she felt as though she were putting on a stranger’s clothes. And as she brushed her wet hair out and tied it back, there was a stranger staring at her in the mirror. And when she went over and sat down on her bed to use her landline, she didn’t remember what the switchboard number at BioMed was.
That last one wasn’t a very material lapse as it turned out. She managed to recall the digits after a couple of pattern tries on the number buttons, but just got a recorded message stating that the laboratory was closed.
She did find something interesting on her own voicemail. Her colleague from Stanford was looking to meet with her, and not just for networking. He had a real-life lab position that was opening up.
She’d have to think about that.
Before she left her room, she went over to the duffel and decided to empty it so she had something to put the few personal effects she had at her workstation in. And there might be employee severance packets or something.
Who knew. Who cared.
Unzipping the top flap, she—
Murhder’s scent, that incredible dark spice that she loved so much, wafted out and she had to blink quick as her eyes watered from sadness. It was a good minute before she could start the unpacking, and as she took her clothes out, the shirt and the pants, the sweatshirt, the bra—
“Oh … God …” she choked.
With a hand that shook, she reached in and pulled out a thick length of braided rope.
It was black and red, and tied on both ends with leather strapping.
Murhder’s beautiful locks.
Running the heavy weight through her hands, she collapsed backward onto the floor and lowered her head. He had cut it off for her, she realized.
He had wanted to leave her something more of him, even if they could not be together.
There was no blinking away anything as she cradled the unexpected gift to her heart and then touched the necklace he had tied around her neck. The talisman and the braid were all she had of him.
Sarah wept until she felt sure that her soul cracked in half.
The attic in Eliahu Rathboone’s house still smelled the same.
As Murhder sat at the trestle table, his sole companion was a single candle in an antique holder that burned steadily before him. The small flame that hovered at the top was unmoving, the yellow glow perfectly round at the bottom where it fed upon the wick, the tip like that of a paintbrush’s fine point.
The softness of the light made him think of the head of a dandelion gone to seed, downy and gentle.
Down below, he could hear humans moving around in the house. Doors shutting. Voices trading places in conversation. Footsteps. The fact that this was their active time, that these daylight hours he could not safely enjoy were the basis of the men’s and women’s lives, was a reminder of the divide that existed between the species.
The divide that could not be crossed in his and Sarah’s case.
There was a cheap pen on the old wood panels of the table and he picked it up. Blue ink, its plastic body marked with the logo of an orthodontist’s office in Virginia. The thing had been left behind by a guest, and he had used it to sign those papers Wrath had wanted executed.
The guests did that often—leaving things behind, that was, the incidentals forgotten in their haste to repack what they’d brought with them on their break from their normal lives. The lost-and-found down at the front desk was a series of Rubbermaid bins tucked under the check-in counter into which all manner of human detritus was stored in the event the owners called looking for their sunglasses, reading glasses, regular glasses. Sweaters. Socks. Retainers and bite plates for teeth. Keys. Belts. Books.
He had always told the people who worked for him to send the things home as requested, no matter if the postage required was greater than the intrinsic worth of the object.
As an exhile from what he considered his home in the Black Dagger Brotherhood, he had always felt badly for the objects left behind.
Staring into the flame, he pictured Sarah’s face with all the specificity his memory could provide, everything from the curve of her lip to the arch of her brow, her nose, that beauty mark on her cheek. He had never seen her with makeup on. Her hair done up with false fancy. Her body clothed in the distraction