“But they didn’t refuse-except for Julie, and she was an addict. They loved you. They told everyone you were perfect. You changed their lives, you were their Prince Charming.”
“But it was never quite right. I picked poorly, I admit. They were too young, or too dumb, to appreciate what I was offering them. They would come so far, so quickly, but then their development would stop. They wanted such ordinary things, they dreamed such tiny dreams. I had been looking for a physical type, but it’s the spirit that matters. You’re more like Becca than any of them, even if you don’t look like her.”
Tess felt something on the back of her neck that she had not felt for almost twenty years-a breeze. Then the battery-powered razor whirred on and began nipping at her skin. She had grown her hair long in protest of just this kind of barbershop cut, which she had been forced to wear throughout grade school because her mother hated trying to work a comb through Tess’s snarls and tangles. She had worn her hair in a braid since high school, getting two inches cut from the tip every six months or so. Which meant that the hair on the floor wasn’t that old, in all likelihood. But it felt that way. It felt as if Billy Windsor had just cut much of her life from her head.
Finished now, he stooped to gather armfuls of her hair. Then, to Tess’s amazement, he carried these tendrils to his cot. He took the patchwork pillow, removed the cover, and unzipped the inside casing. The pillow was stuffed with hair, masses and masses of dark hair. From Becca, perhaps. Almost certainly from Tiffani and Lucy. And now from her. So Carl had been right about something else. Billy Windsor had kept trophies after all. He had just collected them while his victims were still alive.
“Now let me even up the front,” he said, coming at her with scissors in hand, peering so closely at the fringe of bangs he had given her that he seemed almost cross-eyed in his concentration.
“Why?” Tess asked. “Why me?”
He drew back, so he could make eye contact. “Why? Because I made you. Even more than the others. You’re my creation. I’ve read the papers these past two years, I’ve seen how successful you’ve become. None of it would have happened if I hadn’t killed that man.”
His logic infuriated her as much as it sickened her. How dare he? She was not his creation. She owed him nothing. It was just the kind of condescension she and Carl had discussed earlier that day, which now seemed a lifetime away. Blood rushed to her face and she yearned to protest.
But she should agree, she knew she should agree. Perhaps the others had argued with him, rejected his counsel. He had built up Tiffani and Lucy until they were strong enough and smart enough to have their own opinions about who they were and what they should be. Then he had killed them, for the sin of thinking they knew themselves.
“The others weren’t properly grateful, then, for all you had done for them.”
“I put them out of their misery. They were imperfect, malformed. They knew just enough to know they didn’t measure up.” He put the scissors on the concrete floor, then stepped back to admire his handiwork. “Did it ever occur to you that Epimetheus hurried, while Prometheus was guilty of nothing more than having the patience to get it right?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a Greek myth-”
“I know Greek mythology. Epimetheus made the animals and finished before Prometheus, who made mankind. That’s why he had to steal fire from the gods, because his brother had given all the best gifts to the animals. But he didn’t destroy his creations, far from it. He loved them. He risked everything for them.”
“As far as we know,” Billy Windsor said. “But what if part of the reason that Prometheus took so long is because he started over again? And over. And over. I’ve come to believe he made several attempts, destroying his earlier work, until he got it right. That’s why Epimetheus was done first. Because Prometheus had the integrity to strive for perfection.”
“You think you made us? That you’re our creator?”
“Not exactly. But you would be less without me. Can you deny that?”
“I’ll concede you set some events in motion,” Tess said.
“I set everything in motion. I am motion. We’re soulmates, Tess. You can live with me or die with me. If you want to die, I’ll kill you now-and join you in death. One quick shot to the heart, and it will all be over. But if you choose life-if you choose me-it will be a love like no one’s ever known. I’ll hold you forever, the way the jimmy holds the sook, floating on the tide. We’ll be beautiful swimmers. Together.”
He was leaning in so close she wanted to shut her eyes. His breath was surprisingly sweet, minty, as if he had rinsed with mouthwash before she arrived. The Dominican man must have called Billy Windsor on his cell phone after she knocked on his door. Billy Windsor had told him to come here, knowing she and Carl would follow, improvising this plan. He could not plan everything in advance.
“You have to admit, I took advantage of those events you set in motion. I built up my own business. I got better at what I did. You don’t get the credit for all that.”
“True. But without me, you never would have crossed the starting line. What would have happened if I hadn’t killed that man?”
“His name,” Tess said, struggling for control of her voice, the one thing left for her to control, “was Jonathan Ross.”
“I know. But he didn’t matter to me. Neither did you, at first. But when I realized how you were blossoming, how you began to thrive-then I knew you were ready. And I knew what I had to do.”
He leaned toward her, his mouth open, as if he meant to kiss her. Tess swallowed hard, then parted her lips. She had no choice. She had to do what he wanted, had to stay alive every second she could. She opened her mouth, opened herself, allowed his lips to fasten on hers. His kiss was shockingly familiar, not unlike Crow’s-probing but polite, not gnawing greedily as some men did. He was waiting for permission. She opened her mouth wider still, drew his tongue inside- and then she bit him.
She drove her teeth into his lips with all the force she could muster, biting through the lower lip until his blood spurted into both their mouths. She bit down and she held on the best she could, until she tore a strangled scream from his throat, shocking him in her betrayal as he had shocked woman after woman in his. She used her teeth like knives, but the human face was surprisingly resilient. She was not strong enough to rip another person’s flesh, although she was bearing down so hard she felt a sharp, metallic pain in her molar, the one that was tender because she ground her teeth at night.
But she was strong enough not to let go, to fasten on his mouth like some vicious parasite, sending wave after wave of pain into his face, his head, his body. He slapped her, boxing her ears until they rang. Still, she didn’t let go, just kept holding on to his lip with her teeth even as she raised her right leg, the one that wasn’t hurt, and landed her knee exactly where her eighth-grade gym teacher had told her to kick a man if she was ever in real trouble.
It worked, it actually worked. He fell back, writhing. Tess calculated she had bought herself ten, maybe twenty seconds at the most. She rocked on the legs of her wooden chair, tucking her chin to her chest, hoping she didn’t lose consciousness. The chair fell backward with a thud that knocked the breath out of her-and, as she had hoped, cracked its wooden frame, so the rope was now slack and the chair in pieces. She struggled free and looked around the room. He had a gun, he had said he had a gun. Where was it?
But she was out of time. He was on his knees, those strange guttural sounds still coming from his throat, his eyes slitted in pain and revenge. She saw the glint of the scissors on the floor and dove for them. He grabbed her left leg-high, on purpose, on the very bandage he had made for her-and the pain was searing. Now he was on top of her, he had her left arm, but not her right, which she held away from him, like a kid in a game of keep-away. Her right hand had the scissors.