Page 3 of Enter if you Dare: Part One

She remains on the ground, and my quick glance reveals wide eyes of an unbelievable blue, peering up at me the way most people do, as if struggling to understand what exactly they are seeing. But she doesn’t look away, and I watch her instinct to fight dwindle as her brain tells her I am not a threat—to her at least.

This woman is beautiful laid out like this. I stopped being ashamed of the way I see things a long time ago. It doesn’t help anything. I held it in for years when I was young, and it didn’t change a single thing about me.

I need to talk to her, reassure her; yet when I open my mouth, words don’t come easily. Instead, I give her the only sound I can.

“I have no color, yet I stop you in your tracks. I have no voice, yet every eye finds me first. I am broken in places no one can see, and still they call me the most striking in the room. What am I?”

Beautiful.

Her eyes close, and her body falls limp, so I kneel beside her and slide one hand under her. I pull her to my chest and smell her hair—something tightens in my chest at the scent of lilies. Standing, I throw her over my shoulder, where she flops like a rag doll.

I need to make sure she is safe, and the only place that has ever kept me safe is the cornfield. As I cross through the cemetery, she stirs a little, and I don’t want to scare her, so I murmur, “I am a word with no teeth. Lovers use me, monsters too. The lonely crave me and the hunted fear me.”

She stops moving, and I hurry forward, needing to reach the cornfield and make sure she is okay.

After weaving through the rows of stalks, I lay her at the base of my post in the center of the cornfield. She looks right, as if she belongs here with me. I know she needs someone else when she wakes up, that I shouldn’t be the first face she sees. She will need another girl to make her feel safe. I’m good at scaring people in the dark, and I am good at riddles, but I’m not good at the soft things people need when they are hurt or frightened. I wasn’t taught those soft things; what I was taught is not something I like to think about, something I refuse to think about right now.

I know who I need to get—the tattooed girl, Kayla. She answered one of my riddles, and I let her go. It means she owes me a favor; that is how it works. I give them a riddle, and if they answer correctly, they walk away unharmed, but at the cost of a favor.

I head back to the cemetery where I saw her last, and she is gone, so I go straight to her house and see the lights are still on. I let myself in and follow the sound of laughter upstairs. When I open the door to a bedroom, everyone’s eyes turn to me.

Vero shrieks. I swear that little worm is the bane of my existence, especially when he has an episode, but I won’t hurt him. If only because he belongs to Ares—they all do—and Ares has always been kind to me. Clay and Brawley stand side by side, and I nod toward Kayla. At my movement, she pushes past them.

“Come,” I say, and their mouths fall open. They have never heard me talk beyond riddles, but one word is easy—it’s the rest that is hard.

“Over my dead fucking body,” Clay spits, and I draw my sword from the scabbard Cipher made for me.

“Calm down. Cave, is everything okay?” Kayla asks, and I shake my head.

“Girl,” I say, pointing toward the cornfield.

Kayla nods and pulls on a pair of pants—I hadn’t realized she was only in her underwear. Once her pants are on, she slips her feet into her boots, and Vero throws a hoodie at her.

“You are not seriously going with him,” Clay argues.

“Yes, I am. I owe him a favor. Besides, you all know he is no threat to me. I’ll be back.”

“You hurt her, and I will kill you,” Brawley says, and I laugh. He can try.

Kayla follows me out of the room and down the stairs. The sound of her men arguing follows us, along with Ares assuring them that she will be fine. I have zero desire to hurt her; she has done nothing to me. I like her well enough, though I think she needs to be evaluated for loving Vero, but each to their own. A therapist once said something like that to me. That everyone’s brain works differently, and if we were all the same, the world would be boring.

She doesn’t ask me for an explanation, or fill the void with words, which I appreciate. I don’t like words; I like silence, unless it’s Noa—I like his words.

When we reach the girl, Kayla looks down at her and then back at me. I simply nod as she takes off her hoodie and puts it over the girl, then checks her pulse.

Silently I turn and walk away, stalking back toward the cemetery. I need to check on the man now that I know the girl is safe. I am thinking about how to do this when I hear Noa; I know his footsteps, fast and uneven—one foot is slightly heavier than the other. Plus there is almost always the drag of a shovel.

He comes around the curve of the path and stops when he sees me; he looks me over and then meets my eyes. He is quiet for a full second, which is a lot for him.

“Right,” he finally says. “So I saw you come past and thought I would see what you were doing here, see if there was anything I could do to help. I brought my shovel. It’s always with me, which most people think is strange, but really, it’s just practical. No one would think it was weird if a chef carried their knives with them.”

I don’t reply—I never do.

“He’s not getting up,” Noa continues.

I shake my head.

“I know a spot. Past the tree line, and just behind the old fence post that has fallen down. It’s a good place to leave a body, somewhere people won’t find it easily.”