Page 62 of These Vile Hearts

“Yeah.” I’m too aware of the fact that he will never get the chance to put this advice to use if I manage to kill him tonight. After my blood sugar chills the fuck out. “Just…disconnect from your emotions. They are hidden in the house. Close the curtains, lock the doors, shutter the windows.”

He seems to silently puzzle over this. “Will you show me?”

I take in the near desperation in his eyes. They are ratherexpressive, a hundred emotions flitting around inside of them. Dangerous indeed. “Sure.”

Castor moves his chair around the table so we are face-to-face. His jaw looks particularly sculpted in the candlelight. An emotion I don’t want to examine flutters in my chest. It goes in the basement with all the rest.

“It’s easier to do if you close your eyes.”

As if he trusts me completely, as if I were never caught with a dagger hidden behind my back, he does. “I don’t feel like a house,” he says after a moment.

“You have to focus. Paint a picture in your mind—like when your brother used to tell you stories. Imagine the shape of your house, the color of the walls, the size of the windows, the outline of the door. Do you see that?”

“I think so.”

Castor’s eyes are squeezed so tight that the skin between his brows and on the bridge of his nose wrinkles. My cheeks tighten as I repress a laugh. “What do you see?”

“White walls…like a birch tree. Round windows. A red door.”

“Interesting choices.”

He frowns, eyes still closed. “Why? Is that the wrong kind of house?”

A small chuckle escapes my throat. “No. It’s a perfectly fine house. Just keep picturing that and imagine yourself standing inside.”

“Do I need to imagine what the interior looks like?”

“No, that doesn’t really matter.”

“So I’m just in an empty house with no furniture?”

My eyes roll up to the ceiling. “I mean, you can picture furniture in there if you want.”

“Okay.” His eyes squeeze more tightly and his head bobs back a little. “None of this furniture matches.”

“You are literally the one in control of what the furniture looks like, Castor.”

“I can’t justcontrolwhat my mind does, Maddox.”

“Oh my God. Ignore the furniture. You’re going to focus on locking everything down.”

“How do I do that?”

“Think of what you’d do if some evil forest creature were coming for you and this house was the only thing that could protect you from them. Picture yourself closing the front door and locking it, shutting all the windows and sliding the bars across, pulling the curtains and slamming the shutters, until every single window and door is locked and closed and protected from the outside.”

Castor is silent for several seconds, the wrinkles between his brows softening. He has lovely thick eyebrows, I’ve just realized. He has lovely everything, really.

What the fuck, Maddox? You have him helpless and unguarded. Just get it over with.

The idea of murdering someone is clearly much easier to face than the act.

“Okay, everything is closed and locked,” he says, forcing me to refocus, even though my brain is full of hypoglycemic fog. “Can I go lie on the bright purple couch now?”

“Sure.”

With his eyes still closed, the right side of his face lifts with a crooked smile.

“Why do you feel like you have to lock down anyway?” I ask, ignoring the bizarre urge to trace his lips with my finger. “Who do you have to hide your emotions from?”