Jessica likes girls. Likes the feel of their hair, especially when it’s torn from their scalps. Likes the sound of their voices, especially when they’re screaming, pleading, choking. Likes the look in their eyes, especially when the life has faded from them.

She’s careful about the girls she’s seen with. It wouldn’t look good if anyone notices a pattern of disappearances connected with her one night stands. She thinks it’s funny how every girl thinks she’s going to be the one who’s different, the one who’s special, the one.

Jessica doesn’t believe in The One, although she may have to re-evaluate that after this girl. Her hair is sleek and black and Jessica can already see it coiled in her fist as she yanks her head back for the kill. Her eyes are bright, sparkling with life and laughter. Jessica decides she’ll keep them open afterwards. And her smile—

She catches Jessica staring, and Jessica makes sure to duck her head, forcing a blush to her cheeks.

“Hi.” The smile widens as she introduces herself. “I’m Tiffany.”

“Jessica.” She usually gives a fake name, but she finds her real one leaving .

“Jessica,” Tiffany repeats. “Nice to meet you!”

She really does have a beautiful smile. Jessica wonders how she would look with a Glasgow one. She can’t wait to find out.

You would never know that something is off about Jessica. She thinks, sometimes, about how people would react if they found out about her. She’s sure that she would fall into the “why I never thought, she seemed like a nice girl” category rather than the “there’s always been something weird about that girl…” one.

She’s quiet and reserved, but she’s careful not to come off as antisocial. She has friends, and some of them even think that they’re close to her. She’s kind to animals, and most of them like her just fine, although Sunny’s cat always hisses at her and skitters off to the corner with all his fur sticking straight up, but Sunny laughs and says he’s like that with most people.

She is, all in all, very normal. She just has a few skeletons in her closet like anyone else, although hers are more literal.

Tiffany talks a lot, with a lot of enthusiasm and volume. Really, she’s almost irritatingly loud, and Jessica has never liked loud people. But there’s something about the way she talks. She’s so animated, waving her arms around and even bouncing off her chair when she gets particularly passionate, and sometimes she stops and says, “Sorry, I’m talking too much, aren’t I?” with a sheepishly endearing smile, and Jessica finds herself saying, “It’s fine, I like listening to you talk” and she even means it.

Tiffany beams at that, but instead of talking more, prompts Jessica to speak. “I like listening to you talk too, but I’m not giving you much opportunity to, am I?”

“It’s fine,” Jessica says again. “You finish what you were saying.”

She’ll let Tiffany talk herself out, and then she’ll go for the death blow. She was thinking about strangling her. Tiffany has a lovely neck. Jessica would love to wrap her hands around it and squeeze and see the imprint of her fingers in a purple necklace afterwards. Sometime she suffocates her victims with a pillow or shirt, but it’s so much more satisfying to see their faces when she does it, to see the fear and horror in their eyes before everything drains out of them.

“Jessica? What are you thinking about?”

“How you have a pretty neck…lace.” Jessica tips her chin at the pendant. It is pretty, with a T charm but also a little too gaudy, to wear her own initial around her neck. “T for Tiffany, I’m guessing?”

“In a way.”

“…So it doesn’t stand for your name?”

“It does but it doesn’t.” Tiffany smiles. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you some other day.”

“Okay,” Jessica says, intrigued. She’ll let Tiffany live a little longer, because she’s interesting to talk to and, even harder to find, to listen to.

Jessica expects Tiffany to be as loud in bed as she is in life. However, she’s surprisingly quiet. She gasps and keens and mouths ‘Jessica’ with trembling lips like she doesn’t have the air to vocalize it, but she never moans it. Never screams it. Jessica is left rather disappointed. Not that she lets it show, of course. She has better manners than that.

Tiffany, however, picks up on it and, in a typically Tiffany manner, calls her out on it. “Why are you pouting?”

“I’m not pouting.”

“You seem upset.” Tiffany studies her. “Is it because I didn’t scream your name like you expected?”

Jessica, caught off guard, only stares at her.

Tiffany tilts her head and smiles, not her usual sweet smile but something more coquettish. Challenging. “You’re good, that’s for sure, but you weren’t good enough to make me scream.”

Jessica’s eyes flash. Oh, I’ll make you scream. Forget the strangling, she’ll get out a knife. And she won’t end it with a stab to the heart. She’ll paint a pretty picture with Tiffany’s body as the canvas and her blood as the paint.

