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He gave a little sigh of disappointment. “Ah well, worth an ask.”
We sat in silence for a while, watching wolf pups chase a lemming around a snowbank. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay tomorrow?” I asked.
“I’ll be fine. If I can come off smack, I can come off bloody temazepam, Lilith. We’ve both read the idiot guides, and I’m not going to rush it. I can do this, I promise.”
“We can still make a doctor’s appointment…”
Finn shook his head. “Nope. I got myself into this shit, so I need to get myself out without anyone giving me a helping hand. I know it sounds daft, but that’d feel like cheating.”
I grudgingly surrendered. “Okay, but remember, if you change your mind…”
Finn stopped me with a kiss on the lips. “Thank you for the kind offer, but I won’t. Now just hush and watch the little baby wolves with me.”
I sighed and settled further into his embrace. It seemed that as soon as one journey had ended, the next had just begun. And Finn Strachan, stubborn bastard that he was, had decided to take the most difficult route he could possibly find.
Chapter Three
Finn
By Maundy Thursday of the Semana Santa – Spain’s Holy Week festivities – and the day of Nat’s birthday, I’d reduced my daily dose of temazepam by fifteen whole milligrams with a meagre one hundred and sixty-five still to go, and I felt fucked to all hell. I hadn’t slept for as much as a minute for two nights straight, and every muscle gave a soft scream whenever I moved. Even my eyes hurt in their sockets.
Despite my assurances to Lili this withdrawal was proving to be an absolute bastard, and she knew it. She’d hardly left my side since the whole miserable process had begun, and I couldn’t remember the last time she’d ventured into her studio; it appeared that I could add the fact that I was keeping her away from the career she adored to my burgeoning guilt.
*****
The day got off to a bad start when I collected the mail from the black metal mailbox in the front garden of the apartment. I hadn’t anticipated any issue: there had only been one envelope there, and I knew the drill. Cotton gloves to open it, take the letter out carefully, bag it and deliver it to the police station in Santa Marita if there was any concern about its contents. No problem. Besides, the envelope in my hands didn’t look like one of the loony-tunes outbursts we’d become used to receiving; Lilith’s name and address had been neatly printed on the thick, ivory paper, and it looked more like business correspondence, or maybe a written request for a portrait; the postmark indicated that it was from Amsterdam. I slid the letter out, and read the single line of text:
Freedom is not granted by mere distance.
“Fuck it.” I dropped the damn thing on the floor so fast it could have been wired to the mains. Pages of illiterate, scrawled rantings about dismemberment and slow death when we least expected it were nothing compared to that one beautifully typed sentence in the centre of the page. For one awful moment, I thought I was about to puke.
“Finn?” Lilith was at my side in a second. “What is it? Show me.” She used a piece of tissue to pick up the discarded letter and read it. I thought that she might laugh at my ridiculous overreaction, but for the first time since we’d begun receiving threats through the mail, she looked concerned. “Well someone clearly knows that less is more.”
She reached for one of the evidence bags that Sergeant Mendoza had left us, and carefully slipped the paper inside before turning to me again. “Are you okay?”
“Sure. Just being an arsehole. For a change. Christ, It’s just that tone, the arrogance of the thing. It’s like…”
“Blaine. I know.” She took my hands in hers. “But she’s in prison, and I very much doubt that His Majesty’s guests have access to that kind of quality paper. More than likely it’s some high-functioning tosser with too much time on their hands, playing ‘let’s pretend’, or someone acting on her behalf. Let’s face it, there’s quite a list of suspects to work through. We’ll just send it to the station with all the rest of that nonsense, and they can deal with it for us.”
I pulled her towards me and kissed her hard, as if that contact could create a barrier against the world. “Can we just go back to bed?” I pleaded, desperate to keep the rising darkness away.
*****
“Finn, come back to me.” Lili’s voice was gentle and full of concern, but it carried an order. My temples pulsed. Another echo, this time when I was awake. Not good.
come back to me you bastard don’t try and hide out there in subspace I’ll break your fucking neck I’m not finished yet I paid good money for you to feel everything you wee whore
I couldn’t remember who’d said it, or even when. I only knew it was from early in my career when word of my ability to take just about anything your average sick bastard might want to throw in my direction got around the grubby outer margins of Dublin’s S&M scene, where ‘Safe, Sane and Consensual’ was just an amusing, ancient myth. I’d soon learnt that zoning out was not an option that my customers appreciated.
good boy but if you do that again I’ll make sure you don’t walk for a week you fucking slut now look at me when I’m playing with you
“Finn? Sweetheart?” Lilith suddenly sat up and cupped my chin in her hands. To my shame my hard-on had disappeared, and her eyes narrowed with concern as she appraised my face, no doubt seeing everything and leaving me nowhere to hide. My pulse began to flutter in my throat.
Lilith
“Finn, do you want to do this?”
“I already told you. I’m fine.”
