“Oh, fancy. You didn’t like it, though, did you? What didn’t work for you? The mess? You seem like someone who doesn’t like messes.”
This is just a conversation, Ahmare told herself. Given what I’m going to face, this is nothing. No problem. Just words.
“Or is it the guilt.” The Shadow leaned back against the mesh-covered wall of the cabin, crossing one combat boot over the other. “Yeah, I’m guessing you don’t like the weight of the dead around your neck. The memories hang like a heavy chain right on your sternum and make it harder to breathe. When you close your eyes, the smell of the fresh meat and gunpowder comes back to you and chokes you. It’s all about being robbed of air at the end of the day, isn’t it. No more air, no more life. Both for you . . . and him. It was a him, wasn’t it. You couldn’t kill a young or another female, I don’t think. You don’t have it in you.”
Ahmare’s eyes went to the closed door of the bathroom.
Hurry, she thought.
“So who was it? Who’d you send to the Fade.”
The Shadow started to flip her gun up and down, casually tossing it and catching the weight as if she controlled every single molecule in the weapon, in herself . . . in the whole world. She seemed, as the Beretta caught air and returned to her palm again and again, to be in charge also of gravity . . . of time itself.
That confidence was captivating in the way of a cobra. Hypnotic because it was—
The Shadow pointed the gun directly at Ahmare’s chest. “Answer my fucking question.”
—deadly.
Those black eyes flashed peridot, and Ahmare knew with absolute certainty that she was going to fail at getting Chalen’s beloved back to him. The Shadow was right. She was a classroom chump, a videogamer who excelled in an armchair but was going to be picked off first in the actual field of conflict.
All target practice, no tried-and-true.
She thought of her brother and mourned him like he was already dead.
The Shadow smiled, flashing long white fangs. “Poor little girl lost in the wood. You think Duran’s your hero? You think he’s going to rescue you? Let me tell you that he won’t. That male is going to desert you when it counts and you’re going to end up dead in a place where your kin won’t find the body. If you’re smart, you’ll back that SUV out of my garage and get gone. For someone like you, it’s better to admit defeat up front than be forced into a failure that puts you in the Fade. At least if you cry uncle now, you’ll still be able to enjoy pumpkin spice lattes and the last season of The Big Bang Theory in September—while you’re working out at the gym and shooting targets on the range—”
“You’re wrong,” Ahmare blurted.
“About what?” The Shadow started flipping the gun again, like she had to do something to stave off boredom. “Do tell, on the outside chance I can learn something new about you. But you should know that I catch liars like fish in a stocked pond. And I like to eat them.”
“It wasn’t a gun. There was no gunpowder.”
Those eyes flicked over. Before the Shadow could interrupt, Ahmare found herself speaking in a direct voice.
“And I don’t know what I’ll see or smell when I close my eyes because I killed him just after nightfall tonight.”
She thought of Chalen wanting to know what it had felt like. When she had denied him the story, failed to fulfill his greed, it had been an act of defiance in a situation she had no leverage over.
Now, she spoke through a tight throat to prove herself.
And not to the Shadow.
“I spent the night before watching the human,” she said. “He lived with two other males, but he worked alone, outside of town in a trailer in the woods. I tracked him to his lab. He made meth, I guess. What else could he be doing with all those filthy tubs and chemicals?”
“What did you use,” the Shadow said. “If not a gun, then what.”
Ahmare reached to her hip. “This knife. Chalen wanted proof he was dead.”
“What did you cut off?”
“His head.” Ahmare licked her lips with a dry tongue in hopes of getting the syllables unstuck from the sides and roof of her mouth. “I was waiting for him out at the trailer. I spent most of the day practicing in my mind how it would all happen, but nothing went like I thought it would. He had cleared the field around the trailer to get a clean shot at anyone who came on the property—so I had to lay flat on top of the roof, on the far side of the slight tilt. It was hot. The asphalt shingles were like a griddle from being in the sun all day and my palms were sweaty. Maybe that was the fear, too, although I’m not sure what I was more worried about. That he would show up or that he wouldn’t.”