Tiffany giggles so hard she doubles over. “The look on your face!” she wheezes. “You looked like you were going to kill me.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Jessica says lightly, making sure to paste a look of lighthearted amusement onto her face.

“I’m just not much of a screamer,” Tiffany says. “People are always shocked because apparently I seem like the type to scream so loudly you can hear it from across the street.” She rolls her eyes, but then she laughs at herself. “I can’t blame them, my friends always said I sound like I have a built-in megaphone in my vocal cords.”

“You mean you don’t?” Jessica asks, pretending to look surprised.

“No, but you can see if you make me scream this time.”

It’s definitely a challenge. Tiffany looks at her with an expression that’s clearly meant to be seductive, but there’s just as clearly a smile she’s trying to hide lurking on the corners of . Jessica wants to coax it out. It would be a pretty last expression.

“Let’s see,” Jessica says, never one to back down from a challenge, as she climbs on top of Tiffany. Then she closes her eyes and pretends to murmur something.

“What are you doing?”

“Praying.”

“Why?”

“For the hearing of the people across the street.”

When Jessica opens her eyes, she’s almost blinded by Tiffany’s smile.

Jessica watches Tiffany’s chest rise and then fall. Her breathing is so quiet it’s almost inaudible. The pattern of it is steady and can probably lull Jessica to sleep if she lets it. She doesn’t.

She doesn’t know what she’s waiting for. The morning? But there’s something about the way moonlight looks playing over the skin of a dead body. For Tiffany to wake up? That would just give chance for a struggle, and as much as Jessica had wanted to watch her thrash and beg before, suddenly now she just wants to give her a peaceful end. A blissfully ignorant one, to die in her sleep without knowing who snipped the fragile tether of her life.

She doesn’t know what she’s waiting for, except maybe it’s for something to stop her. With a silent sigh, Jessica closes her eyes and waits for the rhythm of Tiffany’s breathing to lull her to sleep. However, it’s changed.

“Jessi,” Tiffany whispers. “Are you awake?”

Jessica keeps her eyes closed. “No.”

Tiffany chuckles. “Always a joker.”

“That’s me.” Jessica cracks open an eye. “What are you doing awake?”

“I could ask the same for you.”

“I have insomnia sometimes.” It’s not a lie.

“Oh.” Tiffany frowns. She even looks pretty when she’s frowning. “Is it serious? Do you take anything for it?”

“It’s not a big deal. I sleep better with someone next to me.” She doesn’t mention that someone is usually not alive.

Jessica’s startled when Tiffany puts her arms around her and pulls her snug against Tiffany’s body.

“I’m right next to you,” she says, and Jessica wants to say way to state the obvious, but Tiffany’s hair is right in front of her face and if she opens to speak, she’ll probably get a mouthful of it. “If you can’t sleep, just wake me up, okay?”

“So you can have insomnia with me?” she asks dryly, extricating herself from Tiffany’s grip. Or trying to, anyway, Tiffany doesn’t seem to want to let her go.

“So I can talk to you, or get you a warm glass of milk, or just, you know, be with you.” Tiffany smiles. It’s so sweet, so candid, it makes something alien stir in Jessica’s chest, like her body had discovered a previously hibernating organ. “I like being with you.”

“I-I do too.”

She’s said much sappier, cheesier things, has reeled off romantic monologues like a seasoned actress, but she finds herself barely capable of saying those three words.

Tiffany smiles again. “Good,” she says, like she already knew but still likes hearing the confirmation. “Now, do you want a glass of milk?”

“Sure?”

Tiffany plants a kiss on her cheek. “I’ll be right back.” She slips out of bed and into one of Jessica’s shirts, the stretches of her bare skin gleaming in the moonlight flitting through Jessica’s blinds.

Jessica sighs again and sinks into the bed. Waits for her to come back.

Tiffany is beautiful. The thought courses through her mind like a tape stuck on replay. No, stronger, more powerful than that, like a mantra, a litany, impossible to purge from her thoughts. Tiffany and the world stopping when she smiles and the light perpetually shining in her eyes. Jessica has the strange thought that she doesn’t want that light to be extinguished. She’s never been interested in taxidermy before, but she can see the appeal now, can see why someone would want to preserve something, keep it around forever.

