Late August meant that the southern hemisphere was warming up. That, coupled with the gentle crashing of waves and shushing of wind rustling through foliage, provided a respite he didn't know he needed.

He thought he would miss the buildings. Between growing up in Italy and living in the States, city life was all he knew. And he thought he would detest the isolation—the removal of his proximity to create. And in truth, it did bother him just a little. But then again, he wasn't alone on this little pocket of land.

Stefano had never really considered himself acting under the will of a muse. From the start, it had always felt like the inspiration was innate. Like any living thing, nourished until it had the strength to stand on its own feet. And then, like a creature of sentience, it had encountered something that gave it a purpose.

But having a muse was… interesting. It had been a long time since he'd welcomed the companionship of another. Celestina was different than anyone he had ever known. She was like a well-composed painting—at first glance, an aesthetical piece. Even to the untrained eye, something to admire. But look closely, and there were small details missed at the first and even second viewing; once spotted, changed the entire composition. And like an obsessed gallery patron, Stefano made it almost a game to pick out as many hidden details as possible. Judging by her first reaction at his attempt to pry, the artist was none too keen to reveal her true motives behind these subtleties. Oh well—speculation was just as fun.

He tried to guess at what she was like before she stepped onto the stage. His first clue was her behavior around him. His dear Celestina seemed to be trying so hard to live a normal life—albeit, a grand one. Away from civilization, away from the crowds and cameras and the eyes of adoration, she didn't seem the least bit miffed. Not like him. Her eyes didn't search for headlines that sang her praises or gave her some clue as to which rising talent to grow bitter over next. In fact, his muse seemed to change entirely on that island. Never once did she mention Marie, or ask what became of her. In her sweet voice, she mewled for Stefano's attention, almost desperately. And when he gave it to her, she purred like a cat in a sunspot.

How strange, Stefano mused. Since that first day, he had never again considered Celestina a woman to use as one of his pieces. At this point—and it amused even himself upon realization of this—he considered her too precious to use in a fleeting piece of artwork. Once transformed, she would only have a short time to linger before she spoiled. That was why he took photographs, but he would find little value in a small, glossy rectangle with just her image. He wanted his muse preserved in the flesh, with a pulse he could feel with his lips and warmth he could combine with his own.

Funny. He gave a cheerless chuckle at this thought—was this what those people in the cities called love? He had already said his vows. What was next? Little ones? Oh dear.

It was this damn island, devoid of the artificial sounds of mankind he was used to. It was making him think these ridiculous things.

Stefano sought out refuge from the deafening silence and looked for Celestina. He found her on the second-floor balcony of the villa. Both of her hands were rested on the wooden railing, with one gently gripping the curved stem of a margarita glass. Her back was turned towards him, and the thin string of her blue bikini top followed its curve. Around her hips she wore a tied skirt, though its lacework was completely transparent. The balcony door was open, inviting. Stepping through and into the sun, Stefano stopped by Celestina and placed a hand on her back.

She had just touched the salt rim to her lips when she quickly lowered it. "You wear your gloves even here? I shudder to think how clammy your hands will get." Leaving the margarita glass on the balcony, she turned towards him and took his hand. Pinching the tip of one of his fingers, she pulled the glove off with a few quick tugs. Then she took his hand from her back and did the same with that one. "See?" she offered, clenching the gloves in one hand. "Not so bad, isn't it?"

Hmm. This wasn't her first mention of them. Another glimpse at a hidden detail. Instead of answering, Stefano took up Celestina's glass from the rail and drank from it. As he did, he rested a hand on Celestina's waist and traced its womanly curve with his bare skin.

"Most people only see these kinds of beaches in pictures," Celestina remarked, gazing out towards the shore. "Did you ever photograph white sands, Stefano?"

"Afghan sands aren't quite as pale," Stefano answered. "Nor as smooth—often it was laced with gravel and dotted with rocks and desert shrubs."

"You mean back when you were overseas?"

"Yes."

Celestina turned her head towards him. She plucked the glass out of his hand. "There's a lot I don't know about you either," she admitted. "Seems we're two mysteries that fell in love." There she went, using that word too. Stefano wondered if she even knew what it meant.

"Then why don't you tell me who you are." He didn't phrase it like a question. His arm tightened around her waist, locking him at her side. And yet, he didn't fell Celestina resist even the slightest.

She raised the margarita glass. "Maybe after a few more of these," she teased. She took a delicate sip, and then said, "Darling, why are you holding me like this?"

"Does it make you uncomfortable?"

"As much as I enjoy your hands on me, I'd rather they be holding mine while you lead me to the water," Celestina replied, gently swirling her glass. Stefano didn't miss her quick changing of the subject. But when her eyes turned to him, with their sinful twinkle, he found himself distracted. "I've always wondered what it would be like to make love on a beach."

