The Grimrose Path (Trickster, #2)(96)

The answer ended up being one of those knives I’d taken out of the jacket. The shit wouldn’t come out of my hair for love or money, and I finally stood naked in front of the cloudy bathroom mirror, took a handful of my hair and sawed through it. I let the clump, matted together with green-gray crap, fall into the sink. The remaining wet hair fell raggedly about two inches past my jaw. I didn’t try to even it up with the blade, slender and sharp as it was. I could have, some at least, but . . .

I turned away from the mirror.

Looking at my picture was okay, not recognizing myself less okay, studying myself in the mirror, not okay at all. I didn’t like it. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t. A quick glance was fine; a long look was a trip someplace and, from the acid sloshing around my stomach, it wasn’t Wonderland. I had guns and knives, scars and dead things; maybe I wasn’t a nice guy. If I didn’t like looking in the mirror, it could have been I didn’t like what I saw. Pictures were only echoes. The guy in the mirror was real.

But it didn’t matter why I didn’t like it, because I didn’t have to look. Problem solved. I spent the next fifteen minutes drying off and doing my best to hand-wash the funk out of my clothes before draping them over the shower rod to dry. By then I was weaving, and I had the next best thing to double vision, and a wet towel in my hand, which I used to cover up the bureau mirror. I didn’t ask myself why. I was only half conscious and barely made it to the bed anyway. So to hell with whys. I pulled the stale, musty-smelling covers over me with one hand and slapped the lamp off the table to crash to the floor. I was too clumsy with exhaustion to switch it off. This worked the same. The bulb shattered with a pop, and it was lights-out.

I didn’t think about it then, but the next day I did, when I had more than pain and drowsiness rolling around in my head. I’d woken up with monsters. I was alone, and I was lost. I didn’t know where I was; I didn’t know who I was. It doesn’t get more lost than that. Wouldn’t you have left a light on? Knowing what I knew and not knowing anything else at all, why would I want the darkness where monsters hide?

Because killers hide there too.