“Hell, yes,” I say with a laugh. “I’m sure it is.”
A few minutes later, the guys come back outside. Jack’s face is set in angry lines.
“What’s in there?” I ask.
“Nothing,” he says. “Literally, nothing. Whoever bought it hasn’t stepped foot inside since the day it sold.”
“Odd,” Lucien says quietly. “But I guess people can be odd. It’s not against the law.”
“Something doesn’t feel right,” Millie says slowly. “Like it’s all more smoke and mirrors.”
“Well, I can tell you that there’s nothing inside,” Cash says. “Except about three inches of dust and maybe a mouse or two. The structure is surprisingly sound for sitting empty in the bayou for so many years.”
“That’s just it,” Lucien says. “After just a couple of years, it should have started to decay. It wasn’t a new house when Jack sold it.”
“No, it was a good fifty years old then,” Jackson agrees. “But no one’s inside.”
“Now what?” I ask, suddenly exhausted. “He’s just got us on a wild goose chase.”
“He’s distracting us,” Brielle says. “Keeping us from the most important thing, and that’s coming up with a plan to get rid of him. Instead, he has us running all over Louisiana.”
“You’re right.” Jackson takes one last look at the house. “Let’s go back to Millie and Lucien’s and regroup.”
We turn back to the cars. I swear I see a curtain move out of the corner of my eye, but when I look up at the house, it’s still.
Chapter Twenty
“I killed so many women, I have a hard time keeping them straight.”
-Gary Holmes, The Green River Killer
“Why do you continue to underestimate me?” He paces the room, his footfalls heavy, his hands fisted in anger. He’s never been so angry in his life.
Even on the day he killed his mother, he wasn’t this angry.
“You think you can just come here and stop what I’ve started?” He turns and glares at his toys. They’re all weeping, especially the newest one he took early this morning—naked and crying on the little mattresses he laid on the floor for them. “I’ve given you every chance, girls. Every chance there is to show me that you’re worthy of everything I’ve done for you. And I’ve done plenty. You know. You saw it all.”
He shakes his head in disgust and rubs his hand over his sweaty face.
“I spent years making everything good for you. Just perfect. I’ve taken blood. Eyes. I’ve sent the ghosts to you so you could see. So you could get excited. So you would WORSHIP ME!”
His face turns red as he yells in their faces.
“But you’re ungrateful! Just like all the other women I’ve known. You’re ungrateful.”
He smiles then, seemingly calm.
“And that just won’t do, ladies.”
He paces slower now in front of the girls, his hands linked behind his back as if he’s a sergeant looking over his troops.
“You’re not who I thought you were. I’ve denied it for a while because I wanted to believe in you. To see the best in you. But I was wrong. You’re not wonderful. You’re not for me. And because of that, you have to pay.”
He turns to his toys and clucks his tongue.
“Now, now. There’s no need to carry on so dramatically. These hysterics are getting old, to be honest. How are those burns coming along?”
He leans in to check on a blonde woman who’s covered in tiny burns from her neck to her toes.
“Healing. That’s good. Probably hurts, doesn’t it?”
She presses her lips together and lets out a low moan of despair.
“ANSWER ME!”
“Y-y-yes. Yes, it hurts.”
“Good. See now? We just have to be kind to each other. Even though our time together grows shorter, we have to be kind. There’s no need to be otherwise.”
He licks his lips, pondering which method to use on each of the remaining toys.
“Of course, now that I’ve decided you’re not the girls I want, the ones I need, we’ll have to speed this along a bit. I have so much to do. You understand, of course.”
He reaches for the girl with the burns, and she begins silently weeping, the tears flowing like little rivers from her eyes.
“Please,” she murmurs. “Please, just let me go.”
“Now, Millie. You know that’s not how this works. When will you learn? Oh, that’s right. You won’t. You just won’t learn. So, you have to die.”
The other toys gasp, cry, even scream as they watch Horace slowly burn the flesh from his toy until the life finally leaves her eyes.
And then he turns to the next.
The temper, the tempo increases as he makes his way through them, slicing and cutting, stabbing, drilling. It’s a fevered frenzy of murder, one full of rage and blood and absolute horror. Until he turns to the remaining plaything.
The other toys’ sprayed blood matts her red hair, though her face is dirty and dry.
No tears on this one.
He grins, his chest heaving from the exertion of his work.
“You’re the only one left, Daphne.”
And without another word, he simply swings out his hand and slits her pretty, white throat from ear to ear.
When she falls to the floor, he smiles in satisfaction.
“There, now. I’ll have to finish this, of course. But first…”
He walks to a bathroom and stares at the face of the man he took—the one who’s done his bidding for quite a while now.
“I don’t need you anymore, Andy. Just like I didn’t need your brother. You were both disappointments. Did you think I wouldn’t find you?”
A single tear slips out of his eye. He can feel Andy fighting him.
And that won’t do.
“Goodbye, Andy.”
He takes the knife and stabs his eyes out.
Chapter Twenty-One
Jackson
“He has us running in circles, chasing our tails,” Brielle says when we’re all back in Millie and Lucien’s house, settled in the library. “And all the other metaphors I can think of. It’s ridiculous.”
“I would have sworn on my life that he was in that house,” I say and hang my head in my hands. “I know that kitchen. I grew up in it. There was no mistaking it.”
“Your premonitions have always been could-bes,” Daphne points out. “A snapshot of what could be, not necessarily what is. And maybe it was something from years from now. We just don’t know.”
I sigh and nod, taking her hand in mine to kiss her fingers. “Yeah. I guess I got excited at the thought of stopping him.”
“We’re going to stop him,” Millie reminds us. “Jack, I mentioned blood magic earlier. To find him. To find the girls.”
“I don’t want to ask them,” I admit, but Miss Sophia’s head turns to me. She and Ruth sit by the fire, each making tea satchels. “They’ve been through a lot already because of me. I’d like to leave them out of this.”