Chapter 6

"You goddamned bitch!" Vera shouted the moment Vincent pulled the rope from her mouth. "You've been in on this!"

Katrina laughed. "Nope, Vince and I have just met. But let me set the record straight for you, Ver. He does kiss a hell of a lot better than your piece of shit brother. And he knows to keep his hands to himself."

"You're disgusting!" Vera cried. "Where's Victor?"

"I slit the pig's throat and let him bleed out like the animal he was. Even for a cannibal, his filthy carcass would have been too gross to eat."

"You're a cannibal?" Vera asked in a small voice, apparently more disgusted by that than the fact that her brother was dead.

Katrina rolled her eyes. "You are incredibly stupid, Vera. I didn't say I was a cannibal." She heard Vincent chuckle behind her and smiled. "If I was, though, I'd eat Vincent." Turning to give him a wink, she added "Or parts of him, anyway," looking pointedly at his crotch.

Vincent could handle no more of her innuendos. He turned around quickly and began heating his wax so she couldn't see how nervous he was. To his shock, he felt her body close to his.

"What are you doing?" she asked. Her gaze fell on the wax. "Good God, is this how you make those wax figures upstairs?"

He swallowed hard, thinking she was disgusted by him. The warm feeling he had before when she kissed him fell away completely.

"This is great!" Katrina exclaimed happily.

His meager confidence returned. "So she isn't disgusted . . ."

"Is every figure upstairs a real person underneath?"

Vincent nodded at her, stirring the wax carefully.

"So how do you do it? Are you going to do it to them?" she asked, nodding towards Vera and Jessie. "Can I watch? Can I help?" Her eyes widened. "Can we make Vera bald?"

Vincent smiled at all her questions. "You can help."

She grinned. "What do I need to do?"

"Stir."

Katrina took the huge wooden spoon from him and struggled to stir the wax. He watched for a moment, noticing that she needed something to stand on. He pulled a box out from underneath the work table and lifted her up onto it, picking her up by her waist like a child.

"There," he said.

"Thank you," Katrina said, stirring with a look of utmost concentration.

He nodded once and began to wash off his worktable with a mixture of vinegar, soap, and water, noting that she needed two hands to stir while he needed only one.

Katrina wrinkled her nose. "That smells horrible. What is it?"

Vincent cleared his throat and told her what was in it.

"Why do you need to use vinegar?"

"It cleans the table better."

"Oh."

When he was done cleaning, Vincent glanced over Katrina's shoulder to check on the wax. "All done," he told her.

"What do I do now?"

"Watch."

Vincent poured the wax into a much larger vat, stoking the fire beneath it. "Must pour a little bit at a time. Can't melt such a large amount all at once. It will burn." He cleared his throat again, not used to talking so much.

She smiled at him knowingly. "This is probably the most you've talked at once in a long time, isn't it?"

He nodded. "More now than all of the past year."

"I take it Bo's not one for a conversation."

"No." He hesitated for a moment. "He just talks a lot."

Katrina watched as he poured more wax pebbles into the smaller vat and motioned for her to stoke the fire underneath it. She did as she was asked, and when the fire began to melt the wax, he handed her the spoon. They melted several more vats of wax before Vincent pronounced them ready to proceed.

With a loud grunt, Vincent tipped the large vat of wax over, pouring the liquid into what looked like an enormous pressure cooker. When he was finished, he walked over to Jessie and Vera. "Which one?" he asked.

Katrina laughed as the girls began to sob. "Jessie, of course. Remember Bo wants to pump Vera full of Bo juice."

Vincent laughed at this, at the same time blushing furiously. Vera looked absolutely disgusted.

"So?" Katrina began. "Let's lift the fat ass up here."

"No. Lifting her will hurt you."

Katrina smiled. "Always the gentleman."

She watched in amusement as Vincent heaved a shrieking Jessie onto the work table. "Do you think we should give her some liposuction before we do this? Or do you need a fat chick in your museum?"

"What is liposuction?"

"Are you kidding? You know how to turn a woman into a wax doll, but you don't know what lipo is?"

He stared at her in confusion. She sighed.

"If a bitch is really fat and has money and wants to lose weight fast, she goes to the doctor and he sucks the fat out of her with a special vacuum. It's called liposuction."

He bit his lip thoughtfully and stared down at Jessie.

Katrina grinned. "Are you . . ."

"Why not?"

"How will we do it?"

Vincent thought for a moment. "There's a shop vac in the closet."

Katrina burst into amused laughter. "Does it have attachments?"