Butcher & Blackbird: The Ruinous Love Trilogy

ROWAN

My first conscious thought is a single word, one that slurs past my lips like it’s stuck in viscous syrup.

“Sloane.”

My second thought is the awareness of the steady beat of music. At first, I was convinced it was my heartbeat, but I was wrong. A man’s angelic voice floats above light drums and a dreamy guitar melody that reminds me of the desert at sunset.

Sloane hums along with the music that swirls around me. As she sings along about cooking someone and squashing his head, I realize I recognize the melody. Knives Out. Radiohead. Sloane’s raspy, rich voice fills my chest with relief. I know she’s okay, thank fuck. Because I am not okay.

Screams fill the room and I open my eyes. A vaguely familiar candelabra comes into view, laden with gaudy crystals. I try to focus on them as the rest of the table swirls at the edges of my vision.

“Just…hold…still…” Sloane says, gritting out every word over the man’s garbled cries. “I’d say it would hurt less if you stop struggling, but that’s a total lie.”

The man screams again and I turn my head toward the sound. It might be the hardest fucking thing I’ve ever done. My head feels like it weighs a hundred pounds.

The screeching reaches a fevered pitch. Sloane’s back is to me. She’s straddling the terrified man seated in the chair at the head of the table, shielding him from view. Some of the evening comes swimming through the soup of wine and sedatives clouding my thoughts. Thorsten. The man is Thorsten. And he fucked me up.

“Just a little snip. There you go.”

The screaming stops abruptly and Sloane’s shoulders sag with disappointment.

“Wuss.”

She reaches behind her without turning around, her gloved fist covered with blood, and drops a severed eyeball next to another already resting on the bread plate next to my head.

I retch.

Sloane whips around at the sound. “In the bowl, Rowan. Jesus Christ.” She tears her gloves off as she climbs off the man and hauls my torso upright so I can vomit into a stainless steel bowl next to my face. Her hands hold tight to my shoulders as red wine and dinner vacate my stomach. “Better out than in. Trust me,” she grumbles, her tone dark.

“Fucker drugged me,” I manage to grit out when the heaving finally stops and I wipe my mouth with a napkin, my hand clammy and shaking.

“Sure did.”

“How long have I been unconscious?”

“A couple of hours,” she replies. She passes me an unopened bottle of water with one hand, drags the bowl away with the other. Sloane looks toward the door to the hallway, hesitating. “I need to ditch this but David is freaking me the fuck out.”

“Has he threatened you? If he’s fucking threatened you, I swear to God—”

“No, not at all,” Sloane says, pushing me back down on the chair when I try to stand. My body pitches to one side. She tries to smile, I think, but it comes out like a grimace. “He seems pretty harmless.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“He’s eating. In the kitchen,” she says. I shake my head, not following what she’s laying down. “The next courses. The…food.”

“That’s what most people eat. Food.”

The color has drained from Sloane’s face. “Yeah… most…”

“I don’t get it—”

“You ate a fucking person,” she blurts out.

I blink at Sloane once before pulling the bowl back to heave again.

“Oh my God, Rowan, it was really gross. You stuffed it in. Couldn’t get enough.”

I retch.

“You passed out while chewing. I had to scrape it off your tongue so you wouldn’t choke.”

I glare at her through watery eyes before vomiting again, though thankfully there’s not much left to get rid of.

“Did you know it was a rump roast? I tortured Thorsten until he told me. I had to dig human ass out of your mouth.”

“At least you didn’t fucking swallow it, Sloane. Why the fuck didn’t you stop me?”

“I tried, but you just went for it. Don’t you remember?”

Shit. I do remember.

I remember a lot more than that.

Sloane watches me a little too closely. She’s not as apathetic as she tries to appear. The longer I stare, the more her indifferent mask crumbles, and a faint blush rises beneath the freckles dusting her cheeks and nose.

This fucking girl. Panicking because I gave her a glimpse into how I feel. Clearly nervous about a conversation she’s desperate not to have. Ready to fly.

And I would do anything to keep her around, even if it means taking a hammer to my own heart.

“No.” I shake my head as my gaze drifts toward the centerpiece. “The last thing I remember is David coming through the door with the trolley. I don’t recall anything after that.”

When I glance up, Sloane’s lips twitch. It’s almost a smile. Her eyes are a little softer.

Fuck.

Just as I suspected. She’s fucking relieved.

