Blood, violence, pain, death . . . blood, violence, pain, death . . . blood, violence, pain, death . . .

   The shrieks were even stronger here than they had been at the caretaker’s cottage, the agonizing notes so sharp and loud that it seemed the emotional vibrations were slowly tearing the stones apart one molecule at a time. Of course, that wasn’t really happening, since emotions, no matter how strong and intense, couldn’t break apart solid stone.

   But I could.

   I needed to incapacitate Porter, and what better way to do that than by using my Stone magic to drop his own house of horrors right on top of his head? That would be some poetic justice, Spider-style. So I concentrated on all those plaintive shrieks and wails, listening to the mutterings and using the sounds to seek out the weakest points in the stones that made up the cottage.

   There—right there.

   The mutterings were particularly harsh and loud in the upper section of the fireplace, right above the mantel where Porter had put that doctored photo of him and Maria. Of course, the emotional vibrations would be concentrated there, since Maria was the focal point of Porter’s obsession. Even better, I could see a faint spiderweb pattern of cracks starting from that point in the fireplace and running all the way up to the ceiling.

   I glanced from the cracks to Porter and back again, calculating distances and angles. I needed to get him to move just a little bit closer to me, so that he would be directly in the line of fire, so to speak. But that would be easy enough to accomplish. All I had to do was attack him with words the same way that I had Tucker. So I fixed my attention on that one weak spot in the fireplace and started gathering up my Stone magic. I’d only have one shot at this, and I had to make it count.

   “And do you know what the worst part was?” Porter said, still continuing his rant. “Maria was ready to move on. She told me that she’d already made plans with someone else and that she was on her way to meet him. I stood there and watched her curl her hair and put on her makeup while she told me all about it.”

   Well, that explained the makeup. He was trying to re­create that one fateful moment, only with the outcome that he wanted instead of what had really happened.

   “She put on her lipstick last, then looked at me in the mirror and smiled, asking me to be happy for her.” Porter snarled. “As if I could ever be happy when she was with someone else. Why did she have to do that? Why couldn’t she just love me as much as I loved her?”

   “Oh, I don’t know,” I said, my voice dripping with venom. “Maybe because she realized how obsessed you were with her. Maybe because she was tired of you always watching her, not to mention following her around all the time. Or maybe she just wanted you to go away and give her one fucking moment of peace. Did you ever think that you were the problem, not her?”

   Porter blinked and blinked, as if such disturbing thoughts had never occurred to him before. “But . . . but I loved her.”

   I let out a harsh, mocking laugh. “You didn’t love her. You stalked her, you hunted her. And when she wouldn’t play along, when she wouldn’t give you what you wanted, you finally killed her. Maria’s gone, and you have no one to blame but yourself. And now you keep trying to recreate these feelings you had for her with other women. Well, guess what, Bruce? None of the poor girls you brought here and murdered loved you either. And Maria? I imagine that she pitied you more than anything else.”

   I paused, getting ready to twist my verbal knife in even deeper, just like I had with Tucker. All the while, I kept gathering up my Stone magic, getting ready to hurt Porter with it even more than I was hurting him with my sharp, taunting words.

   “Nah,” I said. “Maria didn’t even pity you. She just made fun of you. She probably laughed and laughed at you behind your back with all her rich, snooty friends.”

   “Shut up,” Porter growled. “Maria never did anything like that. She would never be so cruel.”

   “She would have been exactly that cruel,” I snapped right back at him. “How could she not laugh at you? The silly little servant boy who thought that he actually had a chance with the rich, pretty princess? Just hearing your stupid sob story makes me want to laugh.”

   I stared him right in the eyes and started chuckling, making the sounds as low, harsh, and mocking as possible. Trying to make him forget about everything else except how angry he was with me.

   And it worked.

   Porter’s blue eyes narrowed to slits, a red flush crept up his neck, and his hands clenched into fists. And I knew that I was seeing exactly what all those other women had seen right before he killed them. They’d said the wrong thing, they’d ruined his fantasy, and he’d flown into a rage and killed them, just as he’d killed Maria when she finally rejected him.

   I let my chuckles fade away. “Face it, Bruce. Maria never cared about you, not one little bit . . .”

   This time, I was the one who went on a rant. More and more hateful words spewed past my lips, each one more poisonous than the last, even as I gathered up more and more of my Stone magic, getting ready for what was to come. My words and power mixed together, each one fueling the other.

   That flush crept up to Porter’s cheeks, staining them a dark, mottled red, and pure murderous rage glinted in his eyes. His entire body tensed, and his hands were fisted together so tightly that his fingers had gone white from the strain. But I kept right on talking, taunting him.

   “And you know what else?” I said. “You didn’t bring all those women here because you thought you loved them. Not really. You brought them here because you wanted to hurt them the same way that Maria hurt you. Because deep down, you like hurting women. Because you wanted all the fucking power over them that you never had over her—”

   And he finally snapped, like a rubber band stretched to its breaking point.

   Bruce Porter let out a harsh primal scream, surged out of his chair, and threw himself at me.

   And that’s when I finally unleashed my magic.