Page 25 of Wretched Thorns

For now.

“Old money,” Eli said. “Old South.”

“Yeah.”

“Bodie can work that.”

“He can.”

“It is not enough.”

“No.”

“We have to plan this,” Eli said. “If we go in the way we went in here, she will be dead before we are through the door. We don’t know that Marcus needs her alive. He could use the threat of killing her to slow us down. He will time it. He will make her watch us walk in.”

“We are not going to give him the time,” Jasper said.

The truck rumbled down the narrow back road. The fire behind them rose into the pre-dawn.

Chapter six

Three Threads

Iwoke up cold.

Not room-cold. Louisiana in May was never room-cold. This was an unnatural cold. One that came up through the mattress and settled into my back. One that had been with me since the first night here. A cold no blanket could fix.

I was starting to think it wasn’t in the room. I was starting to think it was in the bed.

I didn’t sit up. The shadows in the corners had gone quiet, and I wanted them to stay that way until I knew where he was, before he realized I was awake.

I cracked my eyes open. The room was where I’d left it. Dark wainscoting floor to ceiling, the way it had been every time I’d opened my eyes in it. No windows. Old wood. Old money. The single iron sconce by the door held a fresh candle, burning steady. He’d been in.

A scatter of white petals lay across the coverlet. One on my shoulder. One in my hair.

That ain’t no flower. That’s a tag.

The woman’s voice came back to me as clear as if I were in her kitchen. Pain lanced through my skull. Every place one of them petals touched, he can see. Every petal still on you, he can find.

I’d been wearing him for fuck knows how long.

The shadows in the corners hummed once, low, like an animal turning over in its sleep. I pressed my bound hands to the place in my chest where they answered, and they went quiet.

Stay there, I told them. Not yet.

I had rules now. I’d been making them up as I went.

Rule one: don’t let him see me afraid.

Rule two: don’t let him know something was changing in me, in my chest, my core, the very heart of me.

Rule three: when he came, take everything I could before he took from me.

Rule four, added tonight: the petals come off.

***

I made myself wait. He always came soon after I woke, and I didn’t know how long I’d been out. The hum was the only clock I had now, and the hum did not change.