Chapter 16

16

SYLAS

I watched Mina fret for the rest of the day, enjoying the ambient panic radiating off of her as she contemplated murdering one of her classmates. She made herself food she didn't eat, she vacuumed assorted patches of carpeting, and then at the end spent at least half an hour in the bathroom, staring at herself in the mirror, applying, removing, and then reapplying makeup with shaking hands.

I pretended not to notice any of this though, waiting instead until she emerged to present herself to me. "Well?" she demanded. "Do I look like a killer?"

She was wearing a baggy white collegiate sweatshirt with a pink stain on it, black form-fitting leggings, and running shoes—and the only makeup on her face was around her eyes, where she'd rimed them with a bright, true blue.

Overall, what she looked like was unhappy.

"I thought you didn't want my opinions on your attire?" I intended it to tease, but it had the opposite effect, as I watched her deflate further. "It's okay you know," I said. "I'm the one who'll be doing all the work. "

"It's not that," she said in a tone that implied there was a lot more behind it, but her mouth was a locked door.

"Well?" I asked. "Shall we?"

She gave me a curt nod, and then we headed for her car.

We drove around two edges of a college campus before leaving things behind entirely and going to a place that was row after row of houses that had clearly been constructed during the same time period.

I knew we were almost there when she began to slow down, and I waited patiently while she wedged her smaller vehicle in between two larger ones to hide it.

"That's the house, there. The green one," she said, pointing, and I watched her hand shake. She'd been quiet the entire way here, which had surprised me—lost in her own thoughts, probably worried about killing someone for the first time.

She was so different from all of my other clients, who were usually hellbent and monofocused on revenge.

"And that's him," she said, nodding sorrowfully, biting her own lips as a strong-jawed, dark-haired man got out of a truck that could've run over a moose. We watched him walk up the house's front stair. "We'll get him when he comes out, when it's darker."

"You find him handsome?" I asked her, somewhat affronted.

That made her blink and look at me. She smudged a finger at the corner of her eye, streaking some of the blue eyeshadow she'd placed there, and I could see it taking a moment for her to remember why I'd asked. "No. I mean—objectively he is," she said, returning her gaze to the house, where the occupant had let him inside. "But I prefer men who can perform addition."

I waited an entire minute, listening to her anxious heart beat erratically, before stating, "I was there when they created the zero," and had her stunned attention again. "As a mathematical concept."

Her lips opened, her brow furrowed, and I watched the exact moment when she realized I was joking cross her face. She gave a manic laugh, then shook her head violently. "You're not supposed to be making me laugh right now!"

"How should you know what one does before murders, if this is your first one?"

"I—just—" she sputtered, before regaining steam. "I was at an attempted murder once."

"Hmm," I said dismissively. "You'll have to tell me about that later." I watched the breeze blow through the underwatered ferns outside of Logan's tutor's house. "I love hearing about amateurs fucking up."

She shrank back into the seat and huffed. "Yeah. Sure."