It was a week before I met the second intruder.
She was not much older than I was; a slim moonbeam of a girl sitting casually in the armchair across from my bed, arms akimbo.
"Hey, neighbour," she said, and smirked.
My hand whipped out for the light, knocking over the alarm clock that had been a housewarming gift from Ruth. Neon lights blinking from the floor told me it was 3:30 in the morning.
"Great. There's more of you."
Her eyes followed me as I sat up, squinting at her in the soft glow of the lamp.
"Do you mind telling me who the fuck you people are?"
She gave me a 'knowing' smile, possibly the most annoying facial expression ever devised by the human race. In a heartbeat I'd mentally mapped out the trajectory of the knife on my bedside table to her jugular.
"I'm Violet."
"Hey, there we go. Thanks for clearing everything up."
Dewy green eyes considered me, but she didn't respond.
"Alright, then. I'll work this out on my own. You're friends with that Tate kid?"
She reacted. Her eyes narrowed and she looked away, breaking her gaze. "No."
"Okay. But you're in the same little club. The club that breaks into people's houses at ungodly hours of the night."
The girl Violet sighs. "No, its not that. It's...this house. We used to...come here. All of us."
"Oh, I get it. It's been abandoned so long you and the rest of the street trash decided to use it as a little clubhouse."
The smile was back, just at the corners of her lips. "Sure. Something like that."
"Well, as very Enid Blyton as that all sounds, the state of Los Angeles doesn't actually consider cubby house land wars a legitimate excuses for breaking and entering."
She looked at me a moment longer, then pushed herself off the couch. "I'll keep that in mind."
At the door she hesitated. "I wasn't going to come. I probably wasn't even going to wake you. I just...I though you should know. I wish I'd known."
"I'm really glad that you choose to speak in cryptic little phrases. It makes it so easy to like you as a person."
"Listen. Tate...he lies. About everything. He's like, pathological."
"Thanks for the heads up there, blondie."
Violet sighed. "Just remember what I said. He's a liar, and he does...he does terrible things."
"Your friend Tate and I have that in common. Now get the fuck out of my house."
I didn't wait to see that she obeyed before I turned out the light.
My hands were shaking, and that was a bad sign.
The last life I had taken had been on the interstate thirteen days earlier. Thirteen.
My joints felt sore. The inside of my skull itched. This wasn't right. I was beginning to crack.
I could not kill Sarah Kerr, as convenient and satisfying it would have been to string a rope around that mouldy, pale neck. She was just too damn noticeable. Even in total silence, the girl's entire body was a sudden scream of violent shape and color. From the shock of red hair to her vast collection of brightly hued tights, Sarah Kerr was as good as a walking stop sign.
This, coupled with the fact that she was rarely ever alone, was slowly driving me into a state of acute mania. In the week and a half since Sarah Kerr had occurred in my life, I had been accosted by no less than four sneezing mathletes, five passionate and spotty young women from the debate club, and two well-meaning but essentially worthless humans that I was led to understand played a game about dragons on a professional level.
Know these things about me:
1.) I adore being adored. I do not care for it, however, when it comes spilling from the feeble, desperate hearts of the sort of people that will eagerly quote eighty digits of pi at you without waiting to be asked.
2.) These children were easy targets. They were the Red Riding Hoods, they were the Snow Whites. Trusting. Simple. Naive to an extent that was simply shocking.
It would be like shooting fish in a barrel. There was no challenge, not a speck of intelligence required.
Even on an thirteen-day dry spell, I couldn't stoop to that level.
It took me three more days to find Eric Lawson.
He was a flannel-wearing American dream in a pick up truck. He was obviously passing through, although I didn't take the time to ask where from or to.
I found him at a gas stop, under the blueish, dying light of a day brought to an untimely end by a storm. He grinned at me in a lopsided way, and I, looking as forlorn as a small girl with wide eyes and a sopping t-shirt can possibly look, hurried through the puddles to his side.
"Nasty weather, this! Got caught in the storm, didya, doll?"
I made a show of wringing out my hair. "I thought I'd be fine to go for a run while the sky was clear a few hours ago, but I got lost. We're new to the area." I smiled ruefully.
"I'm new to these parts myself, but there's a GPS in the truck. You're welcome to hop in for a bit of warmth if you want, I help you find your house once I've paid the fuel."
I adopted a look of rapturous delight. "Are you sure? You're an angel. I can't thank you enough."
"No need to thank me, doll, no need. Here, you're shivering, hop on in. Can't have you gettin' hypothermia."
His truck was huge. I propelled myself up and into the seat. The cab itself smelled like sweaty leather and spearmint.
