25
Suddenly, everything made sense. Why Rivera’s credit card had been used to purchase the Heartbreaker lipstick. Why there hadn’t been any trace of Elissa in Rivera’s office or bedroom. Why the stones of the caretaker’s cottage—Porter’s home—had shrieked and wailed with such violent agony instead of Rivera’s mansion.
Damian Rivera wasn’t the one who’d abducted Elissa and killed all those other women. It had been Bruce Porter all along. He’d just used his boss’s money, resources, credit cards, and manpower to help him do it and then cover his tracks after the fact.
The one thing that I still didn’t understand, though, was Porter and his motivations. But it was obvious that he was the Dollmaker and that Rivera was indulging him, covering up his messes just the way Porter had covered up Rivera’s drunken disasters for so many years. It wasn’t even a real partnership as much as the two of them seemed to be codependent in a desperate, diseased way, each unable to function without the other.
“Aw, don’t be shy, Bruce.” Rivera took another hit from his flask and stepped aside so that Porter could walk closer to me. “You certainly weren’t when you were making her look like that. You were smiling the whole time. Well, except for all the grumbling about having to dye her hair. I told you that you should have just slapped a wig on her and been done with things.”
I shivered at the thought of the dwarf bending over me, his fingers in my hair, him touching my face, him carefully painting my lips the way he had done to so many other women before he killed them.
Porter crossed his arms over his chest and eyed me, disappointment flashing in his pale blue gaze. “A wig wouldn’t have been the same.” He shook his head. “The dye’s not the same either. You know that they have to be natural blondes.”
“So sorry to disappoint,” I snarked. “Although I think that I can safely say in this case that blondes don’t have more fun.”
His eyes glittered with a hard, angry light. “I had a nice girl all picked out, and you just had to come along and ruin everything.”
I bared my teeth at him. “What can I say? I’m an evil bitch that way.”
“Yes, yes, you are,” a third, familiar voice called out.
More footsteps sounded, and Hugh Tucker strolled into the cottage.
For once, I was almost happy to see him. The vampire might be a cold-blooded killer, but he wasn’t the worst thing in the room. Not by a long shot. Rivera and Porter were tied for that dubious distinction.
Tucker moved over to the fireplace, away from the other two men, creating a clear divide between himself and the combined sickness that was Damian Rivera and Bruce Porter. Couldn’t blame him for that. Then again, Tucker was his own special kind of disease.
As I studied the vampire, I once again thought back over everything that had happened the past few days, and another small puzzle piece clicked into place in my mind, one that made everything else snap into focus. Red-hot anger sizzled through me, and I grabbed onto that burning heat, riding the wave of searing emotion and slowly letting it cool, congeal, and harden into an icy block of rage, hate, and determination in my heart.
Tucker shook his head. “You just can’t leave well enough alone, can you, Gin?”
“I could say the exact same thing about you.”
His black eyes narrowed, but I didn’t say anything else to fill in the real meaning behind my words. After a few seconds, Tucker snapped his fingers at the other two men.
“Leave us,” he ordered.
Rivera straightened up to his full height and glared at the vampire, although his drunken wobble ruined his attempt to be intimidating. “You don’t get to order me around, Hugh.”
The vampire gave him a cold, thin smile. “Oh, I do tonight, Damian, when you’ve brought such unwanted attention to the group. He’s not happy with you, letting your assistant go around town and murder all those innocent women. And he’s especially not happy that the two of you were stupid enough to get caught and he had to send men to bail you out.”
His words made me think about those three SUVs full of men that had showed up at Rivera’s estate, the ones that had seemingly come out of nowhere, since they weren’t part of his regular security team. The alarm that I’d tripped at Porter’s cottage had signaled another alarm up at the mansion. That second alarm must have triggered some sort of Circle security protocol. That’s where all the extra men had come from. I was sure of it. But the knowledge couldn’t help me right now, so I filed the information away for another time.
Rivera airily waved his hand, dismissing Tucker’s concerns. “Mason will get over it. He always does, just as soon as I line his pockets with more of my mother’s money.”
