“That’s good,” Mira says in a dejected tone that she probably used at a beauty pageant thirty years ago.
“It’s not good. It’s cheesy.” I sigh. “You know what? This shit makes all of us feel uncomfortable. And these names only happen in the movies, or on CSI or whatever, and I’m sure you all feel like morons trying to come up with some trivial sound bite for a guy who hacks up labia for kicks.” At this point, all I really want to tell them is to get the fuck over themselves, but that never did much for workplace morale. Still. I like the way half of them blush when I say labia. “The public deserves to know what they’re dealing with here. Give them something they can understand.” With that, I reach forward to yank my phone back, and try to ignore the way my pulse flares at the image on the screen. Red melts in the pale light; she’s strawberry milk, poured in ribbons. It’s like looking at the awkward scrawl of a child.
The world keeps trying to flash away from me today. Wants to pull me down into the mouth of a sin even I’ve never contemplated.
Eventually, Leo’s voice cuts through. “Blood Honey,” she says, studying me with wide, dark eyes.
“Kind of makes him sound…sweet,” Camden says. There’s a hesitant drag to his tone. “Do we want to do that? I don’t know, I—”
“But he probably is sweet,” she shoots back, “when you meet him. Just his idea of sweet is rather different to anyone else’s.”
Camden tugs at his shirt collar. “Jesus. You make it sound like he’s normal.”
“Enough. Look. I like Blood Honey—the name, that is. It’s innocent and provocative at the same time. And this…” I gesture to the picture still visible on my phone, “…is provocative. Use that.”
“Can we publish the images?” Mira asks.
“Carson?” I prompt.
The attorney shrugs. “If you blur her face out, I can’t see why not.”
Normally, we’d be asked not to show images like this for fear of inspiring copycats, or inciting public panic. But since the first body was—deliberately, I’m sure—placed well within the public eye, all that’s gone out of the window.
“Show the Darling part. Just her thigh,” I decide. “Nothing else, for now. We’ve got the upper hand with the exclusive, and nobody needs mangled * flashed across their TV screens at breakfast. We’ll keep it classy.”
If Tuija were here, she’d have snorted at that, and I’d have been annoyed. But she isn’t here. I’m annoyed anyway, as if the memory alone is enough.
“I’ll distribute the images when I get back to the office. In the meantime…” I flick a hand toward the door. “Go wake yourselves up. This is the biggest story we’ve had for months, and I want to run with it.” With scissors.
To be frank: this is the biggest story anyone has had since a notorious young media mogul was accidentally shot by his girlfriend, and if there was ever a headline to bury bad news, this is it. Finally, I can draw some attention back to my channels without heat and speculation; once viewers clap eyes on the image of that girl’s blood-encrusted thigh, nobody will care about Aeron Lore. They’ll just want to know who the hell Blood Honey is, and what America’s going to do to catch him.
My staff shuffle out of the board room, flinching as the fluorescent corridor lights scrape their eyes. Over the years, I’ve called them in far earlier, but for nothing quite as grotesque as this; they’ve left shadows of themselves on the upholstered seats, nervous sweat and microscopic flakes of skin shed amid shudders of tension. Bunch of snakes. One legacy begets another, it seems, and all of them make me desperate for a shower.
But instead of that, I have to face Leo. She’s still in place beside me, unblinking. Contemplating. I am about to be lectured in layers of honey and smoke; I’ll be dirtier afterward, but will feel cleaner.
Leo waits until the door folds shut. Then she twists toward me, resting her chin in her palm. “Are you satisfied that we’ve done this psycho justice?”
“Because psychos deserve justice.”