I’ll absorb the venom of this burning sting. I drop my head into my hands. She’ll never know I remember every second of my embarrassing, unrequited confession. I’ll never forget the way her skin flushed such a pretty shade of pink when I said she was beautiful. I would have crawled across the table to kiss those plump lips when they pursed as I spilled my secrets between us.

I need to get it through my fucking thick skull. She will never want more than this. But I refuse to lose her. Sloane is the only person in the world who can look at my monster and find a friend. And I know she needs a friend just as much as I do. Maybe more.

“Are you okay?” she asks, her voice barely more than a whisper.

“Yeah. It’s just the drugs,” I lie again. I make a vow right this instant that it will be the last lie I ever tell Sloane Sutherland. “I feel like shit.”

Truth.

“I imagine you do. I know how it goes,” she says. She pulls the bowl away when she seems reasonably sure I’m done. “Well, not the eating people part. I don’t know about that.”

I give her a half-hearted glare which only serves to brighten her smile before she turns away and carries the bowl to set it in the hall, muttering to herself about dealing with it later. There’s a groan of pain from the end of the table and I’m a little grateful for something else to focus on besides the burn in my throat.

I look toward Thorsten. And for the first time, I really focus on the scene around me.

“Orb Weaver,” I whisper, my breath catching in my chest at the beautiful horror of an intricate web that shimmers in the candlelight. “Sloane…how?”

Her smile is bashful as she pushes away from the table with a shrug. “I had time to kill.”

Sloane walks toward Thorsten. His head hangs against his chest as blood drips down his face from the lightless caverns where his eyes once were. He stirs a little and groans before he fades back into unconsciousness.

“Nearly done,” she says, patting him on the shoulder as she stops to examine the pattern of fishing line behind him that extends from the floor to the ceiling.

Some lines intersect, others layer behind one another. Some are a thicker gauge than others, the thinner lines tied in delicate knots to hold the heavier thread in specific angles or approximations of curves. At different points and depths there are thin pieces of flesh hanging from the web.

Sloane withdraws a pair of latex gloves from a box on the table, then a tape measure and two pieces of pre-cut, thinner gauge fishing line. She hums to the music playing from her own playlist through a portable speaker as she ties the first of the two threads up on the web above Thorsten’s head, using the tape measure to distance out one metre from the first string to place the second. When the measurements are done, she returns to the table, meeting my rapt attention with a devious grin.

“You might want to look away, pretty boy,” she says, pinching the edge of the bread plate to slide the eyeballs closer to her end of the table.

“Fuck off. I’m not squeamish.”

“You sure?”

My stomach is not sure.

“Usually I’m not squeamish. I’ll be fine.”

Sloane shrugs and plucks one of the eyes from the plate with careful, delicate fingers. “One hundred percent positive?”

“I’d rather watch you make skin ornaments and eye baubles than go to the kitchen and check on Lobotomy David. Let’s just go with that.”

“Fair enough.”

Sloane heads back to the web, carefully winding the first of the two measured strings around the eye to trap it in the clear filament.

“You really did all this in a couple of hours?” I ask. The hem of her dress drifts higher up the backs of her thighs as she works at tying the line in knots. My dick hardens just imagining how the curve of her ass would feel in my hands, the softness of her flesh in my palms.

“I make each layer at the hotel first. It’s easier to glue them to drop sheets and then roll them up so I can peel them off when I get here,” she replies as she nods toward several scrunched-up pieces of paper-thin plastic on the floor next to the wall. “I knew I wanted to stage him in the dining room, so I found the measurements from the realtor’s records.”

Sloane approaches to retrieve the other eye, gifting me another shy smile before she heads back to the web with her prize. Just as she did with the first eye, she winds the thin strand of fishing line around the orb and ties it into her masterpiece before standing back to survey her work.

“Voilà!” she exclaims into Thorsten’s ear, but he doesn’t wake. She watches him for a moment, nudging his bloody arm where it’s tied to the chair. When he remains unconscious, she sighs and turns to face me. “He’s not very tough, this one. This is the fifth time he passed out on me.”

“To be fair, you did gouge out—”

“Pluck, Rowan. I plucked his eyes out.”

“You did pluck out his eyes. Though I dunno, Blackbird…that eye hole on the left looks a little gouge-y.”

She leans toward Thorsten with a scowl, scrutinizing the empty eye sockets as I bite down on a grin. “His left? Or my left?”