"Sandy," Stefano answered. "It'll get everywhere."

The devilish smirk dropped from Celestina's face, but she said, "I suppose you're right. And I bet it'd be course and irritating." With a sigh, she pressed up against his side. "What about here then, my darling? Right here on this balcony."

Stefano's eyes swept over the landscape. "And you're not afraid of someone stumbling in on us?" Despite what the public believed, they hadn't rented out the entire island to themselves. Rather, only the expansive villa they resided in now was theirs for the time being. The island was dotted with other villas, currently occupied by other vacationers. They were too spread out to even catch glimpses of each other. Still, if anyone decided to take a seaside stroll a bit too far in their direction…

"Let them watch," Celestina said wickedly.

"I've found myself wed to a scandalous woman," Stefano mused, moving behind Celestina. He pushed forward until he had her pinned against the rail, reveling in the sharp gasp she let out.

"And you love it, really."

He did. Reaching up, Stefano pulled at the blue knot at the back of her neck and watched it come loose.

As soon as the patrol car was parked in the side of the road, Ledford got out and stepped over the curb and onto the grass. The bank sloped down into a gentle hillside. Ledford descended carefully, moving slowly over the dewy grass.

The area underneath the overpass was roped off with police tape. Ledford saw several officers grouped close to the tape—avoiding the area underneath the overpass itself. Recognizing Ledford, they acknowledged him with silent nods, their faces grim. Ledford stooped down as he pulled the police tape up and crossed the boundary. "Is Hendriks down there?" he asked them, jerking his head towards the shadowed area.

"Yeah."

"Right." The word came out in a sigh as the detective walked past the officers. As he neared the underside of the bridge, he looked up just in time to see the sun disappearing behind the concrete overpass. He looked back down. And then he froze.

This one still had her head. Her face. Marie Chaparé. He had seen her face countless times in the past few days—ID photos, publicity shots. In all of them, she looked happy. Her eyes had glimmered.

Here it was pale. Waxen. Dead, because Ledford had been powerless to stop whoever had did this to her. And that wasn't the worst part.

She had been posed just like Sawyer. Some sick mind had arranged her post-mortem into something they considered… pleasing? Ledford wasn't quite insane enough to be sure what they were thinking. Chaparé had been arranged in a standing position, balancing on tiptoe like a ballerina. Her head was leaned towards one shoulder, and from that shoulder an arm extended. Except this arm, from the elbow down, was stripped bare—right down to the bone. And in the skeletal hand was a bouquet with some flowers still not quite withered enough to lose their color. It was as though the corpse was offering the bouquet.

From her shoulder blades were two tiny wings, also skeletons. Likely, they had come from a bird. In fact, Ledford could see a dismembered crow's head among the blossoms in the bouquet.

The detective stepped closer. He spotted Hendriks nearby. They met eyes. Before she could say anything, Ledford demanded, "Where's my name?"

Hendriks took out her handheld light and clicked it on. Then she pointed the beam. God, the light made the body easier to see. "There," she said. "On the flowers."

Dangling from the tissue paper that held the bouquet together was a small tag. TO JACKSON LEDFORD. The corpse was offering the flowers to him. To the detective that didn't save her. It was Marie's parting gift.

Ledford took a deep breath. He dropped his eyes. And then he saw it—there on the ground. The card tent.

Failure (2007)

Turning away, Ledford suddenly screamed out. His voice echoed in the cavernous space. He hurried over to a nearby pillar and leaned heavily onto it with a hand. He heard Hendriks come up next to him.

"Ledford," she said, her voice firm. "Listen to me, Ledford. This isn't your fault."

None of this is your fault. Ledford squeezed his eyes shut, suddenly feeling dizzy. Keep telling yourself that. Don't stop. Don't let yourself slip. None of this is your fault. None of this is your fault.

When she came back from the bathroom, she nestled up against his side. A hand came up and draped across his chest. With her lips pressed against his shoulder, she giggled softly.

The exhaustion was sweet—a reduction of the wild passion shared just moments earlier. And while each aftermath left him tired, Celestina seemed rejuvenated each time. Her humming would fill his ears while he waited for his heart rate to slow back its normal thrum.

"So how does a man," he heard Celestina say, "with a camera become a murderer? Become my dear photographer?"

Stefano hesitated. No other soul other than his knew his story. Never once had he laid those pages out bare for another to read. He didn't know why he did now. Maybe it was being on this island. Maybe it was the way Celestina gently ran her nails up and down his skin. Or maybe because after all these years, he wanted validation and this was the only way to get it.

"1989," he recalled. "I was 12 when I got my first camera."