Once again, my ears perked up at that name. Mason had to be their boss, the man behind this sick, twisted curtain that was the Circle. For a moment, I savored the fact that I finally—finally—had his name. In fairy tales, names often had great power, like the miller’s daughter saving her child by guessing Rumpelstiltskin’s moniker. Well, names had power in Ashland too. Names led to records, and records led to homes, bank accounts, and businesses, all of which would eventually lead to a real, live person who I could find, drag out into the light, and kill.
But the longer I thought about it, the more the name Mason bothered me. A little warning bell chimed in the back of my mind. I’d heard that name before. I knew that I had. But where? When? Was he some Ashland mover and shaker Fletcher had mentioned to me? Some bigwig my mother had done business with? Or someone even closer and more personal than that?
Try as I might, I couldn’t find the answer in the dregs of my mind, so I let it go—for now. Besides, at the moment, I did have the slightly more pressing problem of getting out of this cottage alive.
Rivera waved his hand again, as if he were going to keep talking about the mysterious Mason, but Tucker stared the other man down. The vampire didn’t look at me, but his lips pressed into a hard, unhappy line. He realized how sloppy Rivera had just been, saying his boss’s name out loud in front of me.
“Get out,” Tucker snapped. “Now.”
Rivera opened his mouth to protest, but Porter laid a warning hand on his shoulder, and the two men left the cottage, shutting the door behind them. Tucker tilted his head to the side, listening to the sounds of their footsteps on the porch. I thought back to the memory I’d had of him in the woods the night Mab killed my mother, how he’d been able to see and hear me even in the dark. He seemed to have more finely tuned senses than any other vampire I’d ever met. I wondered if it was a natural ability or if it came from all the blood he drank. Or maybe it was even a combination of the two.
Rivera and Porter must have stepped away from the cottage, because the sound of their muffled conversation faded away altogether. Only then did Tucker look over at me. I stared right back at him.
I thought that he would make some dismissive, cutting remark, but instead, he carefully studied me, as if comparing me with some other image in his mind. The prolonged silent scrutiny made me uncomfortable, although it didn’t creep me out nearly as much as Porter’s examination had. Then again, Tucker just killed people. I could understand that. But Porter’s sadistic ritual? That was as strange to me as little green aliens falling from the sky.
After several seconds, Tucker shook his head, as if trying to clear away a bad, bad memory—or a ghost that haunted him still. But I knew from personal experience that ghosts didn’t disappear that easily, and he couldn’t help himself from staring at my dyed blond hair again.
“I never really noticed before now, but you look just like Eira. Even more than Bria does, in a way.” He tried to make his voice low and emotionless, but he didn’t quite succeed.
I thought back to what I’d overheard, how Damian had mocked the vampire about his feelings for my mother. I decided to twist that knife in even deeper.
“Well,” I drawled. “You would know, since you were apparently in love with her.”
Once again, Tucker’s lips pressed into that thin, unhappy line at my exposing one of his deep, dark secrets, but he didn’t ask me how I’d found out about his feelings for my mother. I didn’t mind his silence, though. It was just more confirmation about what was really going on here.
And I realized something else. Damian Rivera had been right. No matter what had happened between them, no matter that she’d been murdered years ago, Tucker still carried a torch for my mother. I wanted to know why and exactly what there had been between them. But more than that, right now, I wanted to hurt him the same way that he’d hurt me by not saving her.
I glanced at the mirror again, my gaze fixed on my unnaturally blond hair. “You’re right. I do look like her.” I turned back to him. “Although I don’t remember my mother looking like this. Do you know what I remember about how she looked? The one thing that sticks out in my mind above all others?”
“What’s that?” Tucker asked, genuinely curious.
I stared him straight in the eyes. “Her dead, charred, ashy body the night Mab burned her to death. That’s what I remember about how my mother looked, you son of a bitch.”
Tucker flinched and actually swayed on his feet the slightest bit, as though I’d slapped him across the face and then punched him in the gut for good measure. I itched to do both of those things and more. So much more, including ramming one of my knives straight through his pitch-black heart over and over again, until there was nothing left of it and him but tiny bloody ribbons.
“My mother was a beautiful woman,” I said. “Long blond hair, blue eyes, pretty features. So you can imagine how horrible it was to see all of that reduced to ash in an instant. Her hair, eyes, face, all gone and replaced by blackened skin and charred bits of bone. But do you know what the worst thing was? The one thing that still haunts me to this day? The one thing that still appears in my nightmares over and over again?”
