Filed To Story: Pretty Poisoned Novel by Elle Mitchell
“Whatever man you’ve been seeing. There was no note. Does he have a name?”
I scoff. “No, he doesn’t have a name. And that man would not send me flowers.”
“Well, someone did,” she says. “We have a dinner to get to, but please, Teagan. Get out of bed. Take a shower, go for a walk, or spend some time in the sun.”
She opens the curtains and flips on the light, leaving the door open when she leaves the room.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
And since I have to get out of bed to remedy that, I decide I might as well take a shower.
Afterward, I walk downstairs, make a cup of coffee, and force down a bagel with cream cheese. When I pass through the room again, they catch my eyetwo dozen red tulips in a vase by the front door. That hole in my chest aches.
I set the cup down, pick a flower from the vase, and then close my eyes and run the soft petals over my lips.
I like you, Teagan. Let me be nice to you.
Why would he do this? Does he think this is fucking funny?
I take the entire thing out to the garage, toss it in the garbage, and then crawl back into bed. I don’t know how long it is before I feel someone sink into the space beside me.
“Why are you doing this?” he asks.
“You wouldn’t understand,” I answer, keeping my back to him. “You’re not really a person.”
“Neither are you.”
“That’s not true. I feel things; I need things.”
I feel his weight shifting on the bed before he lies down, pressing his body against my back. He wraps one arm around my front and rests the other under my head. Gloved fingers brush gently over my cheek before running through my hair. I squeeze my eyes shut, biting my lower lip to keep from crying.
“Is this what you think you need, Teagan?”
All I can manage is a nod. I stay like that for a few minutes before turning over and curling up into his chest. I wrap my arms around him, holding him tightly while his fingers run down my back.
“Almost,” I whisper. “Close enough.”
“You’re a pretty girl, Teagan,” he says. “But you make a better monster.”
“I don’t want to be a monster.”
“We don’t always get what we want,” Bone Saw says. “But I got you something; I think you’ll like it.”
“I saw,” I tell him. “I didn’t like it.”
“You haven’t seen this yet.”
He turns over, grabs a black box from the other side of the bed, and sets it between us. I hesitate before opening the lid, and when I do, there’s a gold mask sitting on top of black clothes and shoes inside.
“There’s a full moon tonight, Teagan. Do you want to play monsters?”
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We’re flying down a highway in the middle of nowhere, somewhere deep in San Bernardino Countythe part of California where people don’t really go except to get lost and where, at night like this, you can’t tell which direction you’re headed. There are no lights. There are no towns.
Or maybe we’re in Nevada now. Who can tell?
“I don’t understand why I need to do this,” I say, struggling against the binding over my chest. “It hurts.”
“It’s better if people think there’s a young boy under there than a woman. That’s something they’re used to seeing,” he says. “It’s safer for youprobably for them, too.”
“It’s restricting my breathing. I’m not sure that’s safe.”
“Put your mask on,” he says.
“I’m not going to sit in a dark car with a mask on like a douchebag.”
He scoffs. “We’re almost there. Put it on.”
“You’re smiling. I can hear it.” I pull the mask over my face and then pull the hood over my head. “I’ve heard you laugh, I’ve heard you smile you’re at least a little bit human under there.”
“Not in the way you’d like me to be,” he says.
“I don’t like you at all.”
“Yeah, you do. It’s not your fault, though. No one ever taught you any better.”
“You’re wrong,” I tell him, but he only shrugs.
I turn back toward the window, finally spotting light on a distant hill. We head straight toward it, turning off onto a dirt road, and end up at a massive, off-grid compound. A wrought iron gate with a watchtower opens just as Bone Saw pulls the car up. Then, we head up a long, winding driveway to the main structure.
“We’re going around back,” he says, pulling the car to a stop. I exit the vehicle and follow him around the back of the complex to a staircase leading to a single door on a subterranean level of the home. Another masked thing waits at the bottom.
“How am I going to get in?” I ask as we descend the staircase. “Won’t someone question the plus one?”
“You were invited, Teagan,” he says. “The people who are important wanted you here. That’s the only way in.”
The things don’t speak to each other, but the one waiting by the door scans Bone Saw’s retinas and then my own through the mask before opening the door.
More masked things walk around the open lower level of the structure. It’s a dark, unfinished basement, barely lit with a few red lights on the walls. One corner of the room is filled with wooden crates; it looks like someone is counting or checking in whatever they are. On the other side of the room, there are two bodies, one male and one female, naked and hanging by their feet. They’re attached to some mechanisms I’ve never seen before, but they seem to be
“Are they draining them?” I ask.
“Yes. The blood has to come from somewhere, right? Do you have a problem with that? Your boyfriend used to bathe in it.”
“I’m aware that I should have a problem with it,” I tell him. “But no. I don’t.”
“Good girl,” he says. “Just follow me, Teagan. Do what I do.”
“Well, what are we doing?”
“Tonight we watch. I want to show you some things.”
I follow him up a staircase, and we linger in a doorway leading to a grand, open ballroom. It’s similar to the one in the house I was taken to in Portland, but the decor here is modern and sleek, whereas the other was more old-world opulence. Just like at the other house, there’s a marble slab with a reservoir beneath it near the front of the room, but there’s no body on it. The room fills with wealthy individuals in suits and gowns, still trickling in from a door on the opposite side. Servers move through the crowd with drinks, blood, or a mix of the twoI can’t be sure.
“What is this?” I ask. “Declan and Luca brought me to a party like this once.”
“They did,” he says. “But they were late. See that couple over there by the Monet?”
I think I spot the couple he’s referring to. There’s a woman, maybe a couple of years older than me, with short dark hair, full lips and hips. She’s wearing a short, thin red dress that hugs every curve and no bra, her nipples hard visible points through the fabric. The man she’s with is older, maybe forty-five or fifty, tall and thin with salt-and-pepper hair and square glasses. He looks familiar; I think he may have been in one of the photos the FBI showed me in Wyoming.
“The girl with the cake and her sugar daddy? Yeah, I see them.”
“They need to go,” he says. “You’re going to help us kill them. Not tonighttonight, you’re just here to watch.”
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.