April of 1989—Salerno, Italy

It was a Polaroid Spectra that his mother had gotten him for his birthday. The thing was oddly shaped. The overall shape of the device was like that of partially open book—with the lens being where the pages would be and the spine-end where the eye was leveled. Once a picture was snapped, the camera would whirr and buzz loudly as the slot below the lens spat out the glossy, photograph.

For the next few weeks, when he didn't have it up to his eye, he had the camera cradled protectively against his chest. Suddenly, the coastal city he'd grown up in was presented in a new light.

The one or two hours after school let out became precious—it was a small window where there was enough daylight to take pictures. Homework could wait until after the sun set, or when Mama made him do it.

Stefano had taken enough pictures of the water—of the line that separated the soft sky's blue with the deep ocean one. Of course, he was at that time still a runt of a photographer, and those snapped horizons were never aligned right. Sometimes there would be a boat in them. A seagull. Whatever caught his eye and he happened to raise his camera in time to capture.

He took pictures of the dockworkers at the piers. With a press of a button, he had frozen their everyday lives of unloading cargo and fishing nets within borders of white. When they noticed the boy, some of them stopped to pose. Click. Click. It was all good fun. Then, it was back to work.

When Stefano lowered the camera, he noticed a pair of eyes watching him. They belonged to a boy who seemed around his age. He wore nothing but a pair of sun-bleached denim overalls over his lean frame. His golden brown hair looked as though it had been a while since it had touched a barber's shears—though by the looks of the uneven locks, perhaps it'd been cut by someone at home.

They regarded each other silently, one child to another. Stefano didn't even raise his camera. Then, someone further down the pier shouted, "Giacomo!" The boy turned and hurried away. Stefano blinked. What was he doing? Oh, right. He looked to the sun. There was still time.

He brought the camera to school, and his peers were jealous. They were always jealous of anything new and shiny that didn't belong to them. But they found great fun in having their pictures taken. "Me next!" they would shout, pushing their way into view of the lens. They would smile wide, childish smiles while they waited for the click to sound. A pair of girls posed together, each holding dandelions they had picked just seconds earlier. A boy wanted a picture of him jumping in midair, though it took a few tries before Stefano got the timing down.

He liked taking their pictures. He liked how happy it made them. It was like having several friends without having to get too close. The only downside was that often, he didn't get to keep those pictures. They always wanted to hold onto them.

The teachers told Stefano to keep the camera in the cubby under his desk while he was in class. He obeyed, but he was antsy throughout the lectures. He was almost afraid that if he didn't keep his eyes on it, the camera would simply disappear. But it never did, and always when midday recess or the end of lessons came around, he would reach down and feel that it was still there.

A shrill bell announced the end of the day. At the sound of freedom, schoolchildren flooded the halls with their packs to meet up with friends and go home. Stefano planned on heading straight for the general store. He was running low on film. His Spectra probably had only a handful more photographs left in it.

He had slung his backpack over his shoulder and was picking up his camera when he heard someone nearby ask, "Is it new?" Stefano looked up. He saw a boy with messy, golden brown locks and immediately recognized him. To be honest, Stefano hadn't even realized they were classmates.

"What?" Stefano asked.

"Your camera. Did your parents buy it new?"

"Yeah."

"Oh." The response was soft. "That's cool."

"Yeah," Stefano said again, this time dismissively. He pushed his chair in and looked back to see that the boy had already walked away. What a weirdo. A street rat, Mama would have called him. He worked on the docks.

Stefano stopped by the general store as planned and bought more film. He stored the new pack in his backpack and headed out to use up the last of his current roll. Stopping at a street, Stefano took a picture of the stretch of road, bordered by walls of pale, Roman-styled buildings. Then he walked and walked until he passed the buildings and found a small back road surrounded by small trees. There was a large boulder sitting in the grass, its fissures jammed with dirt and sand. Stefano photographed it. There was a tree with a funny-looking knot, and he photographed it. He liked the way the palm trees in the distance looked, so he photographed them.

He'd reached the end of his roll, so he sat down on the grass to replace it. Stefano placed the empty roll and packaging into his backpack and stood up. A quiet chitter caught his attention.

There was a squirrel standing a good two meters away. Stefano crouched down and raised his camera. In the viewfinder, the squirrel looked small. It'd only be a vaguely coherent dot in the actual photograph, but he didn't want to get any closer and risk scaring it off. With one eye squeezed shut and the other concentrating on the viewfinder, Stefano positioned the camera until the little dot was centered. His hand tightened and his finger was on the verge of pressing down onto the button.

A large black blur covered the viewfinder and disappeared in a heartbeat. The loud roar of a passing engine made the boy jump. Still peering through the viewfinder, he saw that the squirrel was gone. No, not gone. It was…

Slowly, Stefano lowered the camera. He stood up. Each hesitant step over the grass brought him closer. The squirrel had been standing on asphalt, unaware.

Stefano stopped just short of where the grass ended. He looked down, eyes wide.