For a moment, I thought that Tucker wouldn’t ask me the inevitable question, but he slowly wet his lips, and I got the feeling that he just couldn’t help himself. “What?”
“The charred stench of her burned, blistered skin. The ashy aroma that replaced her sweet perfume. The choking clouds of smoke that slithered down my throat and coated my lungs. You can’t even fucking imagine it. Like a slaughterhouse that had caught fire and burned to the ground with all the animals trapped inside.”
My voice was matter-of-fact and emotionless, but Tucker actually shuddered and turned away, as if he suddenly couldn’t stand to see me looking so much like my mother. That cold rage in my heart thrummed with satisfaction. For the first time, I’d actually put a crack in Tucker’s cool, detached armor.
I glanced at the mirror, which was angled so that I could still see his face. He dropped his head and closed his eyes, as if trying to banish the horrible images that my words called up in his mind. But he’d been there that night. He might not have seen my mother’s body, but he’d witnessed the aftermath of Mab’s Fire scorching through the mansion.
I wanted him to remember. I wanted him to think about it. I wanted the memories to haunt the bastard the same way they haunted me.
A long silence followed. Neither one of us spoke. If only I’d had one of my knives, I would have cut through my ropes, risen from the chair, and stabbed him in the back.
But if wishes were horses, I’d have a yard full of prancing ponies by now.
Finally, Tucker opened his eyes, cleared his throat, and faced me again. “I tried to save your mother. Truly, I did. I gave her every opportunity.”
“To do what? Fall in line with the rest of your Circle cronies? Do all the horrible things that they ordered her to? To be their little lapdog, just like you are?” I barked out a harsh, humorless laugh. “Doesn’t seem like much of an opportunity to me. More like a prison. But then, you would know, wouldn’t you, Tuck?”
My cruel words finally snapped him out of his memories and his soft sentiments, whatever they were, and his face hardened back into its usual detached mask.
“You’re the one who’s tied to a chair, Gin. Not me. I’d say that you’re the prisoner here.”
I shook my head, deliberately making my freshly dyed blond hair fly around my shoulders. “Nah. I’m not a prisoner. I don’t take orders from anyone; you can’t say the same. I’m my own person, but you’ll never be that again.”
Tucker’s eyes glittered, and I saw the silent agreement in his black gaze. He shrugged his shoulders, not quite dismissing my words. “Either way, one good thing has come out of all of this.”
“What’s that?”
He flashed me a smile, showing off the fangs that glinted in his mouth. “You won’t be a thorn in my side anymore.”
I gave him an amused look. “Why? Because you think that Rivera and Porter are actually going to kill me? Think again, pal.”
His smile widened, and his black eyes warmed just the faintest bit. “You have your mother’s confidence—and her stubbornness too.”
It was by far the nicest thing he’d ever said to me, but anger spiked through me at his words. He made it sound like some sort of shortcoming on her part, and mine too. “I know.”
“Yes, you do know, don’t you?” he murmured. “And sadly, little Genevieve, it’s going to be the death of you, just like it was for her.”
I started to ask him what he meant, but Tucker gave me another long, measuring look, then opened the door and left me behind.
• • •
Tucker stepped onto the porch and out of my line of sight, although he left the door open behind him. A few seconds later, more footsteps creak-creak-creaked on the wood. Rivera and Porter must have come back from wherever they’d gone and rejoined the vampire on the porch.
“Kill her,” Tucker ordered in a clear, strong voice that carried into the cottage. “And try to get it right this time. I’m tired of cleaning up your messes, Damian.”
I heard more footsteps, heading for the far end of the porch. After a few seconds, the footsteps faded away, as if Tucker had stepped off the porch and out into whatever landscape lay beyond. And I realized that the vampire was leaving. He was actually leaving without killing me.
Tucker was no fool. I wasn’t a scared little girl stumbling around the woods like I had been the night of my mother’s murder. He knew exactly how dangerous I was and that I would fight until my very last breath. But instead of ending me himself, he’d walked away and left the job up to Rivera and Porter. If there was one thing that I knew about Tucker, it was that he always had a reason for his actions, no matter how twisted they were. Hmm.
