Master of Salt & Bones

by Keri Lake

“Maybe he just likes his privacy.” “Most murderers do.”

Maybe that’s the reason they call him the Devil. Because the madness that breathes within these walls is as real as the man who feeds it.

Like the sound of her voice, it calls to some dark and primitive side of me that longs to place her on a shelf, so no one else can touch her.

What a wondrous place it must be inside his mind. A dark and wicked place, brimming with the bizarre and peculiar, just like the song.

I want to taste it on her lips like an addict watching someone get high for the first time.

I should’ve known better than to get involved with a man like him—a deity of wrath and flames, when I’m nothing but a mortal, playing with fire.