Claws scrabbled frantically against the asphalt. The squirrel, confused and afraid, tried desperately to get away but was pinned down by its own crushed flesh. Flattened skin and muscle were glued to the pavement by blood and guts. Stefano was astounded that the thing was still even alive. Yet here it was—struggling. Fighting for life even with half its body smeared against the road.

The child in Stefano told him that it was afraid. What he was seeing was horrific and he didn't like it. But then there was a second voice, one he had never heard before.

This one is perfect, it whispered. Take a picture.

The hand holding the camera twitched. But he couldn't lift it. He was still afraid. So transfixed was Stefano at the sight, he didn't hear the quick steps coming up. Suddenly a foot came into view, perched over the squirrel's head. It came down. Stefano heard a sickening pop. Then all was silent—the scrabbling had stopped.

As if broken out of a trance, Stefano looked up. He looked into the eyes of the boy from the docks. "What did you do that for?" he demanded.

The boy glared back. "It was in pain," he said. "There was nothing else we could do."

There was something else I could have done.

The boy with the golden brown hair walked off the road and stopped by Stefano. The both of them looked towards the dead squirrel with the flattened head. Glancing down, Stefano saw the boy wiping the bottom of his shoe against the grass. "Don't look at it," he told Stefano. "Let's go." He spotted the camera in Stefano's hands as they headed back up the street. "You're the camera boy."

Camera boy. It made him sound like some kind of dumb superhero. "And you're the dock boy."

"You make me sound like some kind of dumb superhero."

Stefano quickly looked up at the boy. Feeling Stefano's gaze, he glanced back. "What?"

"Nothing," Stefano said quickly, diverting his eyes. "I've seen you around. What's your name?"

"Giacomo."

That's right. That's what the dockworker had called him. "Did you know we're in the same class, Giacomo?"

"Yeah," Giacomo replied. "You notice a lot of things when you're the quiet one. Like that you're quiet too. What was your name again?"

"Stefano."

"There's a man on the docks also named Stefano. To set you both apart, you can be Stefano the Camera Boy."

"No. That's stupid."

"You're stupid."

"Take a long walk off a short pier."

Giacomo laughed. Stefano couldn't help but smile a bit. He had never made a friend, well, a friend friend before. He didn't like the closeness required. But this was… nice. Almost effortless.

Giacomo Damiani was an only child, just like Stefano. But unlike Stefano, he only had a mother. Giacomo's father had died in a factory accident when Giacomo was just two years old. His mother ran a business out of her home selling and mending clothes, but the money only stretched so far. So, as soon as Giacomo was strong enough to lift a crate, he began working on the docks. When he had the time, he also worked part-time for stores and restaurants—unloading boxes from trucks and into the storerooms.

Working out of necessity was a foreign thing to Stefano. To him, it was an adult thing, and he was still far from adulthood. Still, that difference wasn't enough to hold them apart. Soon, meeting up after school became a regular occurrence. They'd explore Salerno for a bit until Giacomo would have to go back to the docks.

Giacomo led Stefano to the seaside and showed him things he had never noticed before. Through the damp ropes that separated a walkway from the water, Giacomo pointed out the rocks just below the surface that were covered in barnacles. Occasionally, Giacomo told him, when the water was still, tiny crabs could be found crawling over the bumpy shells.

Stefano, of course, took a picture. Then, he pulled his camera back from between the ropes and straightened up. Aiming the lens, he said, "Giacomo, smile for the camera!"

Giacomo didn't give a smile. He gave more of a startled glance over his shoulder when the click sounded. Lowering the camera, Stefano plucked the photograph out of the slot. He glanced at it and admitted, "Maybe I took that one a bit too soon."

"Didn't even give me any time to react," Giacomo grumbled as he turned around to face Stefano. Leaning back against the ropes, he cracked a wide grin. The Spectra snapped a photo and pushed out the picture. But this time, Stefano didn't immediately take it. He held the camera out towards Giacomo. "How did it turn out?"

Reaching out, Giacomo took the photograph and looked it over. "Pretty good," he answered.

"You can keep it, then."

"Really?"

"Sure."

"Thanks!" Giacomo looked back down at the picture. "I can't wait to show Mama!" He looked down towards the piers, his smile quickly disappearing. "I think I need to go back and help out. Hey." He gave Stefano's shoulder a pat as he hurried past him. "I'll see you tomorrow!"

"Alright. See you, Giacomo." Stefano looked down at the empty slot. He looked out towards the water where the sun still hovered a good distance over the horizon. There was still time. Stefano peered down at the docks. From where the stood, the workers were tiny, moving shapes. He couldn't tell which one was Giacomo, but he knew his friend was down there.

Friend. That word had come so naturally. Stefano put his camera away into his backpack and headed home.