Someone had killed him. Not only killed him but ragefully torn him asunder.

“Return to me,” she said. “Cyrus Rivera, I speak your name. I speak your name so you may live again.” And a chill ran through her body, as if her spine were a string of icy pearls pulled by an unseen hand.

Dog sat on his haunches, horn-ears perked. Motionless, as if he’d been carved from obsidian, except for his nose with its 300 million olfactory receptors. His eyes gazed at her with worry and with love. Her protector. She realized he’d been in this position the entire time she’d acted out this weird, compulsive ritual that she herself could not even begin to understand.

Izzy swallowed a Tramadol with as much water as she could stomach and lay down beside the mannequin. She had loved Cyrus so deeply and for so long that she had ceased to even think of it. The way she had forgotten that the ring on her finger was not a part of her hand, until the ring was gone. The same way her body had clung to life. A blind, driving obsession to stay alive, even in the years with Larry and Leanne before Izzy had found Cyrus, as if she knew she would find him. Now her body loved death like that. So she could be with him again.

Unless he could rise up, reassemble, return to her. Through some dark magic.

I Want Your Hands on Me

I Want Your Hands on Me

She lay beneath a man’s warm, wide chest. For its muscular expanse, it was surprisingly full and soft, almost feminine. She held on to the strong slope of shoulders, the tensed biceps, she ran her fingers over the pectoral muscles, the abdominal muscles to the groin. The man’s skin was so soft, like the satin of a woman’s dress smoothed over the muscles and flesh. How was it that a young man’s skin could be so soft? She tasted wine and salt. A sensation of great tenderness and of even greater desire filled her.

She opened her eyes in the dream and looked up at the man’s face.

He was not Cyrus.

Here, in her dream, was Ever.

And yet this time she felt no regret, nor any guilt. Somehow, she knew.

Cyrus had sent him. Cyrus had sent him to her. He would know what to do.

◆◆◆

Cyrus had vanished on November first, Día de los Muertos. She had met Ever just weeks later. Maybe, she thought, some part of Cyrus’s soul had slipped inside of Ever, as another part had slipped into Dog. Dog Gone. Desperation, Izzy knew, could easily overcome doubt. But she was so far gone herself now that the thoughts only struck her as a little strange. Certainly not stranger than anything else that had occurred.