Page 1 of Love Her Ruin
Chapter 1
Sera
Thecoldfireinmy veins is screaming. The kind that makes you want to run in every direction at once, but you arrive at none.
Daddy already poured himself out of the house like a black tide to search for Eddie, who is…not dead.
He’snot. Daddy will find him before it’s too late and save him just like he saved James. I have to believe that.
An engine sounds from outside, loud, pushed to its limit, the roar of a car being driven by someone who does not give a single solitary fuck about the transmission. Tires shriek on asphalt, then headlights blaze through the living room's tarp-covered bay window.
It’s James's van.
I see it through the front door, still open after Daddy’s departure because all I can do is wait for him to come back.
His stereo speakers blast through his open windows. "Twisted" by MISSIO. The bass shakes through the foundation and into the soles of my feet.
James drives his van straight across my lawn, over the sidewalk, and parks it so close to the porch that the bumper kisses the bottom step. The headlights die, the engine cuts, and the night goes deadly quiet again.
He crashes out of the van and fills the doorframe. His eyes are wild, flickering blue-black-ember in rapid succession like a strobe. Shadows trail from his fists, coiling and snapping, his body vibrating with violence that has nowhere to land.
"Prayer." He crosses the distance in three strides, his hands on my face, my shoulders, my arms. "Ye all right? Are ye hurt?"
I shake my head even though I’m far from all right. My hands are shaking. I didn't notice until his steadied them in his firm grasp.
James reads my face, and whatever he sees there makes his jaw clench so hard the muscles cord along his neck. He pulls me against his chest, one arm crushing me to him, the other still trailing shadows that whip and coil around us both. His heart beats fast and furious, and I realize he's as terrified as I am for Eddie.
Then he looks up, and his face changes. His expression sharpens into something colder as his ember-flecked eyes sweep from the tarp-covered bay window to the tarp-covered kitchen window.
"These arenae windows," he says. "These are invitations for Vincent. Who the fuck knows what he’ll do next, Prayer. These tarps wouldnae stop a determined child, let alone a man with a gun and nothing left to lose."
I shiver in his arms as my gut churns. He's right. Vincent just murdered his wife and staged it to look like Red Hands did it. He just shot a cop in a public parking lot. The man has crossed everyline there is to cross, and a man with no lines left is a man with no limits.
My worry has stalled my brain and turned me into a fucking idiot. Without Daddy here, without James, I only have myself and my shadows. Would that be enough to stop Vincent if he's already here, already inside, crouched in a dark corner of this broken house waiting for me to turn my back?
The thought hits like a bucket of ice water.
"James." My voice drops. "Do you think he’s already here?"
His eyes snap to mine. The embers flare.
James releases me, strides to the front door, and hauls it shut. The hinges shriek. The frame is still cracked from Daddy's assault during my kidnapping, the wood splintered along the grain, and the door doesn't sit flush anymore. There's a gap at the top wide enough to slide a hand through and another at the bottom where the threshold has warped.
After he locks it, we move together in shared paranoia. James pulls the shadows tighter around his fists until they solidify into something that looks like gauntlets made of frozen smoke. I draw my gun. The weight of it is a small, hard comfort in my palm.
As one, we check the entire house from top to bottom.
When we come back upstairs from the empty basement, I let out a breath I've been holding since the thought first entered my skull. The house is ours. For now.
“I have boards, nails, and hammers,” I say, gazing at the hardwood.
James thumbs my chin so I look up at him. “The house isn’t your fault, Prayer. Let’s make it safe for ye, aye? Wait here. I have shit in my van to help.”
He goes back outside, and when he returns, he's carrying a toolbox, a drill, and plywood. What else does he have in the back of that van that can help clean up messes of all kinds? Theman is a walking contingency plan wrapped in muscle and bad intentions.
After we’ve gathered more supplies from the shed out back, we get to work.
I hold the sheets of wood in place while he drives screws through it on either side of each frame. The drill screams with each screw, a high-pitched whine that sets my teeth on edge, but the plywood holds. It's not pretty. It's not even particularly secure against someone with a crowbar and motivation. But it's better than tarps and duct tape.