In better times, when I had more than slim pickings to work with, I would have taken longer, savored the lingering moments with Eric Lawson. As it was, with my hands shaking in a way that was most ungainly, not to mention unprofessional, I felt it would be best to get things over with as hastily as possible.
He got out of the car so meekly that I was annoyed. Knife to throat, most people will show you pretty quickly what it is they're made of, and mostly, I've come to the conclusion that within every grown man and woman lurks a small, whimpering five year old with snot dripping from the nose.
I dispatched of him quickly, taking only a moment, knee-deep in the mud and twisted grass, to appreciate the dulcet ambience of crickets harmonising from the bushes through the misty dark; the raw feeling of rope fibres as they dug painfully into my hands, still tightly clenched behind his neck.
When the thrashing had stopped, I heaved him back into his car, poured the gasoline he'd stored in the back of the truck over the cab and the muddy corpse, and standing back, flicked a match at it.
How I love fire. If I'd been given different opportunities in the early years of my self-discovery, I could easily have indulged in a little pyromania to ease the tension between kills.
I left the scene quickly, tracking back through the roads to my own house, avoiding the distant sound of sirens and keeping clear of the streetlights as they hummed to life.
He was waiting for me when I got home.
I'd decided to keep my wet clothes in the basement until I could bleach them, as Ruth and my mother were too petrified of potential spiders to venture into the dim recesses of the house. I didn't see him until I'd turned on the light and peeled off my sopping tshirt.
"Not that I'm not totally into it, but you should probably know you aren't alone." He wasn't where I'd first seen him; he'd found some sort of chair against the back wall to rock against, his foot propped against one of the sinks. The striped sweater he wore was all but indistinguishable from the one I'd seen last time.
"Aw, two visits in 24 hours. Is it my birthday?"
He looked at me curiously. "Two?"
I flung my sopping shirt into the sink by the door, wrestling with the rusted faucet. "Yeah. Your dippy girlfriend paid me a visit. I'll be honest, I totally appreciate the added creepiness in that she apparently watches me sleep. Really sets the tone for this little home invasion bit you two have going on."
Over the sound of stagnant water angrily gurgling through the ancient pipes, I heard Tate make a noise that was almost a growl. I looked up at him, eyebrows raised.
"Did she talk to you?" he asked slowly.
"Not for long. Enough to warn me away from her territory, though. What was her name again? Lilac? Bluebell something?"
"Violet." his voice was so low I could barely hear it.
The tiny specks of blood had washed out in thin red ribbons down the sink, and I turned off the tap, wringing out my shirt.
"I'm sorry she spoke to you. She shouldn't have done that."
I sighed, reaching down to pull off my mud-caked sneakers. "I don't know that I can actually express to you the extent to which I do not care about your dysfunctional teenage love story. You know what would be absolutely peaches, though? If you-" I spun as I heard his chair drop the floor. He'd somehow crossed the basement in total silence to stand directly behind me, with all the unnerving stillness of a stone monolith.
"-Get out of your house? Yeah, I think you've made that clear."
He was so close I could see the steady pulse of him, surging through the thick veins across his neck. The idea of slitting one open was so potent that I lost my breath a little; an uncomfortable bit of bad-timing, as the self satisfied smirk on his face told me all too quickly.
"Fuck off." I shoved him hard in the chest; not enough to throw him off balance, but more out of amusement he took a deliberate step backward. Black eyes studied me with interest.
"What's on your neck?" he asked suddenly. "Are you bleeding?"
I froze momentarily, my hand going to my throat on instinct. Stupid, stupid! I hadn't even thought to check a mirror. It was sloppy; a beginner's mistake. I was out of practice.
"Must be," I said, forcing my voice down to a normal octave. "I got caught in the storm, didn't you hear it outside? There were branches flying everywhere."
He looked up at the blackened windows curiously. "I didn't hear it."
"Do you actually just sit around for hours waiting to deliver pervy little one-liners? What do you do in this basement when I'm not here?"
He bit back a laugh. "I read, mostly."
"And you're just gonna keep dodging the slightly more important question of why you're apparently living in my basement again?"
He smiled cheerfully. "Looks that way."
"Fantastic." I paused, looking down at my jeans, the bottoms solidifying with mud. "Shit. I can't wear these upstairs, mom will have a fit. Look away for a second."
He stared at me. "You realise you're already topl-"
"Are you going to turn around, or do I have to break your neck for you?"
He laughed and turned back to his chair, books in hand. "Alright, alright. I'll talk to you later, when you can keep your pants on."
There was a wet splatter as my muddy jeans collided with the back of his head. I sprinted upstairs before he could turn around.