CHAPTER TENShe followed him. She paced. She watched. She waited.He didn’t smoke a cigarette or take a drink of anything. He didn’t spit on the ground or put his hands on anything she could take in to the police. He just watched. Prowled. Sniffed the air and smelled, perhaps, the scent of a hunter.Crazy Marie couldn’t take it anymore. She was ready to scream. Ready to rush him and take his fingerprints forcibly. His DNA. Force him to bite down on something hard enough to get an imprint. Match it to the wound that he had left on her daughter.On her breast, as it turned out. Officer Will hadn’t wanted to tell her. But after she finally forced him, saying that her imagination was coming up with horrors that dwarfed anything in reality, he relented.She wished he hadn’t.I will kill you. I will kill you, she sing-songed in her head. Her dark glasses protected her from looking directly at him. He was an eclipse and would burn her eyes out of her head if she made contact. But her gl

CHAPTER TWELVEShe used a soft lipstick that added bare color and shine. It didn’t add authority or boldness or blatant sexuality. It didn’t turn her into any sort of femme fatale. She didn’t need that.The Wolf wouldn’t want that.Her stomach ached in ways that reminded her of Aleta in her womb, of the hollowness after she was birthed, of the barrenness of her soul now that she was dead.She felt something strange in her eyes. Not tears. No, a glitter. Something feral and dangerous. Her teeth pulled back from her lips in a snarl until she caught herself and coughed demurely. She pulled her sunglasses over her eyes to hide the predator’s shine.She sat on the bench, trying to look fresh and plump and swollen with youth and soft, sensual things. Something to be crushed. Scented with blood and bone meal.“You’re back,” he said as he took his seat beside her. That voice. She’d never forget it. It spoke to her at night. It called her darling and lover and Aleta and whore. It whispe

CHAPTER FOURTEENShe left him while he was sleeping, sprawled naked and stinking on top of the hotel sheets.She vomited quietly into the toilet. Once. Twice. Then she slipped her clothes on and crept out of the door.Marie held her body far too carefully. She was tired, and sore, and disgusted, and so, so jubilant. When she stepped into the lobby that she had only been in a few hours before, the man behind the desk raised one eye at her.GLENN, his nametag read.“Hello, Glenn. Would you call a cab for me? Please?”“Certainly.”Glenn the Polite spoke quickly and quietly on the phone. Marie leaned against the desk, aware that her eyes were starting to blacken and her face was swollen. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Miss?” Glenn asked her. His words were professional, but his tone said so much more. Sweet, kind Glenn. A lamb working at the desk, unknowingly serving a wolf.She looked him deeper in the eyes, then, and realized that he knew. That there was a weariness

CHAPTER SIXTEENOfficer Will’s wife met her at the hospital.“Thank you for coming,” Marie sobbed. “Thank you so much.”“Of course I’d come,” Winnie said. She sat in the corner of the room while the nurses scrubbed and swabbed and collected everything they could. It was like being violated all over again, except with soft voices and lighter touches.The worst, Marie thought, was when she exposed her breasts. Bite marks everywhere. On her nipple and ribs and on her stomach.“I hope it helps,” she whispered to nobody in particular. “I hope it helps my baby.”They didn’t understand and she didn’t bother to explain, but pictures were taken. Bites were measured. Details were taken and carefully written down.It seemed to last for hours. At last they said she could go home.“I’ll drive you,” Winnie offered, and Marie nodded wearily.The car ride was silent for a long time. Marie leaned her head back against the seat and stared at the dark sky.“Thank you for coming today,” she sa

CHAPTER EIGHTEENOfficer Will took the call with sorrow. Grim Marie had taken her own life. She was found in the bath with expensive-smelling bubbles and a candle. She had used a razor.He wished this hadn’t surprised him.His heart felt heavy, but he tried to convince himself that at least she was at peace now, enfolded in the arms of her mother and her daughter. A third little urn lined up on the shelf, perhaps. At least the pain and misery of her hunt for The Wolf was over.He sighed.“I’m responsible,” he said aloud, and the words pierced. They twisted up inside of him like a jangle of knives and sharpened bones and Dead Marie’s razor blades.He had sent her after the man she believed to be her daughter’s killer. Told her to keep an eye out for any DNA he might drop. He hadn’t believed this man was The Wolf, but it didn’t matter. It gave her something to do. Gave her something to throw her heart and soul into, since she had little heart and no soul left. Picking up a littered