However, she would never be able to keep Tiffany the way she is in life. She’d have to take her eyes out and replace them with glass ones, and as realistic as they look they could never come close to Tiffany’s eyes. That light would be gone forever. And that smile – that smile isn’t meant to be frozen in death, it’s meant to be alight in life.

Tiffany is so full of light and laughter and life. Jessica can’t let anything take that away. Not even herself.

“You’re beautiful.”

Tiffany laughs. “Where’s that coming from?”

Jessica traces a thumb along her bottom lip, like she wants to map out her smile. “The gaping hole where my heart should be.”

Tiffany laughs again. Jessica smiles too. Tiffany doesn’t know that she’s being perfectly serious.

“Well, thank you.” She presses her smile against Jessica’s cheek, and Jessica touches her own skin afterwards, like she wants to catch a fragment of Tiffany’s touch. “You are too.”

Jessica knows that she’s attractive. She works at it, because beauty is as effective a tool at trapping her victims as any knife or gun. More effective, even. It’s a very rational observation to her, but for some reason when Tiffany tells her that, she finds her cheeks warming. She dismisses it as pride, that she is attractive to the person she most wants to attract.

“You’re too cute, Jessi,” Tiffany tells her, pinching her cheek. “You can tell me a compliment, but when I say it back to you, you blush.”

“You think I’m cute?” Jessica asks, genuinely surprised. She knows she’s attractive. Beautiful. Alluring, even. Cute? Not so much.

“Of course.” Tiffany’s eyes disappear into crescents in the way they do. “You get all shy. It’s adorable.”

“Adorable,” Jessica repeats, another word she’s never heard being attributed to her. “Hmm. Good to know I can be those things.”

“What, so you can use them on your next girlfriend?” Tiffany asks, with a hint of a pout.

Jessica kisses the expression off her face. Bites down on her lip, hard enough to draw a bead of blood. Tiffany gasps and Jessica the droplet away.

“What next girlfriend?” Oh sure, she’s definitely going to have a next girl, a next victim, but girlfriend? She can’t see that happening. Not with Tiffany looking at her with those shining eyes. She really is beautiful. Too beautiful to live, but too beautiful to die.

Tiffany giggles. “You’re just buttering me up now. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were trying to get me into bed.”

“I am,” Jessica says. “I want to sleep with you. I think you’d look beautiful asleep.” Even and especially in an eternal sleep.

“Does that mean you think I’m ugly awake?”

“Not ugly. Just a bit loud.”

“Jessi!” Tiffany whines. Her pout is back. Jessica kisses her, and Tiffany’s breath hitches when Jessica’s tongue traces over the wound on her lip, gentle, soothing, the only apology she knows.

“Why do you never talk about yourself?”

“What do you mean?” Jessica blinks. “I told you about my family and my job and—”

“That’s all surface things,” Tiffany says dismissively. “I could have found those things out just from talking to a few people from your circle.”

“Oh yeah? Who’s in my circle?”

“You know, Sunny, Sooyoung, Yuri and the rest of them.”

“You seem to know pretty well who’s in my circle.” Better than Jessica knows about hers, if she stops to think about it.

“Am I in your circle?” Tiffany asks playfully, trailing a hand down her side.

“Do you want to be?”

“I want to be in your everything. I want to be a part of your everything.” She lowers her hand, and then , breathing the words right against her. “I want to be your everything.”

Jessica gasps. Her spine arches, her abdomen clenches, her chest throbs.

You are my everything.

Jessica would like to say that killing is only a hobby for her. The truth is, it’s more than that. It’s an addiction, a call, a need. And she hasn’t satisfied it in too long. She can feel it like an itch she can’t scratch, like an illness festering in her bloodstream.

She has to go out and find a girl. She’s been putting it off, because work has been especially busy and she spends what spare time she has with Tiffany while allotting enough time for her friends so they think they’re involved in her life. They that she’s totally gone for Tiffany, and she can’t even deny it.

Even though she usually likes to play with her food before she eats it, she decides that this time she’ll just find a girl, take her somewhere and end her quickly. She doesn’t want to bring her home, not when it’s a home she shares with Tiffany, and she’s never been one to go home with her victims. It’s too easy to leave evidence that she can’t clean up that way.

Tiffany sends her a text: Jessi!! What do you want for dinner? ^^, and she types a quick reply back: Something came up at work and I won’t be able to come back until later. I’m sorry. Tomorrow?