The other two men stepped back inside.
Rivera glanced over at me, making sure that I was still securely tied up, and took another long hit from his silver flask. He held it up to his ear and shook it, but the container was empty. His nostrils flared with anger that his precious booze was already gone.
“I need a refill,” he growled. “You heard Tucker. Kill her. And be quick about it. It won’t be long before her friends realize that she’s still on the property and come back searching for her.”
Still on the property? So we were still on the Rivera estate. But where? I’d reviewed every single inch of the grounds when I’d been planning to break into Rivera’s office, and Porter’s caretaker cottage had been the only one clearly marked on the property. So where was this second cottage located? I didn’t know, but fresh hope filled me. All I had to do was get out of my bonds and out of the cottage. Once I was outside, I could figure out exactly where I was and escape. Then I would find my friends, and we would come back here together, finish what we’d started, and put these bastards in the ground for good.
“Of course,” Porter murmured in a neutral tone, more than accustomed to dealing with Rivera’s drunken demands.
Rivera rolled his eyes, knowing that he was being handled. He stomped out of the cottage and slammed the door shut behind him. He crossed the porch, and the sound of his staggering footsteps faded away. No doubt Rivera was on his way back to his mansion to get his much-needed refill and drink the rest of the night away.
That left me alone with Bruce Porter.
I thought that he might immediately come over and start beating me, as both Tucker and Rivera had ordered. I tensed, ready to reach for my Ice and Stone magic and use it to blast right out of my chair and the ropes still tying me down.
But Porter had other plans. He grabbed one of the chairs from the kitchen table, brought it over, and put it down directly across from me. He sat down, leaned back, and made himself comfortable. Once he was settled, he looked at me and smiled.
And just like that, the Dollmaker finally revealed his true self.
Oh, Porter looked exactly the same as before. Gunmetal-gray hair cropped close to his skull, pale blue eyes, deep lines grooved into his ruddy skin, strong, compact, muscular body in a dark, subdued suit.
But from one second to the next, his entire demeanor changed.
Gone was the dour, serious head of security, the man who stood quietly in the background and waited for others to tell him what to do. Now his eyes were brighter, his smile wider, his posture far more natural and relaxed. He looked . . . happy.
No, I realized, not happy. Giddy—giddy that he was about to act out his sadistic dream yet again.
Well, I hoped he enjoyed it, because his dream was quickly going to turn into the worst fucking nightmare of his life.
“Now we can finally get started,” Porter chirped in a high, almost manic voice that was completely different from his usual soft tone. “It’s been so long since I’ve had a special guest here. You can imagine how excited I am.”
“Oh, yeah,” I drawled. “It’s been less than a week since you kidnapped a woman, dolled her up, brought her here, and beat and strangled her to death. Can’t imagine how you’ve lasted so long without all of that.”
Anger sparked in the dwarf’s eyes that I wasn’t playing along with him, but he forced himself to dampen it down. He’d gone to too much trouble to kill me just yet. His gaze flicked over to the fireplace, and I spotted a photo sitting on the mantel, one of Maria Rivera.
It was the exact same photo that I’d seen in Damian’s office, the one of him standing with Maria and his father, Richard. At least, it used to be the same photo. Someone had cropped both Damian and his father out of the picture, leaving only Maria, with Porter now standing right beside her instead of off in the distance like he was in the original photo. So I’d been right when I’d thought that this was all about Maria. I’d just associated her with the wrong man.
“So this is all about her?” I asked. “You kidnapped and killed all those women trying to find a replacement for Maria? Let me guess. You were in love with her, and it didn’t end well.”
Porter kept staring at that photo, his expression softening with fond memories. “My father worked for hers, and my family lived here in this cottage. The two of us grew up together. I loved her from the first moment I saw her, ever since we were kids. She was always so beautiful, so elegant, so classy. Nobody had style like Maria did.”
“So what happened?”
I was totally stringing him along, trying to keep him talking long enough for me to figure some way out of here. Even with my magic, it would still take me precious seconds to break free of my chair and the ropes that tied me down. Given his dwarven strength, Porter could easily kill me with one blow if he hit me in just the right spot. I needed to find some way to incapacitate him first. Then I could work on getting out of my chair.
