Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 85490 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 427(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85490 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 427(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
I reach Laura’s back fence and throw myself over.
I hit the other side with a grunt and lie very still. Nothing moves. There are no shouts, no alarms, no snipers blowing my brains out the back of my skull. I slowly get to my feet and stay hunched over as I hurry through her yard, angling to her back door, and I have to skirt around scattered sculptures in various stages of weathered disrepair. Hands, fingers, an ear, a few tongues, even what looks like a single severed big toe. The grass is high and the flower beds are more like nurseries for weeds. Clearly, my little demon doesn’t care about landscaping.
I reach the door and find it unlocked.
“Still alive,” I whisper to myself as I turn the handle. “For now, anyway.”
It’s strange, seeing her place in person. I’ve been watching it through her cameras for days now, but this is the first time I’ve actually been inside. The sense of scale is different—it’s bigger than I expected. It smells like candle wax and perfume, a surprisingly pleasant scent. I walk quietly to the kitchen and pull the mask on, listening for any noise. There’s a low hum of something, probably her impressive basement ventilation system. Last I saw, she was down there hard at work on her next jackal ear. I head to the door and hesitate.
This is her private world. I can’t guess how many people have been in here over the years, but I’m betting it’s less than ten. Maybe less than five. I’m not sure she really thought I’d be able to pull this off when she made the offer, and I need to be careful about how I play this.
Laura’s fragile. She’s also the toughest fucking woman I’ve ever met. But she’s only just starting to come back into the world, and I can tell that the wrong move will push her right back into isolation. Which I really don’t want. My coming here is a violation of her sacred privacy, and I have to be respectful of that.
But I also want to scare the fucking shit out of her.
I creep down the basement steps. Lucky for me, they make no noise. I’m guessing they’re reinforced in order to stand the weight of bringing all those sculpting materials up and down. I pause at the bottom and gaze across the room.
Laura’s standing in front of a block of stone. Her workbench is on the right. It’s messy and covered with tools. The camera I watch her through is propped up at the top, giving a nice view of the space. There are more storage lockers, a few sculptures that are half-finished, and more untouched raw materials.
But I can only stare at her. Laura’s wearing overalls and a white t-shirt. Her hair’s braided but messy. Her skin’s covered in a sheen of sweat and dust. She’s got a respirator covering her face, a chisel in her left hand, and a hammer in her right. I lean against the wall, enjoying the way her body moves, her strong arms and sure motions as she cracks off piece after piece, seemingly at random, but I know her better than that by now. Nothing Laura does is random, not when she’s working. Everything is by design, preordained by some inscrutable plan she keeps hidden up in her head.
It’s incredible. There’s something sublime about watching a master do their work with such ease. I almost don’t want to interrupt her.
“Hello, little demon.”
My low voice shatters through the low drone of the ventilation fan.
Laura shrieks in terror, whirls around, and throws the hammer at my face.
Chapter 20
Laura
Iwatch in horror as the hammer flies at Jackal’s head. He barely manages to duck out of the way, and a plume of concrete chips scatters against his back from where the tool smashes against the wall.
“Not the welcome I expected,” he says, picking himself up.
I stand trembling. This can’t be real. This seriously can’t be real. I finally pushed myself too hard and I’m having the mental breakdown I always expected. Jackal can’t actually be here.
Yeah, I told him to show up, and I gave him some pretty decent incentive, but there’s no possible way he could’ve actually pulled it off.
This was going to happen sooner or later. My tenuous grip on reality was shaky at best, and now it’s totally gone.
“I’m hallucinating,” I say, thinking maybe if I admit it out loud, that’ll snap me out of it, like telling myself to wake up during a dream.
“No, you’re not.” He comes toward me.
I brandish the chisel at him. “You can’t actually be here. There’s no way.”
“There’s always a way.”
I try to stab him. I figure, if I do something drastic, it’ll break the illusion and I’ll find myself lying on the floor passed out from dust inhalation or something. Instead, my hallucination catches my wrist with a grunt and yanks me off balance. I try to punch him, but he turns his shoulder and lifts me, throwing me down onto my back, and cradling my head to keep it from bumping off the floor.