Tiffany replies with a line of :( :( :(, followed by Okay. Don’t forget to eat! You work too hard as it is.

Will do, and you too. Eat well and don’t wait up. It’s going to take her quite a few hours for the whole thing, from preparation to clean up, especially since she has to be careful not to go home with blood on her clothes or any other traces of the deed.

See you tonight, I’ll miss you! xoxo is Tiffany’s reply, and Jessica knows that she’s going to wait up for her no matter what Jessica says. It makes her sigh and rolls her eyes, but she can’t deny that it brings her a spike of warmth too.

It’s hard for her to remember what her life was like before Tiffany. She has to be extra careful from now on, because she has so much more to lose if she gets caught. She can’t bear the thought of losing Tiffany. And she won’t.

She’s thought about it – if they find out about her, she won’t let them take her. She won’t go to jail. She’ll kill herself first. Well, she’ll kill Tiffany first, before she finds out, before she knows the truth about Jessica. She’ll do it as gently and painlessly as she can, so Tiffany won’t suffer. And then she’ll kill herself, with Tiffany’s face being the last thing she sees.

She won’t lose Tiffany. She refuses to.

Everything is working out according to plan. Jessica drives half an hour away to a town where no one knows her, finds a bar with only one surveillance camera, picks a corner in its blind spot and chats up a pretty, naïve girl.

It’s all a little too easy.

“Minjung.” The fake name she gave is moaned. “Your place or mine?” the girl – Hasa, or Hana, or something like that – gasps, her eyes wide as Jessica finds a sensitive spot on her neck with expert precision.

“I live with a bunch of roommates so it’s not really convenient. Do you live close?”

“N-not that close.”

“We could go to a motel?” Jessica follows the suggestion up with a nip to her ear. “I think there’s one right around the corner.”

The girl pulls back slightly, and Jessica flashes her best smile. She may not have one like Tiffany – she ignores the twinge she feels at thinking about Tiffany, who’s waiting back at home for her – but she knows how to use it.

“Okay,” the girl – Hara, Jessica finally remembers – says breathlessly.

Jessica smiles again. It’s all a little too easy.

Hara is wide-eyed and flushed even before they get into their room, and Jessica knows it’s because of the drug she slipped into her drink. It’s really kicking in now.

“Do you want some water?” Jessica asks in a caring tone. “You look a bit hot. Well, a bit temperature hot.”

Hara looks embarrassed. “Sorry, I think there were just way too many people at the bar.”

“It’s okay. I’ll get you some water.” Jessica gives her a kiss on the very corner of . She’s carefully avoided her lips all along, because there’s just something wrong about that. She feels apathetic at the thought of ing her, and she feels excited at the thought of killing her, but she feels repulsed at the thought of kissing her. There’s only one mouth she wants to kiss.

She gets her a bottle of water from the vending machine in the hallway. There’s no need to put anything in it now, not when she has Hara in the palm of her hand. She’s a nice girl, and normally Jessica would have taken a bit more time with her, but now she just wants to finish her quickly and ease her growing itch.

“Here,” Jessica says, passing Hara the bottle. “I’m just going to go freshen up. You stay hydrated, okay?”

“Thank you, Minjung. You’re sweet,” Hara says as she uncaps the bottle.

“No problem.” Jessica goes into the bathroom, locks the door behind her and rifles through her purse. She pulls out a pair of latex gloves, a pocketknife and a coil of fishing line and, upon reconsideration, puts back the fishing line.

She walks back into the room, and suddenly she feels a sharp prick in her elbow and then the world scatters around her and she knows no more.

When she regain consciousness, she’s greeted by a smiling face. Not Hara’s face, but one that she knows far better.

“Tiffany?” Jessica asks, dazed, realizing that she’s tied to a chair with zip ties binding her wrists and ankles.

“Jessi,” Tiffany greets, like she ran into her at a coffee shop. “I bet you didn’t expect to see me here.”

“What are you doing here?” Her mind still feels cloudy, her thoughts floating and unable to get traction.

“Well, I thought you were held up with work but imagine how I felt when I saw you getting a room with the lovely Hara.” Tiffany looks hurt. Disappointed. Betrayed. “I thought I was special to you, Jessi.”