Porter kept looking at the photo of Maria. “When we were eighteen, I told her how I felt about her and asked her to run away with me.” His smile vanished, and the happy light was snuffed out of his eyes. “But she didn’t want to run away. She said that she didn’t want to leave her parents behind.”
More likely, she didn’t want to leave their massive fortune behind, but I kept my mouth shut, still analyzing my situation. For as strong an elemental as I was, my Ice magic was useless right now. An Ice dagger wouldn’t help me cut through my ropes, and since my hands were tied down, I couldn’t even raise my wrist and send a spray of them shooting out at Porter.
“So you loved Maria, but she wouldn’t go with you,” I said, just to keep the conversation going, just to keep him prattling on about the past. “And eventually, she married Richard Rivera.”
“It wasn’t her fault,” he growled. “It was her parents. They never liked me.”
Couldn’t imagine why.
“They made her marry Richard. But he didn’t love her. He didn’t appreciate her. Not like I did. All Richard was interested in was drinking and having affairs and spending her money. He broke Maria’s heart over and over again.” Porter shrugged. “So I finally killed him when Damian was a teenager. Made it look like a car accident.”
That got my attention, and I looked at him again. “Does Damian know that you murdered his father?”
He airily waved his hand the same way that Damian had done earlier, dismissing his own evil deed. “Of course not. I covered my tracks very well. I always do. Besides, the boy was better off without him.”
“So you killed Damian’s father and had Maria all to yourself again.”
Porter nodded, smiling widely again. “For a while, everything was wonderful. Of course, I gave Maria plenty of time to mourn. I’m not a complete monster.”
Oh, no. Not a complete monster.
But I held my tongue and went back to my own problem of how to escape. Since I’d ruled out using my Ice magic, I focused on my Stone power. But it wouldn’t help me cut through my ropes any more than my Ice magic would. So I asked him some more questions, trying to buy myself some more time to figure this out.
“And what about Damian? What does he think about your obsession with his dead mother and all the women that you kill in her place?”
Porter snorted in disgust. “Damian’s always been far too interested in his booze and broads to think about anything else, including his mother. He’s just like his father that way. As long as I keep him happy and cover up his drunken messes, he lets me do as I please. He understands that I know what’s best for him.”
I wondered if Damian was really as self-centered and oblivious as Porter thought. Or maybe Damian realized that if he didn’t go along with the dwarf that he would end up dead in a supposed car accident just like his father had.
“But finally, I got tired of waiting for Maria, and I told her that now that her parents were gone and Richard was dead, it was finally time for us to be together.” Porter shook his head. “But she didn’t react the way I expected. Not at all.”
This time, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut or keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “Let me guess. Maria said that she only thought of you as a friend. That she just didn’t love you and that the two of you were never going to be together the way you wanted. Maybe she even tried to break it to you gently, but that’s when you finally snapped.”
Something else occurred to me, something that I’d read in the information that Finn and Silvio had compiled for me on the Rivera family. “Maria died in a car accident too, didn’t she? Several years ago. Let me guess. More of your handiwork.”
Porter shook his head. “I didn’t mean to hit her. It just happened. She just made me so angry, saying that she could never be with me. That I was just a friend. That she appreciated my service and my loyalty, but there could never be anything more between us. Why couldn’t she see how much I loved her? Why did she have to make me kill her? Why . . .”
He kept right on talking, but I tuned him out, much more interested in what the stones of the cottage suddenly had to say. All around us, they started muttering, responding to Porter’s dark, dark rage.
Blood, violence, pain, death . . . blood, violence, pain, death . . . blood, violence, pain, death . . .
The shrieks were even stronger here than they had been at the caretaker’s cottage, the agonizing notes so sharp and loud that it seemed the emotional vibrations were slowly tearing the stones apart one molecule at a time. Of course, that wasn’t really happening, since emotions, no matter how strong and intense, couldn’t break apart solid stone.
But I could.
I needed to incapacitate Porter, and what better way to do that than by using my Stone magic to drop his own house of horrors right on top of his head? That would be some poetic justice, Spider-style. So I concentrated on all those plaintive shrieks and wails, listening to the mutterings and using the sounds to seek out the weakest points in the stones that made up the cottage.
There—right there.