“His left.”

“Fuck off, it does not look gouge-y,” she says. Her doubt turns into a scowl as she looks back over her shoulder and catches the amusement in my eyes. “Dick.”

I laugh and try to avoid the tape measure as she chucks it at my head, though I’m still too drunk and drugged to avoid being hit in the arm. When I meet her eyes, she tries to look pissed, but she’s not. “You said before that it’s a map,” I say as I rub my forearm. She nods. “How?”

Sloane grins and comes closer, pulling off her gloves as she looks down at me with bright hazel eyes. That dimple pops out next to the corner of her lips as she holds out an upturned palm. “I’ll show you, if you think you can stay upright without puking on me.”

I slap her palm and she laughs but holds it out again, and this time I grab it. The room swirls as I stand. I’m not so convinced I’ll be able to keep my shit together, but Sloane just waits, patient and steady. Her grip is an anchor. When I stop swaying, she’s still there, ensuring that every step I take is a firm one as she leads me to her work of art.

“This is the scale,” she tells me as she points to the eyes set one metre apart above Thorsten’s unconscious head. “One metre equals ten kilometres on this map.”

Sloane pulls me closer. Heat radiates from her body to warm her ginger and vanilla scent. She leads me to the edge of the first layer of fishing line and then lets go of my hand to step behind me. Her fingers wrap around my upper arms as she rises on her tiptoes to look over my shoulder.

“It’s hard to do, but try to imagine it in three dimensions. One layer is for streets. One is for wetlands. Another is for soils,” she says. She lays a delicate hand on each side of my head and shifts me so I can see the layers on an angle, where severed flesh is neatly tied at specific points in the web. “If those idiot investigators would take each section of the design and layer it into ArcGIS software, they’d have enough to make a topographic map. The piece from his chest in the center of the web is this house. Every other little bit of Thorsten represents the last known whereabouts of missing persons he’s taken or killed.” Sloane’s arm rests on my shoulder as she points to a piece of skin wound in fishing line. Her breath warms the shell of my ear, triggering the rise of goosebumps on my neck. “That’s for a man named Bennett who he killed two months ago. I took it from Thorsten’s bicep. B for Bennett.”

I glance at Thorsten who’s starting to stir once more. His sleeve has been cut off, a patch of flesh raw and exposed from where the skin has been peeled away.

“This is so much work,” I say as Sloane slips her hands from my head and moves to my side.

She glances at me, a hint of pink rising in her cheeks before she smirks and rolls her eyes. “You probably think I should take up crochet and acquire twelve cats and start yelling at the neighborhood children to get off my lawn.”

“Never.” I turn toward her and hold her wary gaze. “Well, maybe the yelling at neighborhood children part. I’ll always condone that. But this, Blackbird? This is art.”

Sloane’s eyes soften. A faint smile tips up one corner of her lips. I could so easily lean down and inhale her scent. I could kiss her. Run my hand into her raven hair. Tell her I think she’s brilliant, and cunning, and so fucking beautiful. That I have fun with her. That even though I feel like complete shit right now, I’m disappointed this year’s game is nearly over, because I hate watching her walk away. What we have now? It’s not enough. I want more.

But I’m afraid that trying to push for it will only drive her away. With the way she took off at the restaurant and how long it took to coax her back, that’s a risk I’m not willing to take.

I take a step back and mask my thoughts behind a cocky grin. “I am surprised you don’t already have twelve cats, though. You seem like the cat-hoarding type to me.”

Sloane wallops my arm and I laugh. “Fuck you, pretty boy.”

“You could make so much money as a cat litter influencer on Instagram.”

“I was going to let you do the honors and kill this pretentious fuckwit, but I totally take it back.” With a final glare that has no real venom behind it, Sloane turns and heads back to the table to pull on another pair of latex gloves before picking up a scalpel. Thorsten stirs and moans, but he’s not fully conscious until she twists the cap from a vial of smelling salts and holds it under his nose.

“Please, please stop—”

“You know what, Thorsten…or is it Jeremy? That’s your real name, right? Jeremy Carmichael?” Sloane stops next to his shoulder and looks at her web, reaching up to tap one of the eyes that gazes across the room. “You remind me of someone I once knew.”

