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Power was a borrowed thing.
Places held onto pain, items kept the imprint of aggression, walls were watermarked with memories, and that nasty chair had witnessed the departure of a soul. She remembered a corpse slouching there, grayish and gone, and tempered her grin, whirling around, searching for the source.
She’d asked a god for an audience and received one. She’d found a guard and had no idea what to do with him now that she had him. “Take him home, I guess,” she murmured
The last time she’d done anything interesting at work, Bishop and Colin had walked through the door, tiptoeing around each other like teenagers at a school dance.
“Food.” She nudged a steaming bowl toward him. “You’re not, like, vegan, right? Or Keto or whatever?” “I was dead this morning,” he said, matter-of-factly.
His gentleness was gone. The guarded, curious guy she’d fished out of Bishop’s basement melted into a confident, magically emboldened dickhead. Every woman knew that feeling, the suddenness of becoming prey. Fuck.
Secrets were like botflies, making homes inside little wounds, growing and wriggling, and bursting free entirely new.
Darkness thickened like paste, hollowing his handsome bone structure, chasing away the assurance of his humanity. He passed as almost, as maybe, but anyone with a lick of intuition would sense the chaos nesting in him.
She’d always been the upheaval—someone’s dreaded Tower card—and this dynamic was entirely new. What a fucked-up thing, realizing she enjoyed the prospect of being overwhelmed. Destroyed, even.
“Go sit with the other wives and be quiet? Is that what—” “Welcome to church life, witch-bitch.” He nudged her with his elbow and offered a teasing smile before making his way down the aisle toward the podium.
Lincoln's gaze snapped to her. He smiled, nodding along to something someone said. His sly eyes hooked around her ribs. Pulled. Cinched everything a little tighter. She wanted to extinguish the fire he lit. Wanted to walk into the ocean and let the waves pummel her, then crawl back onto shore renewed and restored, unchanged and unbothered. But the spark he'd carried back from hell continued to grow, and Tehlor Nilsen burned.
In unison, every woman in the kitchen said, “The Lord will keep her,” except for Tehlor. Every mental alarm that could’ve rang out did so at the very same time. Jaws music. The theme song from Halloween. Admiral Ackbar hollering it's a trap! Fire alarms, air-raid sirens, and the iconic slasher movie ching ching ching.
What a sad, sorry thing to watch a murder take place and expect an absent god to intervene.