The mutterings were particularly harsh and loud in the upper section of the fireplace, right above the mantel where Porter had put that doctored photo of him and Maria. Of course, the emotional vibrations would be concentrated there, since Maria was the focal point of Porter’s obsession. Even better, I could see a faint spiderweb pattern of cracks starting from that point in the fireplace and running all the way up to the ceiling.
I glanced from the cracks to Porter and back again, calculating distances and angles. I needed to get him to move just a little bit closer to me, so that he would be directly in the line of fire, so to speak. But that would be easy enough to accomplish. All I had to do was attack him with words the same way that I had Tucker. So I fixed my attention on that one weak spot in the fireplace and started gathering up my Stone magic. I’d only have one shot at this, and I had to make it count.
“And do you know what the worst part was?” Porter said, still continuing his rant. “Maria was ready to move on. She told me that she’d already made plans with someone else and that she was on her way to meet him. I stood there and watched her curl her hair and put on her makeup while she told me all about it.”
Well, that explained the makeup. He was trying to recreate that one fateful moment, only with the outcome that he wanted instead of what had really happened.
“She put on her lipstick last, then looked at me in the mirror and smiled, asking me to be happy for her.” Porter snarled. “As if I could ever be happy when she was with someone else. Why did she have to do that? Why couldn’t she just love me as much as I loved her?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, my voice dripping with venom. “Maybe because she realized how obsessed you were with her. Maybe because she was tired of you always watching her, not to mention following her around all the time. Or maybe she just wanted you to go away and give her one fucking moment of peace. Did you ever think that you were the problem, not her?”
Porter blinked and blinked, as if such disturbing thoughts had never occurred to him before. “But . . . but I loved her.”
I let out a harsh, mocking laugh. “You didn’t love her. You stalked her, you hunted her. And when she wouldn’t play along, when she wouldn’t give you what you wanted, you finally killed her. Maria’s gone, and you have no one to blame but yourself. And now you keep trying to recreate these feelings you had for her with other women. Well, guess what, Bruce? None of the poor girls you brought here and murdered loved you either. And Maria? I imagine that she pitied you more than anything else.”
I paused, getting ready to twist my verbal knife in even deeper, just like I had with Tucker. All the while, I kept gathering up my Stone magic, getting ready to hurt Porter with it even more than I was hurting him with my sharp, taunting words.
“Nah,” I said. “Maria didn’t even pity you. She just made fun of you. She probably laughed and laughed at you behind your back with all her rich, snooty friends.”
“Shut up,” Porter growled. “Maria never did anything like that. She would never be so cruel.”
“She would have been exactly that cruel,” I snapped right back at him. “How could she not laugh at you? The silly little servant boy who thought that he actually had a chance with the rich, pretty princess? Just hearing your stupid sob story makes me want to laugh.”
I stared him right in the eyes and started chuckling, making the sounds as low, harsh, and mocking as possible. Trying to make him forget about everything else except how angry he was with me.
And it worked.
Porter’s blue eyes narrowed to slits, a red flush crept up his neck, and his hands clenched into fists. And I knew that I was seeing exactly what all those other women had seen right before he killed them. They’d said the wrong thing, they’d ruined his fantasy, and he’d flown into a rage and killed them, just as he’d killed Maria when she finally rejected him.
I let my chuckles fade away. “Face it, Bruce. Maria never cared about you, not one little bit . . .”
This time, I was the one who went on a rant. More and more hateful words spewed past my lips, each one more poisonous than the last, even as I gathered up more and more of my Stone magic, getting ready for what was to come. My words and power mixed together, each one fueling the other.
That flush crept up to Porter’s cheeks, staining them a dark, mottled red, and pure murderous rage glinted in his eyes. His entire body tensed, and his hands were fisted together so tightly that his fingers had gone white from the strain. But I kept right on talking, taunting him.
“And you know what else?” I said. “You didn’t bring all those women here because you thought you loved them. Not really. You brought them here because you wanted to hurt them the same way that Maria hurt you. Because deep down, you like hurting women. Because you wanted all the fucking power over them that you never had over her—”
And he finally snapped, like a rubber band stretched to its breaking point.
Bruce Porter let out a harsh primal scream, surged out of his chair, and threw himself at me.
And that’s when I finally unleashed my magic.