Thorsten’s cries grow more frantic as Sloane trails the tip of her blade across his neck. A light scratch lines his skin and I smile as he thrashes. I know her typical process and her next moves. She’ll notch a precise cut into his jugular with a single strike and then leave him to bleed out in his chair.

The final slash of color in her perfect canvas.

“This man, he lured people in with promises of safety and care only to deliver the opposite,” she says as she stares down with disdain at Thorsten’s shaking body. “A lot like you, really. You lured us in with the promise of a meal and nice company only to drug and deceive us. It just didn’t work out entirely the way you hoped, did it.”

“I’m begging you, I’m sorry, truly, I—”

“Did David beg you to stop when you decided to play Lobotomy Barbie with his face? I bet he pleaded with you, and you loved the sound. But the funny thing is, Mr. Carmichael, you and I have something in common. I’ll tell you a little secret,” she says. A devastatingly beautiful smile creeps across her lips as she leans close to his ear. “I love the sound when my victims beg too.”

“No, no, you don’t understand… David! David, help me!”

His pleas for help go unanswered as Sloane backs away and returns to the table to exchange her scalpel for her Damascus blade. Thorsten’s head swings from one side to the next as he loses track of her whereabouts beneath his desperate, sputtering cries. But Sloane doesn’t make a sound as she creeps closer to her prey. She moves like an owl in flight, fluid and silent and graceful. Predatory and powerful.

“The man you remind me of, he presented such a civilized mask to the world, yet underneath, he was a devil. He promised the best education. The best opportunities for students gifted in the arts. He promised a safe place to learn and the best chance for getting into the most exclusive universities for those of us whose parents were wealthy enough to pay the price. And since mine were never around, they didn’t notice the price I truly paid.”

For all the times I’ve thought my soul was little more than a fucking stone, Sloane Sutherland proves me wrong.

Her words echo in my head until my imagination takes me to every dark and terrible possibility. My heart hits every bone on its way down to the floor. All that’s left behind is a black space that burns hotter with every hollow beat.

“I could take it,” she says. “I could cope. I had an end in sight. And in a way, I was learning. I was learning how to keep my rage and darkness beneath a mask so I could carry on in the world. So I kept my mouth shut as I gave pieces of myself away. But you know the one price I could not pay?” she asks as she stops behind Thorsten. Her smile is gone. She stares straight ahead, her eyes nearly black in the dim light. Her voice is low and drips with menace when she says, “The price I could never pay was Lark.”

Ice infuses my veins. A chill spreads through my arms. It sluices down my spine.

“She was the only person I cared about. When I found out what he was doing to her, what she had been hiding, I did some hiding of my own. That same night that she confessed someone else’s sins to me, I waited in the shadows. I made a vow in the dark. That I would wipe out everyone like him that I could find. That I wouldn’t stop until I found the worst, the darkest, the most depraved, and I would erase them from the world, one at a time. And I promised myself that I would never let anyone hurt someone I cared about ever again.”

Sloane’s arms raise on either side of Thorsten’s head, the handle of the knife gripped in both hands, her skin bleached over her knuckles.

“This is me keeping my promise,” she says.

The music crescendos through the speakers. She is a fucking virtuoso, surrounded by her masterpiece. She waits for a single word from the man beneath her, holding out for the perfect note.

“Please—”

Sloane plunges the blade into Thorsten’s stomach.

“Since you asked so nicely, let’s spill the filth from your guts together,” she grits out, dragging the sharpened steel upward through his abdomen to the melody of his blistering scream.

Blood and viscera flood from the straight line carved into Thorsten’s flesh. Heavy breaths saw from Sloane’s chest as she whips the knife free, a flick crimson to stain the carpet with the twist of her hand. Thorsten’s wail slows until it falls silent beneath Sloane’s menacing, watchful glare, and with a few final, ragged breaths, he dies strapped to his ornate chair.

An electric charge surrounds us. The aroma of hot blood perfumes the air. Candlelight flickers on the web. Every detail sharpens, as though the universe has narrowed to this single room.

And Sloane the goddess of chaos at the heart of it all.

There’s a shiver in her blade. My gaze tracks a slow path up the length of her arm. Her shoulders tremble, her attention sharpened on some faraway memory brought too close to a murky surface from another place in time. I know it because I feel it sometimes too, the way I feel it in her now. It’s bleeding into her lightless eyes.

Neither of us should be trusted. She could turn on me while she’s caught in this lethal fog. But when I see the first tremor in her lips as a tear slides across her freckled cheek, I know I’d take any risk for Sloane.

