The President is just a puppet, and these people who refer to themselves as the Society—they hold the real power.
“Tell me why you did this, Mark. Why did you insist on going after Addie when you knew she was mine?”
His chin trembles, the waste of flesh the epitome of a pathetic old man.
“She was already marked.”
My heart drops, thudding down my spine like a deflated basketball rolling down a staircase.
“I took a picture of her because she looked familiar. And when she told me her name, I realized that she was a target of the Society’s. It worked out perfectly that they happened to call me, and I told them everything. She… she’s worth a lot of money, man. And the Society wants her. It doesn’t matter to them who you are—it doesn’t even matter who I am. When the Society wants someone, they get them. And if I was the one to bring her in… I would’ve been highly rewarded.”
He sniffles, though it doesn’t prevent the snot from leaking out of his nose.
“Why did they target her?”
Mark sputters out a wet, humorless laugh. “Why do they target anyone? If they’re young and beautiful and happen to be noticed, they’re on the Society’s radar. She brought attention to herself in one way or another. It could’ve been from her books, or you know how women are these days. With the way they dre—” I snatch his hand again and flick off another nail before he can finish such a stupid fucking sentence.
As if showing any amount of skin is a goddamn invitation to be raped and kidnapped.
His answering scream does little to lessen the fury.
“I-I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. Look, you just don’t ignore the Society’s demands. And they’re going to come after you, Z,” Mark warns, his voice tight with pain but also grave.
I hope they do.
They’ll be saving me the trouble of coming to them.
Knowing that Addie was marked doesn’t only spark anger, it sparks genuine fear for my little mouse.
It never mattered if I came into her life or not—Addie was destined for human trafficking, and the fact that she happens to be the girl I’m absolutely crazy about feels like kismet.
It feels like fucking destiny that the man who haunts her is the same man who dedicated his life to destroying the people set out to take her life.
“I know you don’t care,” Mark forges on, noting the look on my face. “But the second they find out I’m dead, they’ll up and move.”
I’ve accepted this.
I look over at Sibby, the girl now having moved onto Miller. She could be a scapegoat.
If the Society gets word of a deranged girl killing these four men—a girl who’s killed before—they would chalk it up to the partial truth. Wrong place, wrong time. An unhinged girl who swears she can sense evil sniffed these men out and decided to murder them in cold blood.
She’s the perfect scapegoat, actually.
But the thought of using her—it doesn’t sit right with me.
She’s a lonely, fucked up girl who helped me carry out these murders. Doesn’t matter that she would’ve done it anyways had I not been there. Without her, I wouldn’t have gotten the information I did tonight. And I can’t let that go unrewarded.
So, I resign myself to protect Sibby. I’ll clean up the evidence, dispose of the bodies and do everything I can to infiltrate Savior’s before they relocate.
“Will they demolish?”
“Yes,” Mark answers quickly. I let out a slow breath and nod. By saving Sibby, I’m giving up the first lead I’ve truly had.
“I-If you let me go, I can get you in,” Mark barters desperately. “I’ll help you and you can do whatever you want. Just as long as you let me live.”
“The other three are already dead,” I say. “They’re going to relocate anyways.”
“Not if you pin everything on this girl. That’s what you planned, right? To let her take the fall for it?”
Sibby is still too blind with bloodlust to hear what Mark is saying, but I would’ve been honest about it anyway. Sibby and I never promised each other anything, and I’m pretty sure the girl still plans on killing me.
But she won’t succeed because despite what she thinks, it’s only her against me. And I’ve fought far too many bad guys to allow a little girl to take me out. Even if she is a little badass.
I refocus on Mark. “Do you know where they’d relocate?” I ask. Mark hesitates, sensing that he will no longer hold any leverage if he confesses. I dig the knife deeper into his dick to drive home my point.
I’ll know if he’s lying.
“No,” he admits, his lip trembling. “They wouldn’t tell us until afterwards.”
I nod my head, lift my hand, and plunge the blade deep into his pelvis. His screams do little to abate the pit of dread and anger churning in my stomach.
Chapter 32
The Shadow
S ibby took the fall for the murders.
After chopping the bodies into pieces and loading them in the trunk, we sat on the hood of my Mustang, where I was once again reminded just how broken this doll actually is. Sounds like her father was a piece of shit.
Can’t help but muse over the fact that she has a reason to end up the way she did and I… don’t.
Just as I was getting into my car, the cops pulled up. Sibby refused to get in, insisting that she needed to stay with her henchmen. Men who don’t actually fucking exist.
And I didn’t have time to stay and argue. I had chopped up pieces of body parts in my trunk and needed to not only get away from the police but dispose of the evidence without getting caught.
So, I left. The police chased me for five miles before I lost them. I have backup license plates on hand, so once I got to a safe area, I changed my plates and clothing, burnt the evidence, and drove home.
There are one hundred and sixty-two people in Seattle with the same make and model, but they’ll never be able to pin anything on me even if they magically narrowed it down to me.
In the end, the police pinned the murders on a mentally unstable girl and an unknown accomplice. I figured the Society would look into the crime and find an unknown accomplice suspicious. Enough to up and move.
But after looking into Sibby myself, I found that she was born into a fucked-up cult and wanted for the murder of her father.
Her father rivaled Jim Jones, spouting about being God’s disciple and tricking hundreds of people into believing in his word.
He was a rich man who came from old money. He spent his riches on building a compound for his followers, confining them to a stretch of land for the rest of their lives. That’s where Sibby was born and raised, up until she committed a heinous crime and fled.
There are reports of Sibby’s mother committing suicide via poison, and it seems that’s what led to the broken doll finally snapping. She snuck into her father’s bedroom at night with a knife and stabbed him to death.
One hundred and fifty-three times to be precise. Rage was a factor. Sibby made it clear that she is perfectly capable of stabbing a man past her body’s physical limits if angry enough. Robert was proof of that.
It took three days for them to connect Sibby to murders across the country. All cities that Satan’s Affair has rooted the haunted carnival in have numerous cases of missing person reports in each location for the past five years.
If all the people reported missing from Satan’s Affair had connections to her, Sibby has killed around fifty people.
I was genuinely surprised that the haunted fair didn't come under fire sooner with so many reports connected to them, but then I had learned that most of the victims were lowlifes, with very few people that cared enough to look for them.