“You are,” Jessica says without thinking. Without needing to think. “You – you’re my—”

“Your everything?” Tiffany asks with one of her smiles. Except, for the first time, it sends chills down Jessica’s spine.

Yes. You are. But for some reason, Jessica can’t say the words. Instead, she asks, “Where’s Hara?”

“Oh, you don’t need to concern yourself with her,” Tiffany says dismissively. “She won’t be bothering us anytime soon.”

“Did you kill her?” Jessica asks, throat tight, not at the thought of Hara being dead, but at Tiffany being her killer, being a killer.

“Would it hurt you if I did?” Tiffany looks curious. “Does she mean something to you?”

No. Only you do.

Jessica stays silent.

Tiffany doesn’t look bothered. “You don’t want to talk? That’s fine. I’m sure you feel like I let you down. Like I lied to you, cheated you out of the sweet innocent girlfriend you thought you had. It must hurt, doesn’t it?” She looks at Jessica with that hint of a pout again, her eyes looking genuinely regretful. “I’m sorry if I hurt you.”

Jessica chuckles mirthlessly. “Are you?”

Tiffany’s eyes are wide, sincere. “Of course! I mean, I can’t say that I never wanted to hurt you, but I definitely don’t want to now.” She tilts her head to the side. “You can’t say that you never wanted to hurt me, can you?”

Jessica has to give her that. “How long have you known?”

“Why, from the beginning, of course. As soon as I saw you at that party, I knew.” Tiffany’s eyes turn into crescents in that pretty smile. “I could feel it from you right away. I guess you pinged my murderdar, if we were to call it that.”

“I guess mine is non-existent, since I never got anything from you.”

Tiffany laughs. “Don’t feel bad. I’m just very good at this.”

“You are very good.” Jessica bites down on her inner cheek. “So what are you going to do with me now? Silence me?”

Tiffany’s eyes widen. “Of course not! Didn’t you hear me just now? I told you that I don’t want to hurt you.”

Jessica laughs, once, if it can even be called laughter. “And I’m supposed to believe you?”

Tiffany’s face darkens, the first thing Jessica knows to be real from her this whole time. “You should be careful what you say, Jessi. I don’t want to hurt you, but that doesn’t mean I won’t.”

“Just do it,” Jessica says, turning her face away. “End it.”

“End what, exactly?”

“My life,” she bites out. “What else?”

“Why would I do that?” Tiffany sounds shocked. Affronted. “I—”

“You what,” Jessica mocks. “You love me?”

“I do,” Tiffany says in a small voice.

“Tiffany, you’ve already won the Psychopath of the Year Award. You don’t have to convince me any further.” Jessica gasps at the sudden stab of pain in her arm. She looks down to see blood spreading from a wound as Tiffany draws a knife away. Jessica’s knife.

“I told you.” Tiffany’s voice is cold now. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will. And at this rate, I might change my mind about not wanting to.”

“I thought you love me,” Jessica says derisively. “Or is that what you say to every girl before you cut them up?”

Tiffany looks at her with cold, hard eyes like she might plunge the knife into Jessica’s chest. She doesn’t need to; there’s already one buried there. Jessica thought that she didn’t have a heart, but Tiffany had awakened it. It would be fitting for her to crush it.

Then, Tiffany’s expression softens, becomes the gentle one that Jessica knows. She closes her eyes so she doesn’t have to see it. She doesn’t want to know that it’s fake.

“Jessi.” Tiffany’s voice is soft. Coaxing. “Open your eyes.”

Jessica keeps both her eyes and mouth closed.

“Please?” She stays silent and still, even when she feels cold metal trace over her left eyelid, and then the right, like a lover’s kiss. Tiffany’s voice hardens. “I really think you should open them, before I open them up for you.”

“Do it,” Jessica goads. “I’ve been blind when it comes to you anyway.”

The knife is pulled away, and then she really does feel Tiffany’s kiss as Tiffany’s lips brush over her eyelids, and then her nose, and finally , only to pull away after the faintest hint of contact. Despite herself, Jessica whines.

“Open your eyes, and I’ll kiss you.”

Jessica opens them. Tiffany smiles, her old smile, the one that made Jessica realize she can’t ever bring herself to kill her, that she would kill anyone who’d try. She never thought that Tiffany might have contemplated the same question.