I approach with careful, measured steps. She doesn’t move as I fold my hand around her wrist and pry the handle of the blade from her grip. I lay it on Thorsten’s bloodied lap and she hasn’t as much as shifted on her feet, her gaze still caught in another moment of time.

“You’re okay. Lark is okay,” I whisper as I slide one arm across her back. When Sloane doesn’t react, I fold my other arm around her too, until she’s caged in my embrace. “You did good.”

There’s no change in her, not even when I tighten my arms or lean my head on her shoulder.

“I’m okay too,” I continue. “Though I might need some antacid. Something about that homemade dijon dressing just isn’t sitting quite right. Not sure what it could be.”

Sloane huffs a breath of a laugh and leans some of her weight against my chest. Wherever she’s gone, I know in this moment that I can bring her back.

“David might have some pointers for me. Sounds like he’s having no trouble with dinner.”

“It’s really bad, Rowan,” she says into my shirt, her voice muffled. “When I went into the kitchen to get the bowl, he had half a sausage link hanging from his mouth.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad—”

“It was raw.”

“Okay, yep. That’s pretty bad.” I swallow down the uncomfortable protests of my stomach and cleanse the imagery from my mind with a deep breath of Sloane’s ginger scent. I don’t want to let go, but time is always working against me when it comes to her.

It works against me almost as hard as she does.

Sloane tenses in my embrace and I let her go before she can pull away. “We should probably check on him,” I say, shifting my attention away when she looks at me with a question in her furrowed brow.

“Yeah, I guess we probably should.”

Sloane shifts around me, her gaze lowered as she leads the way out of the dining room. When I offer to take the metal bowl she refuses, claiming I might spill it on the walls and give her twice the amount of cleanup work, but I don’t think that’s the full reason. Maybe she just feels guilty for not telling me about Thorsten earlier. Maybe she needs something else to focus on. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because she meant what she said. That she cares.

I mull over her reasoning as I follow Sloane down the corridor, the bowl held as far from her face as she can manage without the risk of spilling. Her steps slow until she stops and lingers just before the threshold to the kitchen. When I halt at her side, she looks up at me with a grimace, her nose crinkling, a little spattering of blood dotting her cheek like a crimson echo of her natural freckles. If I could, I would tattoo it right into her skin.

Fucking adorable. 

“It’s too quiet,” she whispers. “I don’t like it.”

“Maybe he wandered off.”

“Or maybe he’s in a meat coma.”

“Christ. Too soon.”

We lean forward and peer through the door.

David is sitting on the counter, his legs swinging and his gaze vacant as he spoons what seems to be cookies and cream ice cream into his mouth straight from the tub.

“That’s a relief,” I say as I let go of a held breath.

“He’s living his best life.” Sloane’s shoulders drop and she watches David for a moment before heading into the room with careful steps as though not to spook him. He tracks her movement as she stops at the sink to ditch the contents of the bowl before dousing everything with bleach, but he doesn’t move, just keeps slowly digging into the pint of ice cream.

I lean against the doorframe and cross my arms as I watch Sloane work at the sink. “When did you figure out who Thorsten was?”

“Pretty much right away.” She shrugs, her focus still caught on her hands as she washes the bowl more thoroughly than it probably requires. “I heard about a cannibal killer in the UK from a few years ago who hadn’t surfaced recently. When Lachlan gave us the location and I looked into disappearances nearby, they fit the same profile as the victims in his previous location. After that, I went through local real estate purchases from the last few years and bingo, found him.”

“Did you consider at any point that you might want to clue me in about a cannibal inviting us over for dinner?” I ask.

Sloane shrugs, her attention still not shifting to me. “Maybe. Mostly only when I was scraping human meat off your tongue. Up until then, no, I can’t say that I did. You insisted on worming your way onto my dinner invite, after all.”

“Christ.”

She giggles, clearly delighted with herself. Her eyes shine with amusement when she turns to me as she dries her hands with paper towel. “Worked out pretty well in the end, wouldn’t you say?”

“Not really.”

Sloane grins as she heads toward David whose focus is consumed by the ice cream in his grasp. She shoots me an unsure glance before she stops by his swinging legs. “Hey, David. I’m Sloane,” she says. He doesn’t acknowledge her words, just watches her as he slides a spoonful of ice cream into his mouth. “Maybe we should take a break from the food, what do you say?”

