have been, but still it shot out, striping across her face, hot and salty when it dripped down her lips. She blinked it from her eyes, and kept going at Beck’s gentle encouragement, until the man’s throat was a gaping second mouth, and the blood was pouring down his chest, and he was dead, dead, dead.
She licked her lips on reflex, but she didn’t hate the taste. Her pulse throbbed in her wrists, her throat, her temples. Fluttered at the back of her skull, where she’d cracked it against the now-dead man’s nose. Her wrists smarted where he’d gripped them, and her breath shivered in her lungs: a dozen little symptoms of being alive. Of being on the other side of the veil that the unmoving thing before her had crossed beyond.
Beck took the knife from her, and set it aside. Then his arms went around her, and he pulled her shoulder into his chest. Gripped her tight with sticky, bloody fingers. Pressed his face into the side of her head, his breath harsh rasps through her hair, hot against her scalp. “Rosie,” he murmured. He was shaking. “Oh, God, Rosie, you sweetheart. You’re perfect.”
She closed her eyes, and found that her breathing had shifted to match his: little gasps. Dizziness drove her harder against him. She was warm, and shaking, too, now, and he clutched her tight, so tight, but it didn’t hurt, nothing did.
He nuzzled through her hair, and found the top of her ear with his mouth. Nipped at it gently. Panted. “Rosie.” Just a low, rough whisper. His hand found her throat, holding not squeezing. Fingertips splayed over her pulse.
“God,” he breathed. “Fuck.” Then he released her, and stood, and she burned with cold where he’d been pressed only seconds ago.
She watched him, incapable of – anything. Watched him rifle through kitchen drawers, heedless of the blood smudges he left on the cabinets, until he found a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a lighter, and lit one. He groaned on the first exhale, smoke pluming out across the island.
Rose’s legs gave out, and she sat back hard on her backside, just beyond the puddle of blood.
That was how Kay found them. “Oh, Jesus.” She held her robe up like a fine lady would a skirt, the edge dark with blood; she’d walked through the puddle in the foyer, then, before realizing what the dark glisten on the hardwood was. “Oh, shit. What did you – Rose?” She looked frazzled in a way Rose had never seen her before. She turned on Beck with a hiss, eyes flashing. “You brought her down here?”
“She came down here on her own,” Beck said, tone soft, voice crackling with warning. Even Kay drew back from it, clutching her robe closed at her throat. “After I told her not to.”
He almost sounded…proud.
“But she – why is she – did you let her–” Kay’s face reddened. “Why is she holding a knife?”
Beck took a drag and tapped ash onto the countertop. “Because she used it.”
Kay sucked in a breath to respond–
“Go back to bed,” Beck said. Ordered. “We’ll handle this.”
Kay stared at him a moment, jaw set, mouth pressed to a trembling line. Rose was startled to see the glimmer of unshed tears in her eyes – though maybe that was a trick of the light against her glasses.
“Go back to bed, Kay,” Beck said, softly, and somehow that was even colder.
Kay’s gaze cut toward Rose, a dark and unreadable look, then she whirled and stormed out.
Beck finished his cigarette and turned to flick the butt into the sink. “Well,” he said on a last exhale of smoke. “I suppose we’ll need some plastic.”
TWELVE
He washed his hands in a quick, cursory way, and urged her to do the same. She had to set her knife in the sink first.
In the garage, he showed her where he kept rolls of thick, clear plastic, and lots of sturdy rope. There were three bodies, all of them made heavier by death, and she helped Beck roll them up in the plastic and bind them tightly. They cleaned the blood from the floors with harsh, chemical-scented cleansers that burned her nose, jarring after all the ink-dust-wood scents she’d grown so used to in the house. There would be stains, but Beck said they could throw some rugs down.
They spoke little, only directions and acknowledgements. Rose kept waiting for horror to settle over her; for disgust to punch her in the gut. But it didn’t happen. Under