Fuck his tenderness.
“You know how lucky you are, you didn’t get found out? You didn’t get fuckin’ raped, murdered, and tossed away without a thought?” The words were objects. He was throwing them at me. To wound. To cut open scabs he didn’t even know I had.
But he wanted me to bleed. Even if he didn’t know how deep that cut ran.
I stepped back. “I’m not lucky, Saint. I’m smart. I know how to handle myself around men who make no illusions about what kind of monsters they are. If you haven’t noticed, I can handle monsters. I’m sure as fuck not scared of them. So how about you prowl through the woods, find another woman on the brink of death, figure out a way to get her under your thumb. Or don’t. Just get the fuck off my property.”
He recognized my tone. I forced him to. He wasn’t the only one who could turn words into weapons. I was the expert. The artist.
So, he turned.
Picked up his sweater, shrugged on his jacket, and melted back into the woods.
He didn’t look back.
The banging on the door interrupted my third glass of whisky. The remains of a sad dinner of steamed chicken and broccoli was half eaten on the coffee table. I’d overcooked the chicken and undercooked the broccoli. I was trying to distract myself with the whisky and Emily’s last Stephen King book instead of walking to the pantry and opening up the packet of Cheetos Margot had put in there because she was a total monster. My famous control was crumbling here. Was it Saint? The quiet? The fact I couldn’t write?
Though I was still not a fan of visitors in my remote island of suffering and self-deprecation, I was relieved to hear the banging, though not relieved enough to not grab my gun and hold it behind my back as I opened the door.
It was completely dark out, thanks to winter and Daylight Savings, something I liked, apart from when I got a visitor who liked to bang on the door of a place where a woman had been murdered.
I clutched the gun just a little tighter when I didn’t recognize the man standing on my doorstep. I did recognize the pure fury painting his ordinary face.
“I know who you are,” the man hissed at me the second I opened the door.
Annoyingly, fear clutched at my throat. “Then I feel I’m at a disadvantage because I have no idea who you are, or why you’re coming to my house to harass me. But I’m sure the police would do a great job at figuring out your name, putting it on an arrest warrant.” I made sure to keep my voice cool, calm, though inside, I was cursing chasing off Saint before. He could at least have been some use to kill this man who obviously did not mean me any good will.
He was older. Weak looking. Drained looking. His shirt was rumpled. Cheap. It hung off him much like it would a hanger. He was almost entirely gray, hair unkempt, about as wild as his hatred-filled eyes.
I could take him in a fight if it wasn’t for those eyes. Hate made people strong.
“The police,” he scoffed. “What good will they do? They didn’t do anything for her. To save my daughter.” Grief punctuated his anger, weakened it, as grief did. It ate away at strength like a termite might gnaw at wood.
“You were Emily’s father,” I deduced. I didn’t release my grip on the gun. This man looked like he had nothing left to lose.
“I am Emily’s father,” he snarled. “I will always be. And I know who you are. The author who writes about death. Who came here to use my daughter’s murder as some kind of story. I’m here to tell you, I’ll sue you for everything you’re worth if you think of using anything of hers.”
I relaxed slightly. People who were intent on murder usually didn’t threaten legal action. They just went straight to the killing part.
Plus, as hot and toxic as this man’s fury was, it wasn’t enough to push him to violence. I noted it now. The softness to him. It was all but dead with his obvious loss, but it was there. He was not the father who sat on the porch with a shotgun while his daughter’s date walked to the house.
No, he was the father who might shake his hand, invite him in for iced tea.
That was his word. Soft.
It took me longer with the hard grief as a distraction.
“I’m not planning on using your daughter’s murder as a plot for a book,” I told him, wondering if I was lying. “And even I were, you couldn’t sue me for it. Because I am a fiction author. A relatively well-known one with very good lawyers. So, I’m very sorry for your loss, but this is my home now.”
I was being harsh. Bordering on cruel. But I did not know this man. The burden of his grief did not rest on me. It could not.
He blinked a couple of times, like a man who was in some kind of trance, coming out of it. Everything about him became more frail. Older. He had lost whatever steam had got him out here in the first place.
“I understand you’re probably looking for someone to blame,” I continued. “Which is normal, considering the police have found no one for you to punish, but I am not that person. I’m not the person you harass for buying a house. It will do neither of us any good.”
I bit my lip, stopped myself from doing something insane, like inviting him inside. Trying to comfort him.
That wasn’t my job.
I didn’t have that in me.
“Again, Mr. Andrews, I’m sorry for your loss,” I said. “But Emily isn’t here anymore. So please refrain from coming back.”
Then I closed the door in his face.
For someone that hated people, I was getting a lot of visitors.
Unlike last night, this visitor was not yelling at me and didn’t hate me for the mere fact I bought a house and I wrote about death.
At least, I didn’t think Margot hated me.
She always brought wine I liked and hadn’t put arsenic in it yet. She’d even been toting a freaking cheeseboard when she arrived, just after four in the afternoon.
I’d only been up a handful of hours.
After my little visitor last night, I was keyed. Not shaken at having the parent of a slain girl spouting ugliness at me; no, I was inspired by his grief. His pain. It invigorated me like a fucking vampire after draining a human.
Which was what I was, really. A cold-blooded predator, preying on the vulnerable.
Because I wrote. I wrote, fueled by the man’s utter horror. His life.
His daughter’s death.
I had lied about using Emily’s murder. To him. Mostly to myself. I’d told myself I’d not bought this house because I wanted to write about the murder. It was because I wanted to soak up the negative energy, the death.
I’d pitched a story about a bunch of teenage girls summoning the devil, fucking him and gaining powers from him. Kind of like a fucked-up version of The Craft.
Obviously, my agent and publishers had loved it. I’d gotten a mockup of the cover days ago. I hadn’t opened that email. Told myself it was because I didn’t want it affecting my flow. I wanted to be switched off. Needed to be. I didn’t need someone else’s interpretation of my story messing with me. And the publishers always fucked up my covers. It made me fuming mad I spent weeks having arguments over email, the phone and text until I got exactly what I wanted. It was usually because the book was finished, fully formed by then.
But this time, I didn’t open it because I knew I wasn’t going to be writing the book I’d pitched them.