with Sloane. She and Rowan are spending a weekend in Martha’s Vineyard to bask in their newlywed bliss, something I guess I’m starting to feel too, even though it’s all been a little backward for Lachlan and me. But does that really matter? There’s a worn path in life that most people take when they wind up married. Fall in love first. Make your vows. But maybe I was never meant to be on it. It surprises me more than anyone when I realize that I’m happy where I am.
I’m thinking about that epiphany as I enter the apartment and send Lachlan a text to let him know I’ve arrived home. I set my mobile down to spend a little time playing with Bentley, who grabs the stuffed squeaky skull that Lachlan bought him last week. We’re playing tug-of-war when my phone vibrates on the coffee table with an incoming call.
The rush I just felt expecting to see Lachlan’s contact on my screen is washed away when it’s my mother’s details that appear instead.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Honey.”
I already know what she’s going to say next.
There’s a vortex in time right before the words come that feels even worse than the moment you hear them spoken aloud. It’s like waiting for the anticipation of a needle—you know the hurt will come, but imagining it is sometimes worse than the moment it slides into your skin.
“Auntie Ethel passed away.”
That pain still hits me like an ax to the chest. Tears fall freely down my face. We all knew this was coming. I thought about it every day. And yet it still feels like a hole has erupted inside me, a void that seems gravitational. Unfillable. Like it was made to only consume.
The tears don’t stop as my mom gives me the details. That Ethel passed in her sleep. It was peaceful. She says all the things that are supposed to be a minor comfort in the aftermath of loss. And then she talks about the practicalities that don’t stop for grief, not even for a moment. Mom sounds tentative when she asks if I want to meet them at Shoreview before the funeral home comes to take Ethel’s body away. She barely gets the question out before I tell her yes, to wait until I get there. And though my mom doesn’t ask outright about Lachlan, he’s the first person whose presence I crave. His quiet countenance. His steady shadow to my faltering light. There’s comfort knowing he’s seen more of me than I’ve been willing to share, and yet he doesn’t back away.
As soon as my mom hangs up, I select Lachlan’s number from my list of favorites. I try to compose myself, but the room seems to pulse with every beat of my heart, a watery film obscuring my vision.
Lachlan answers on the first ring. “Hey, duchess. I was just thinking about you.”
“Hi.”
That’s it. That’s all I need to say. Just one short word. A breath of sorrow.
“What’s wrong? Did something happen? Are you okay? Where are you?”