Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT

Montessa was enthralled. She watched Lu’s mouth while he spoke, watched the way he used his hands, the way his emotions changed his face according to where he was in the story.

He talked about his dad’s abuse, about the way he hid in his closet as a little boy. The way they took him to rituals and the shamans beat their drums and how he ate the special foods meant to cleanse the soul and body. Lu had set the shaman aflame the last time his parents took him. She had been put out quickly. Maimed but not murdered. Scarred but alive.

“So not my first kill, but almost,” he said, and the way his eyes twinkled, it was like something out of a fairytale.

“Tell me how it felt to kill your father,” Montessa urged, and even though he had already told her, he told her again. And again, when she asked for it a third time. She was a child with a favorite bedtime story. Tell me again, please. Again. More and more and more.

“The way his bones cracked, it was like nothing I’d ever ima