Page 37 of Love Her Ruin
The temperature dips, and the light dims a shade. The vent above us sighs like winter leaned down to hear better. Daddy approves in wavelengths, and it rumbles through my bones like a low organ note.
Eddie appears in the doorway like we summoned him with blasphemy. He’s all clean lines and shadowy ruin at the seams, shirt sleeves rolled like he’s ready to get to work.
He looks at Sera’s jellybean and sticky note spread. “Is this our world domination plan?”
“Close,” she says, popping a jellybean into her sweet mouth. “I’m figuring out my next creative display for Monster energy drinks and Crown Royal. A huge throne out of both, maybe.”
“And we’re opening a shop,” I add.
“Please don’t call it a shop,” Sera says with a chuckle.
“A ministry?” I offer. “St. Bridget’s Unlicensed Problem Solving?”
Sera shakes her head. “Absolutely not.”
“Fine,” I say. “Saints With Dirty Hands. The Choir Invisible. The Night Confessional. The Velvet Rope. The—”
“No, no, no, and no.” Sera pops another jellybean into her mouth, her eyes shining with her laughter.
“Fine, we’ll think of names later,” I say. “We make a door on the dark web, and maybe even the light one, that only the right kind of desperate can find, and when they knock, we ask three questions. Are ye in danger? Do ye want out? Will ye help us make sure no one else bleeds the way ye did?”
Sera nods. “And if the answers are yes—”
“We come,” I say. “With bells on.”
Eddie rubs his jaw. “You’re serious?”
“Aye, I can fix a man who breaks a woman or a child,” I say, and the smile drops off my face. “That I’m very, very good at.”
Sera tilts my chin up with two fingers, reclaiming the smile for her private use. “You really quit to do this.”
“I really quit to do this,” I echo.
“What did they say?”
“That I’d regret it. And I will, a wee bit. Every day I don’t get to watch some minister of state fall face-first into a stairwell.” I shrug while I devour my Prayer with my gaze. “But then I’ll look at ye and forget…everything.”
She huffs a breath that’s not a laugh but touches the same bones. “You’re ridiculous.”
“Malicious,” I correct solemnly. “Similar letters, though.”
The vent sighs again, which I take as Daddy’s amen.
“I’ll help with logistics. Quiet ones,” Eddie says, cutting me a look. “No names. No branding. We don’t need them.”
“Aye aye,” I say, sketching a wee cross on my chest with two fingers and a grin. “Cross my heart and hope to…well, not that.”
Sera stands, dragging me with her by the front of my shirt. She kisses my knuckles brutal-soft.
“Find me a name who needs our help,” she says.
“Aye,” I say, and my throat goes tight at the messages, the cries for help, that I’ve already seen on the dark web, the ones that live under my tongue like thorns. “I’ll fetch ye a name.”
We stand like that—Queen, Mind, Fist, and the Shadows that learned to love us—while the night leans its ear against the siding to hear us plot mercy. The old job peels off me like a scab I finally stopped picking. Underneath is pink new skin.
I lean in to kiss her, my Prayer, and I make a private vow in the church of her mouth.
Send us your monsters, world. We’ve got sharper teeth.
