Chapter 205: Give Me Your Hand

Blair woke with her mouth dry.

The strip of lamplight under the door was still there. Daemus lay curled around her back, one arm heavy across her ribs, his breath warm in her hair.

She lifted his arm an inch at a time and slid out from under it.

He grunted. His hand patted the empty sheet, found her pillow and dragged it into his chest. He buried his face in it.

"Bunny," he mumbled into the pillowcase. His ears flicked once and went still.

Blair picked up the empty glass from the nightstand and eased the door open.

The floor was cold under her bare feet. The kitchen was a few steps down, and the light over the stove was on.

Jack sat at the kitchen table with his back to the wall. A black notebook lay open in front of him. Beside it stood a glass of whiskey, half gone.

He was writing. When the floor creaked under her, he looked up.

His eyes went down Daemus’s T-shirt to her bare knees, then back up to her face.

He went back to the notebook.

Blair crossed to the sink and filled her glass. She drank half of it standing there with her back to him.

When she turned around, his pen had stopped.

He was looking at a card on the table. A cream-colored registry card. MARSH, IVY was typed across the top, and a round blue stamp sat at the bottom.

The notebook lay open beside it. Both pages were covered in his small, square handwriting, a date and a place on every line. Fallen oak. Cart track. Botanical gardens. Fallen oak. Down the left page and onto the right.

Halfway down the right page, he had drawn a hand.

The fingers were long. Far too long. He had marked every knuckle with a short line, and there were four on every finger.

Blair’s fingers tightened on her glass.

Jack turned back a page. Then another. The lists went on. Further back, the ink had gone brown.

He let her look.

She read the top line. A date. Cart track. Then one more word, smaller than the rest. Down.

She looked along the column. Every line ended the same way.

He shut the notebook on one finger and looked at her.

"Come here."

She set her glass on the counter and went.

"Give me your hand."

She held it out.

He took her by the wrist and turned it knuckles up. His hand was warm and dry. He pressed his thumb into the base of her first finger. Then the middle joint. Then the last one, just under the nail.

Three.

He moved to the next finger and did it again. The pad of his thumb pressed down on every bone. Her breath went shallow. Heat crept up the back of her neck. She watched his face. He watched her hand.

At her little finger he stopped. He kept hold of her wrist and opened the notebook again, to the drawing.

He looked at the four lines on each long finger. Then at the name on the card.

He let go of her.

Jack picked up the whiskey glass. He looked into it for a moment.

His hand closed.

The glass cracked. His knuckles went white, and it burst in his fist. A shard skittered across the table and dropped to the floor.

Whiskey ran out between his fingers, over the notebook and across the card. Then red came with it.

Blair flinched.

Jack looked down at his hand. His face was perfectly calm.

"They were human," he said.

"All of them." He opened his fingers. Glass glittered in his palm, wet and red. "Every one I’ve killed."

Blair’s stomach turned over.

She looked at the drawing. At the long fingers, and the four short lines on each one.

The whiskey was soaking into Ivy’s card, spreading toward the stamp. She snatched it out of the puddle and wiped it on the hem of the T-shirt.

She set it face down on the dry end of the table.

Then she took his wrist.

He let her.

She hooked a chair out with her foot and sat facing him, so close her knees pressed against the insides of his. She turned his palm to the light over the stove.

The big piece first. It stood up out of the heel of his thumb. She pinched it between two fingers and drew it out. Blood welled after it. His jaw tightened, and his breath went out through his nose.

The next one was smaller. Then a sliver in the crease of his palm, so thin she had to find it with her fingertip. The whiskey stung her raw skin. She kept going.

Every time she pressed near a cut, his fingers twitched. Then they opened again for her.

One piece at a time, onto the table, into a little pile beside the notebook.

His eyes were on her face the whole time. She felt them on her mouth. On her lashes. On the hair that fell across her cheek when she bent closer.

She pushed it back. It fell again.

Jack gathered it in his free hand and held it at the back of her neck. His fist stayed there, loose and warm. His thumb moved once along the side of her neck.

Her pulse jumped under his knuckles.

"There’s one more," she said.

He held still.

She found it at the base of his ring finger, just under the first joint. When she drew it out, he made a short, rough sound low in his throat.

Blair reached for the dish towel hanging from the oven door and folded it around his hand. She pressed it tight between both of hers and held on.

Red came through the cotton in a thin line.

Jack looked at it. Then at her.

His crimson eyes were very dark in the stove light. His fist tightened in her hair.

"Go back to bed, Ms. Willows."

His hand turned inside the towel and closed around her fingers.

She stayed.