Primal Pursuit

Where are we meeting? When?

The chase, darling rabbit. I’m not meeting you.

I’m going to hunt you the fuck down and feast. And punish.

I grab my coat, and I’m halfway down the stairs when the phone pings again.

You’ll know when and where to start. Be a good rabbit.

He’s lucky it’s my day off.

Lucky? Yeah, right. He knows. That’s the kind of man he is. He claims he doesn’t have my address, but if he knows I’m close to St. Brigid and has a car following me, he knows.

It should scare me. It doesn’t.

It fucking thrills.

I make my way to the church. It’s not Sunday, so there’s no service, and I edge up to the door, part of me expecting Davian to leap out and grab me. But as I open it, I just see a package with the word rabbit on a tag. Small r.

“Hello, Rabbit.”

I scream right as I notice it isn’t Davian’s voice. It’s the smooth, sexy tenor of the priest. But he doesn’t sound so…priestly.

On shaking legs, I turn. And look up.

He’s gorgeous. The face of a fallen saint. A man far too beautiful for a life of celibacy. It’s a sin, really.

“You’re Davian’s friend.”

“I know him.” There’s something threatening in his stance, how he looks at me. “You’re his rabbit, the girl who wants a man dead, little Penelope Moore, right? Tell me, is he the man?”

Panic claws at me, and I can’t breathe. “I?—”

“The confessional is sacred.”

I gulp. “This isn’t the confessional.”

“How very right.” The priest offers me a devastating smile. “Be careful, though, little Penelope.”

“Of Davian?”

“Of what could happen. Sometimes we’re not what we seem. And sometimes,my child, we hurt ourselves in hurting others. And there are a lot of ways to kill. Have you read Oscar Wilde?”

“The plays?”

“Poems.The Ballad of Reading Gaol,Wilde says, ‘For each man kills the thing he loves’, and ‘the coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with a sword.’”

My heart stutters, and I swallow hard. “I’m not…” I don’t know how to finish it. “It’s not him. He’s not the one I told you about.”

Even I don’t believe me.

The priest picks up the large, flat box and hands it to me. But as I take it, he keeps his grip on the box, his eyes boring into mine like he’s staring straight through my soul. “In most things, Davian can handle himself. But you” —he lets go of the box— “well, I guess we’ll see. Have fun, Penelope Rabbit.”

I make a slight sound and turn, running fast from the church. That priest caught me off-guard. He knows toomuch. God, Davian’s influence stretches into churches, priests, confessionals. Is there any place in this city Davian can’t reach?

I’m sort of in a state of panicked confusion when I get home and run into a sour-smelling pig at the building’s door.

“Poppy.”