SHE

3. ideal lover

Katerina had matched with Adelaide Demas, but she had not actually bothered to message her yet. She didn't want to look too desperate, so she went to her pass-time instead. She had matched about fifteen other people--all men--and needed to work them discretely and slowly, the way that she had been doing for years. She picked one of the men who looked so much like a frat guy that she had to triple check to make sure that the photo in his profile wasn't actually some sort of stock photo. He was the easiest one, his father had money, he constantly posted gymbro videos on Instagram, and she had to search really far for this, but she found out that he had quite the seedy past that he kept hidden so that he could advance in his career.

It had only taken about three weeks for Katerina to find the dirt that she used to justify what she was about to do next.

Katerina had a test. One that should be very easy to pass, but a lot of men hadn't. She was a very reasonable person, the qualifications to pass weren't hard, but she always managed to find something that would get the men put on her list. This time, it was pictures.

Pictures and blackmail and you could put the rest together. He had extorted three ex-girlfriends, and Katerina reckoned that she would be no different when she got into his good graces, which she was sure that she was going to. She glanced at her phone again, to make sure she would call this man the right name. The name Justin Lakewood stared back at her.

'It's always J names,' She thought to herself. She stared at the fake profile she had made too. This time her name would be Kenzie. Nothing too conspicuous, she was a party girl who was just looking for her prince charming, didn't vote, liked to cook, wanted a dog, and wanted someone who was attractive so she would have good looking babies.

She hadn't been sure that anyone would fall for it, but Justin did. Katerina did her makeup to match the pictures closely, and was glad that she was good at art, because this was much similar to painting and she needed this skill set to pull everything off. When she was finally done with her makeup, she put a wig on over her dark hair and secured it, making sure it looked realistic enough. "Sometimes I outdo myself," She muttered to herself.

She put on some red lipstick and adjusted the generous padding that she had put in her bra. She was wearing a dress that left nothing to the imagination, but also didn't draw too much attention to her. That was just the thing she was aiming for. She wanted to be remembered, but only by her victims. She didn't want any witnesses to remember her face too well, even though she had enough makeup to almost change her face shape. She just wanted to play it safe.

That was the only way that her pass-time worked.

*

"Reservation?"

"Lakewood,"

"Party of two,"

"Yep," Katerina played it right in the middle. Nice, but not too nice. Not memorable. It was a hectic day too, so that would make it harder for a hostess or a waitress to identify her. She knew that Justin Lakewood was going to be late for his reservation, and that would give her exactly the time that she needed to poison him.

She had worked with poisons dozens of times. Usually she would dose small amounts with large amounts of drugs that her victims already took, to make it look like some sort of overdose, but this time she couldn't find any evidence that he took any substances so she had to get a little more creative with her work.

Aconite would do the trick.

Absorb it through the skin, a little more in his food. Just enough to let him get home before he passed out and died in his house.

She just had to endure the date.

This was the only difficult part for her, and not because she found it hard to seduce these men. That was the easiest part, and the murder wasn't that hard either. She just hated sitting through the conversations that always happened the same exact way during these dates. They all had a lot in common with each other. So much so that sometimes Helena wondered if she was dating carbon copies of the same man.

They always involved:

-cars
-how much they could lift at the gym
-their dog
-their jobs
-their bodycount (and not the interesting one)

Sometimes they would shock her and talk about some sort of hobby and almost seem like they had some sort of deep substance to them, but of course, it would always evaporate a few minutes after it started.

"Are you Kenzie?" Justin was a tall boy with golden retriever hair and blue eyes that any naive girl would fall for. Katerina immediately saw right through him.

"Yep! You're Justin right,"

"Uh, yeah. Good to meet you," He sat down. Helena turned off her phone. Five minutes after the time they were scheduled to meet. Not late enough to be rude but just enough to be obnoxious.

This was why she preferred women.

*

Adelaide was wiped clean as far as her social battery went. She had done an interview and came back home to try and finish her book. She didn't know if she would be able to do it.

Her head ached.

She walked through the door and into her apartment, locking the door behind her. She turned off the lights before her head exploded.

Adelaide immediately took four tylenols out of the bottle and grabbed a water bottle, swallowing them and going to her bed. Maybe if she got a good night's sleep, she might actually be able to write in the morning.

She didn't know if she was going to be able to do that though. She had no idea where to start. She felt stuck. Maybe she needed to do something stupid.

Get the adrenaline pumping the way she had when she had started this book.