“Good girl,” Tiffany murmurs, before giving Jessica a deep, dizzying kiss. She wants to lift her arms and put them around Tiffany, whether to embrace her or choke her she doesn’t know, but they’re firmly bound to the back of the chair.

“Are you going to untie me?”

Tiffany smiles. “Maybe if you’re good.”

“Well then, I guess I’m never getting off this chair.”

Tiffany laughs. “As fun as keeping you tied up sounds, I wouldn’t want to have to bring this chair around everywhere with me.”

“You could kill me and then keep my corpse around.”

Tiffany sighs. “How many times do I have to tell you that I don’t want to kill you?”

“You said you don’t want to hurt me either, but you still stabbed me.”

“I think a little blood is exciting ,” Tiffany says brightly. “Don’t you?”

“Okay, then why don’t you give me the knife?”

“I don’t know, in your current state you might kill me,” Tiffany says, not sounding bothered in the slightest.

“I would never kill you.”

Tiffany raises an eyebrow. “Never?”

“Never,” Jessica says adamantly. Now that she knows Tiffany knows about her, has known all along, there would be no if they found out contingency. If they found out, she’s sure that Tiffany would be able to escape. She’s obviously better at this than Jessica. And as long as Tiffany’s safe, Jessica wouldn’t have any worry to take to her grave.

Tiffany sighs, suddenly, and leans forward to kiss Jessica again. “I know before that you wouldn’t. You thought I was something…good. Something bright and innocent and untarnished. Something to save you from the darkness, maybe.”

Jessica hadn’t thought about it like that, but now that she mulls over it, she finds that it’s true. She’s always recognized the darkness inside her, but she never thought she needed to be saved from it. Until Tiffany. After she realized how precious Tiffany was, she wanted to keep Tiffany away from the darkness. She wanted to be the Jessica that Tiffany loved, to be worthy of her love.

And now… All that has been crushed. Or has it?

“I understand,” Tiffany continues, “because it was the same for me. I wanted to be the person you wanted me to be. For a while, I even thought I succeeded. But it came back. It always does.”

“What?” Jessica asks, even though she knows.

“The Dark Passenger,” Tiffany says in an eerie voice. At Jessica’s blank face, she says, “Come on, haven’t you ever watched Dexter?”

“I have, I just never thought anyone would use that phrase in real life.”

“Now you’ve met someone who does.” Tiffany smiles, so sweet, so radiant, that Jessica wonders how she can be real. And then she remembers that she isn’t, and despite herself, she chuckles.

“What?”

“I always thought you were too good to be true and now I find out that…”

“That I’m not?”

“You’re more than that. I mean, a girl who thinks stabbing is ? Sign me up.”

Tiffany laughs, and then, in a few quick motions, slices through the ropes and zip ties binding Jessica.

Jessica massages her wrists, getting her circulation flowing again. “Did you really have to use both zip ties and ropes? Seems kind of overkill.”

“I wanted to make sure you were tied down properly,” Tiffany says innocently.

“Most people do that with a ring.”

“I’m not most people.”

“I’ve realized,” Jessica says, and then lunges at her and wrenches the knife from her hand.

Tiffany wraps up Jessica’s stab wound expertly, and then holds out her own bandaged arm. “We match.” She frowns. “You’ve lost quite a bit of blood. Are you feeling dizzy?”

“Whose fault is that,” Jessica grumbles. “No, I’m fine. Just kind of hungry.”

“We can order room service.” Tiffany glances around the room. “But we should probably clean up a bit.”

“I don’t think I feel up to it.” Jessica lets her head fall back dramatically. “I’ve lost a lot of blood.”

Tiffany snorts. “You stabbed me too.”

“Not very deeply.” Definitely more shallow than the cut Tiffany gave her.

“That’s true. And you did it on my weak arm.” Tiffany smiles. “You’re so considerate, Jessi.”

“Well, I have to make sure that you can still go out and kill as many girls as you want.”

“I usually go after men, actually,” Tiffany says idly, “but girls will do too. They’re easier to overpower.”

“Like you did with Hara? Where is her body, by the way?”

“In the closet,” Tiffany says carelessly. “She’s not dead though. Just unconscious.”

“You didn’t kill her?”

“No, I wanted to save her for you. Since you picked her out, after all.”

“You’re too good to me,” Jessica says, accompanied by a searing kiss.

Tiffany smiles. “So you’re not mad that I interrupted your plan, tied you up and stabbed you?”

