Page 110 of There Are No Saints

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29

Cole

As I make my preparations for Mara’s arrival, I go back and forth a hundred times on how I should kill her.

I’ve never been indecisive before.

I’ve always known exactly what I should do, as if it already happened.

She clouds my mind. She darkens my ability to see.

If I remove her from my life, I’ll go back to the way I was before. I’m sure of that.

The problem is . . . I don’t know if I want to go back.

Mara warps who I am. But in the moment, when I’m with her . . . I like it. I see things I never saw before. I feel things. Hell, I even taste things differently.

She’s electric. I touch her, and the current runs through me. She lights me up, turns me on, fills me with energy.

The cost is the loss of control.

Control has always been my highest priority. The thing that made me unique. The source of all my power.

I can’t give that up. I can’t become like everyone else.

In the end, it’s Mara who made the choice: I invited her to my home. She asked to come to the studio instead.

She wants the artist, not the man.

My art is death. It always has been.

I’ll make it a beautiful death. A pleasurable one. She deserves that at least.

The minutes tick by, seven o’clock drawing closer.

She won’t be late this time, I already know that. Her desire to see my studio is too great. It’s what she’s wanted most all along—just like Danvers.

I spent all day on the preparations. Planning is the foreplay.

At precisely seven o’clock, Mara arrives at the studio. I already heard the motion notification and walked toward the door to greet her. I open it before she’s pulled her finger back from the bell.

Black Magic Woman —VCTRYS

Spotify → geni.us/no-saints-spotify

Apple Music → geni.us/no-saints-apple

She turns, startled, her hair and her dress swirling around her. The dress is loose and diaphanous, black as a shroud. The peasant sleeves and square neckline give her a witchy look, especially when combined with her wild hair and the spatter of freckles across the bridge of her nose.

Fear battles with eagerness, adding a sharp edge to her scent. She licks her lips. They’re red and slightly chapped. I can almost taste their texture, like the rim of a cocktail glass—salty-sweet and granular.

“Are you going to let me in?” she says, tilting her head and looking up at me so her eyes are more slanted than ever above that upturned nose.

Each angle of her face reveals a mood. There’s always something new to be seen. I never finished reading her, and I suppose I never will.

I step aside. Her hair caresses my forearm as she passes. It slides across the back of my hand like a whisper, like a kiss.

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