Sloane’s smile is sweet, her movement fluid and graceful as she grasps the tub with one hand, the spoon with the other, then gently pulls them from David’s grip. He doesn’t protest and relinquishes both items at her request.

“Well,” she says as she saunters closer to me, her dimple a shadow of restrained amusement as she keeps her eyes fused to the plain white tub in her hand. She’s still reading the homemade label when she draws to a halt in front of me. “I might never look at ice cream the same way again.”

“I don’t want to know.”

“Ingredients: cream—”

“Sloane—”

“Sugar—”

“I’m begging you,” I say, but as soon as ‘beg’ leaves my lips, Sloane’s grin ignites. My stomach flips in the most uncomfortable way.

Sloane clears her throat. “‘Semen, milked April tenth to April thirteenth.’ That’s an interesting substitute to salt—”

I push past her and vomit in the sink to the sound of her traitorous laugh. Christ, I thought there wasn’t anything left, but I was wrong. It takes a long moment to recover myself before I can rinse my mouth and the sink, my breath and balance both unsteady.

“Christsakes. What a fucking weirdo,” I say as I wipe a thin film of sweat from my forehead and turn to face Sloane where she stands next to David with her arms crossed and a shit-eating grin spread across her lips.

“Yeah, he was a strange one.”

“I’m still not sure if I’m talking about Thorsten or you.”

Sloane giggles and shrugs. “Maybe it’s fun to see the perfect pretty boy a little messed up for a change.”

My dark glare only seems to amuse her further. “I think you’ve already seen that plenty,” I reply as memories of last year’s game bubble to the surface. I can still recall Sloane’s touch as she bandaged my bloody knuckles, can still feel the warmth of her fingertips on my skin.

“That was different,” she says. “That was you in your natural element. This is…definitely not that.”

I huff a breath of agreement but say nothing further.

“But, you do kinda owe me extra for this year’s win,” Sloane says as she wanders closer.

I give her a suspicious glance as I lean against the stainless steel sink. “How do you figure?”

“Saving you from choking, for one thing. I thought that was kinda obvious,” she replies with a shrug. She stops just out of reach as she gnaws the edge of her lower lip. “I think I need to make a claim.”

“A claim?”

“A victory claim.”

“Hold up,” I say, shaking my head. “I didn’t make a victory claim last year when I beat that piece of shit into the ground for spying on you.”

“To be fair, you also kinda spied on me.”

I scoff, but it sounds forced. “Did not.”

“No? The way I remember it, you were pretty much in the wall, that’s how hard you were listening to me getting myself off.”

“I was listening to that pink tie motherfucker getting himself off to you. So, no.”

“Sure,” she says with a flat glare. She turns toward David, watching him for a long moment before she spins on her heel and levels me with ferocity in her green and gold eyes. “David.”

My gaze travels over to the vacant expression of the man who sits on the prep table, his legs still swinging in circles. “What about him?”

“Give him a job.”

I snort a laugh. “A job.” Another loud laugh whooshes from my chest before reality sinks in. She’s fucking serious. “What the fuck?”

“You heard me. A job.” Sloane’s eyes narrow when I shake my head. She takes a step closer and pins me with a murderous glare. “We can’t leave him like this.”

“Sure we can. He should be glad he didn’t get eaten. He’s in the clear. Dodged a bullet. Or a fork,” I say.

“And now he’s got nothing. You could give him a place to work. A purpose.”

“Have you noticed that we’re in Cali-fucking-fornia? I live in Boston, Sloane. How the hell am I going to get him from here to there without arousing suspicion?”

“I dunno,” she says with a shrug, her expression unconcerned by this dilemma she’s dropped in my lap. “If he hasn’t been reported missing by anyone, you could just…take him.”

“It’s not like Winston. I can’t just put him in a cat carrier and bring him with me.”

Sloane sighs and tries to tamp down an eye roll she’s desperate to unleash. “I didn’t find anything about a missing person matching his description in the area in my research. If Thorsten wanted a long-term servant, he probably took someone whose absence wouldn’t be missed by anyone. You could just claim he’s your brother. It’s not like he’s going to tell them any different.”

“This is an epically bad idea, Blackbird.”

“Then drop him off at the hospital and drive away. If his reappearance hits the news, you could reach out, offer to set him up. Just say you were so moved by his story or some shit.”