“I mean, it’s the most interesting form of I’ve ever had.”

“I’ll show you interesting,” Tiffany whispers in her ear.

Jessica can’t wait.

Hara’s eyes are filled with terror. is duct taped shut, but she’s making frantic, muffled sounds, like an animal struggling for its last breaths.

“Do you want to do it together?” Jessica asks, holding out the knife in her hand like an offering.

Tiffany smiles and puts her hand over Jessica’s. “Sure,” she says brightly, and then turns to Hara. “Don’t be scared, it’ll be over very quickly.” Her voice is gentle, reassuring, like she’s soothing a wounded animal. She looks back at Jessica. “You ready?”

“Whenever you are.”

They bring down the knife together.

Jessica doesn’t mean to make Hara suffer, but even though she usually has very good aim, she somehow misses a vital point. It takes a couple more stabs to end her life, all delivered by Jessica. Tiffany had graciously relinquished the knife to her.

“I had one last week,” she says. “You should enjoy this one.”

Jessica can’t resist kissing her. “Thank you.”

“Any time.” Tiffany takes Jessica’s bloody hand in hers. “As hot as you look covered in blood, I’m not sure how sanitary it is. Do you want a shower?”

“Together?” Jessica asks hopefully.

“The shower doesn’t look too big, but I’m sure we’ll fit.”

Neither of them spares a glance at the corpse behind them as they trade kisses all the way to the bathroom.

“I’ve never taken the phrase ‘you wash my back, I’ll wash yours’ so literally,” Tiffany says, as she helps scrub Jessica’s back.

“Do you trust anyone with your back?”

“Not before you,” Tiffany says, and Jessica feels a burst of warmth that has nothing to do with the water.

“Okay, your turn.”

“Give me a second,” Tiffany says, as she turns the necklace she’s wearing around so the pendant is facing away from the spray of the water.

“That necklace,” Jessica says. “You said you were going to tell me its story one day. Has that day come?”

“Oh.” Tiffany laughs. “It has. Exactly. This necklace has to do with my first kill.”

Jessica is intrigued. “Is it from your victim?”

“No, like I would wear something of his.” Tiffany wrinkles her nose.

“Whose is it then?”

Tiffany’s expression darkens. “It’s from my best friend. We were friends since preschool. When we were seventeen, she was and killed by one of our classmates. He got off because there wasn’t enough evidence. Well, if the law wasn’t going to make him pay for it, I was.”

“Did you castrate him before you killed him?”

“Of course.” Tiffany grins, black eyes and white teeth. “And then I shoved his up his so he would know what it feels like to be . And I didn’t preserve it or anything, so it started to rot.”

“Good, he got it coming to him,” Jessica says in satisfaction. “I hope he suffered.”

“Oh, I made sure he did,” Tiffany says darkly. “He was begging for death long before I was done with him.”

Jessica gives her a smile full of pride, before the expression dims. “I’m sorry that happened to your friend.”

“She was like a sister to me,” Tiffany says quietly. “I think if she knew what I’m like now, she’d be devastated.”

“You don’t know that,” Jessica says. “You did the world a favour getting rid of scum like that. Who knows how many more girls he would have hurt?”

“I’m not a vigilante, Jessi. I’m not Dexter. I’m just…a killer.”

“So am I,” Jessica says. “Does that make us Bonnie and Clyde?”

She feels accomplished when she sees Tiffany start to smile. “Who’d be Bonnie and who’d be Clyde?”

“Who do you want to be?”

Tiffany studies her for a moment. “I want to be yours, and I want you to be mine.”

Jessica takes her hand and brings it to . “You’re my everything, remember?”

It’s the first time she’s said it out loud, despite the countless times she’s said it in the place that once was merely a gaping hole.

And Tiffany smiles. She’s so beautiful.

“Where’s that coming from?” Tiffany asks, and Jessica realizes she spoke aloud.

“My heart.”

“If you’re saying that it’s mine… Well, if you ever betray me, I’ll really make your chest have a gaping hole.” Tiffany says all this with that sweet, radiant smile of hers.

Jessica smiles. “You say the most romantic things,” she says, and bracelets her fingers around Tiffany’s arm and squeezes. Right over her wound.

Tiffany kisses her, lips tasting like blood, as her nails dig into Jessica’s arm.