I give him a look and a raised brow.

“We’ll go get it right now,” he says, turning around to look at me as he steps back into his boots and adjusts the laces. “In fact, we’ll make a game of it and rob the damn place.” He’s smiling again. Always smiling. He finds pleasure in me, looking at me, talking to me, fucking me. He’s found his light in the darkness. It’s a heavy burden to bear, so I exhale sharply. “That’s what we do best, Bernie.”

“Steal?” I ask, that one word strangely breathless, like a butterfly catching a breeze, its wings still, like two jeweled carpets stretched out on either side.

“Take back,” Cal corrects, offering me his hand.

I curl my fingers with his, reveling in this strange thing that is human connection. It’s so powerful that it steals the air from my lungs and the blood from my heart. All of it seems to rush to just one place, right between my thighs.

He pulls me off the bed and then pushes me into the wall without even trying. I lean back so that I’m resting against it, closing my eyes as Callum puts his hands on either side of my neck. He feels my pulse and sighs, his body shuddering as he leans his head back and closes his eyes.

“The feel of your pulse …” he starts, and I wonder if we’re both thinking about Danny Ensbrook, bleeding out on the floor of a haunted house. Behind Callum, I see Kali Rose, leering at me. A manifestation of my own self-doubt. Cal drops his head back down and then presses his mouth to the side of my neck, licking that throbbing beat of my pulse. “My whole goal in life is to keep this thrumming,” he tells me, pulling back and framing me with his hands. “That’s it.”

“Surely you’ve got dreams bigger than that?” I query back, but I’m having trouble finding my words, lost in eyes the color of the sky, or of the marbles Pen and I used to play with as kids. Eyes the color of pain and heartbreak, eyes clouded by affection and love.

“Bigger than romance?” he repeats back, laughing at me, that husky, dark sound curling around me like smoke. Callum doesn’t even use the door. Instead, he turns away and heads for the window, pushing it open and then glancing back at me before he hops out. “Bigger than love?”

Cal leaves through the window, and I follow after, but he never does answer the question.

It takes Callum Park about fifteen seconds to scale the back fence of Pamela’s duplex, climb on the empty hot tub that’s been full of sludge and old leaves since we moved in years ago, and hit the roof.

“You’ve done this before, I see,” I grunt as Cal helps haul me up the rest of the way, cloaked in darkness and starlight. Pamela isn’t home, and to be honest, if the neighbors see us, they’ll just look the other way. This is deep South Prescott right here. Don’t call the cops because you might be labelled a snitch. Don’t call the cops because they might shoot you or somebody you love ‘on accident’.

Neil loved that, being a police officer. His father and brother looked down on him as ‘just a cop’, but they knew why he did it. He loved the power that came with the badge. He could hurt people and justify his reasons for doing it. Not to say that there aren’t some good cops out there, but Neil was certainly not one of them.

Sara Young might be. Maybe. Possibly.

“At least three times a week for years,” he tells me, and I pause. There’s a worn spot near my window, like a spot where somebody might have sat. I look up at him as he very carefully and systematically removes the old window, lifting it right out of the sill and setting it aside.

“You … snuck up here and stared at me through my window?” I ask, thinking about all the nights I lay here, staring at the door and listening for Neil’s movements.

“For years,” Cal says, slipping inside and pausing on my bed. His boots are getting the blankets muddy, but I don’t care. I’ll never sleep here again. Actually … it feels like there’s a forcefield there, in that empty window, the one that reminds me of an eye socket with no eye. My throat closes up and my breath catches. This is the house where Penelope was raped, where she died.

I don’t want to go back in there.

I glance over at the windows behind me, the matching ones for the neighboring duplex. The curtains are always drawn shut since the view from up here isn’t so stellar. Behind our house is the parking lot for a cabinet-making business. Sometimes, if you open the window on hot days, you can smell the fumes.

“Bernadette,” Cal says, very calmly, very slowly. “Come here.” He holds out a hand and I take it, scrambling into the window before I can lose my nerve. He yanks me to him, the bed wobbling beneath us. But we don’t fall. Callum keeps us standing, his hood sliding off his blond hair, leaving him bare for me. “You cannot let this place have power over you.”

“Are you going to tell me why you stalked me for years and I’m just now hearing about it?” I snap, using my anger to push aside the feeling of despair I feel at being in here again. This building is drenched in hate and pain. You could smudge it with sage, or bless it with holy water, and it would still smell like sulfur and ash.

“Breathe,” Cal whispers, voice thick and smoky. He closes his eyes and puts his hands on either side of my face. His fingers are cool against my skin, soothing me even if I feel like they shouldn’t. “It’s just a house. Houses don’t hold hate; people do. There’s nobody here but you and me. Just us.”

“Victor is going to flip when he finds out we came here alone,” I say, but my voice wavers and I’m so wound up that I bet you could tell if you were looking down at me from space. I’m lost in a dark orbit here, and I don’t like it.

“Breathe,” Cal repeats, holding me still, standing together on the bed I didn’t sleep in for years. I’m so tired. I’ve been so tired for so long. I exhale and close my eyes, pulling in a shuddering breath that smells like peaches and vanilla from the sprays and lotions still sitting on my abandoned desk. “You’re not alone, Bernadette. You never were. If you need to fall, let your knees go and I’ll catch you.”

“You can’t sweet-talk me during the middle of a robbery,” I murmur, but I’m feeling lightheaded anyway. “I’m your monster.” That’s what Callum told me. I can feel an edginess to him, this violent burning that’s on the brink at all times. It wouldn’t take much to set him off. Yet, I feel no danger standing here with him right now.

I open my eyes.

“I stalked you, Bernadette,” Cal says with a sigh, his shoulders slumping slightly. “There is no other way to put it. I can’t romanticize it or explain it. I’m sure it isn’t healthy.” He looks back up at me, but there’s no shame or regret in his gaze. None at all. “I’d do it all over again though, if given the chance. We are beautiful poison, not perfume.” He steps back and then climbs off the bed, looking up at me.

Nothing about my relationship with Havoc is what most people would consider healthy or normal.

I don’t care.

While I would discourage my sister from ever living a life like this, I’m throwing myself headlong into the dark.

I hop off the bed, looking around the room and trying to decide what it is that I want. Looking at it all now, it’s virtually meaningless. Things don’t matter, not at all. Be practical, Bernie, I tell myself, moving over to my closet and pulling out a dark blue Adidas duffel bag that used to belong to Penelope.