“I’m not.” I look over at David, who watches me with no spark of interest or awareness. “No offense, mate.”

He doesn’t respond.

I drag a hand down my face and pin her with a pleading gaze. “Look, Blackbird, it’s sweet what you’re trying to do for him. Really. But this is a huge ask, and he might be better off here. I’m sure he’s got family somewhere, people who need to know where he is and who will want to take care of him. We don’t even know what he can and can’t do now, thanks to that Thorsten fucker.”

“I bet he could wash dishes.” Undeterred, Sloane turns from me and approaches David. Her hand folds around his wrist and he looks down at her touch. “Come with me, okay?”

With a few gentle tugs, David slides off the table and follows Sloane. I make room for them to stop close to me at the commercial dishwasher. She takes a few plates and hands them to David before she guides him to the rack, her smile encouraging, that fucking dimple filling me with equal parts warmth and dismay.

“Can you help me with the dishes, David? You just put them in the rack and then open it like this.” She demonstrates how to open and close the freestanding machine before guiding him to fill the rack, which he does a little more quickly than I expected. He successfully navigates all the next steps with her encouragement, and when the cycle is finished he takes the clean dishware out and leaves it to cool on the counter. “That was awesome. See, Rowan? He got it no problem.”

I resist the urge to groan when Sloane’s bright smile alights on me. “For godsakes. You look like a kid asking for candy.”

“Please? Super please. Big extra pleases with cherries on top,” she says as she stops in front of me. Her dainty hands curl around my biceps in an uncharacteristically forward touch, her blood-red nails like talons against my skin. “I’ll even give you a victory claim to make up for last year. Whatever you want.”

I swallow and resist the urge to either maul her or run away. My feet stay planted as my eyes narrow with skepticism. “Whatever I want?”

She nods, but her brow furrows as though she’s just starting to realize what she’s gotten herself into.

My slow smile is wicked. “You’re one hundred percent sure about this.”

Her face scrunches. My grin stretches.

David burps.

And just like that, my smile disappears. “Fucksakes. I’m going to regret this, aren’t I.”

Sloane bounces in place.

“I’m going to collect,” I warn.

“I know.”

“And you’re helping me clean.”

“I thought that much was obvious, seeing as how I just washed your puke bowl.”

I let loose a heavy, lengthy sigh. “Fine,” I say on a groan, and Sloane beams. She bounces in place. There might even be a squeak. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her bounce or squeak, and I’m not sure it’s so much about David as it is about convincing me into something that she really, really wants.

“Thank you,” she breathes.

In one hop, she kisses me on the cheek.

And then she’s gone, the echo of her touch fading as though it was never real, just imagined. But I think I catch the wisp of blush on her cheek as she turns away. I think she hides it from me as she gathers supplies to start cleaning. In fact, I know it. It’s in the shy smile she darts in my direction before she lowers her head and leaves for the dining room.

It takes a few hours of cleaning to erase our presence from Thorsten’s house. When we’re done, I keep David occupied in the kitchen by loading the same three racks of dishes over and over, and then I walk Sloane outside.

We stand in silence, both of us looking up at the few stars whose light penetrates the pollution from the city sprawl beyond the dark hills. It was only a few hours ago that it felt like the universe had collapsed in on us. All its power was honed in a single blade. And now we’re a fleeting breath of time beneath starlight.

It’s Sloane’s voice that breaks the night.

“I think we’re officially best friends now,” she says.

“Oh yeah? Do you want to go do karate in the garage?”

Sloane grins at her feet. Her dimple is a shadow in the porch light. My heart is still turning over when her smile fades.

“I lied, by the way,” she says.

I wish she’d return my gaze, but she doesn’t. She can’t bring herself to. So I take a second to memorize the details of her profile, because I know the hardest part is coming, just like it did last year, just like it did in the restaurant.

“Lied about what?” I ask.

The delicate column of her throat shifts as she swallows.

And then her head turns, just enough to give me her eyes and a melancholy smile that tips up one corner of her lips, the faint trace of her dimple coaxed into view.

“Boston. I wasn’t there for a meeting.”

Her words echo in my head, and before I can absorb them or ask what she means, she hikes her bag higher on her shoulder and walks away.

I don’t just hate this part. I fucking loathe it.

“See you next year, Butcher,” she says, and then she slips into her car and disappears into the night.

I lied too, I want to say. But I just don’t get the chance.