Reason

1

The boy.

That's how Helena's mother always described him, her slim brows converging on her forehead like tectonic plates.

The boy. Sometimes the boy next door. Rarely, when she was sipping her tea and looking out the window, that poor boy, just mumbled under her breath like the words would melt away with the steam.

Never Vasile's son.

Never the murderer.

He'd never looked like a murderer to Helena.

Not until now.

He sat across from her, hands steady on the knife as he plunged it downwards.

The meat didn't budge.

"You don't have to eat it," Helena's mother said, reaching across the dinner table. "I think I overcooked the steak a bit."

"No, no, mitera," he said, waving her away. "I'll eat it." Even if I die trying.

"Are you sure, child?" Helena's mother said, brushing her fingers along the wood of the table. "I'm sorry, I thought your father was coming home today and didn't cook anything else-"

"Don't worry," he said again. "I didn't know he wasn't coming back. And I mean, you're my neighbor, not my nanny."

Helena's mother laughed. "I changed your diapers when you were a baby, young man."

He blushed, the red running over his freckles. "You and my dad were way too close," he grumbled.

Helena shook her head, smiling at the memories. She'd known him even when they were young, sitting in the living room and watching the dust swirl in circles around the sunlit air. They'd drawn on butcher paper with crayons, pictures of a happy family with him and her and her mother and his father, like the broken pieces of two different families could form one whole.

Helena's fingers drummed a soft beat into the grain of the living room table. She hadn't expected him to come back here to eat. Not for the third day in a row.

But the house he lived in was empty, and his father was busy.

Busy, his father had said, his words coated with power. I'm busy. I can't come home today. Go play with Helena.

Vasile talked to his son like he was still five, not seventeen, not the best orator in the class. He spoke to his son like his voice held all the power and his son's held nothing but coarseness.

Vasile talked like he was the only Silvertongue in the family, and his son was nothing. Voiceless in a world where persuasion was all that mattered, the honey-coated words the only way to climb the bars of society. To get a good job. To be a success.

His son would be a success, with his loud, charisma-filled voice, curled hair constantly too long, brown eyes filled with uncorrupted light. But his father didn't think so.

Helena shook the thoughts from her mind, picking up her plate and rolling the keftedes onto her friend's plate. The meatballs piled around the steak.

"Take mine," she said, voice soft and clean.

Her voice wasn't filled with sweetness, not like his.

Because when the honey started to seep into his voice, he could kill.

He had killed with his virus-like words.

He'd told her one night when his father hadn't come home by ten, curled up near the couch cushions and drawing tic tac toe boards on the carpet with black markers and guilt. They'd been seven, huddled together in a blanket of sleepiness and half-murmured words.

"Helena," that same voice said, deeper at age seventeen but still filled with frank honesty. "Are you going to eat those peas?"

She shook her head no, passing her plate over to him.

The doorbell rang, the sound piercing through the room, and he dropped the peas.

They rolled across the floor. One lodged in a crack between floorboards, another at the corner of the beige carpet.

"I...wasn't expecting anyone," Helena's mother said.

Helena stared at the door, seeing the murky shadow of a silhouette shift in the glass pane.

"Helena, darling," her mother said, putting down the potatoes. "Would you get the door?"

She nodded, standing, when the boy stood. "Listen for the warning phrase," he told her. "Listen for their words. Make sure he isn't-isn't persuading you. Using his silver tongue. If-if he wants anything, call for me."

"No," she said. "I'll handle it."

"I have nothing to hide from," he told her. "I'm clean."

Clean? She looked at his hands, the phantom nightmare-thick blood that dripped from them. She'd heard the screams, heard the regrets threading themselves through his voice. She's heard him try to scrape that blood off his hands since he was seven years old, sleeping in the room next to hers because his father was busy climbing rank with his sparkling words.

Helena's mother shook her head. "You will stay here," she said, but her words were smiling. Her eyes were not. "Helena can handle it."

"But she has no power in her voice-"

"I'll be fine," Helena said.

She left the table, letting his protests rolling around the open air like the peas on the ground, ignored. She stepped on one on the way out.

The silhouette figure of shadow shifted when she opened the door, moving like a nightmare.

"Hello, I was looking for a Andrei Radu?" a lilting, sweet female voice said. "He's supposed to live next door, but he's not there."

The words were coated in power, in silver and silk, sliding through the air and trying to latch onto Helena's mind. She ignored them and met the woman's stare. "Who are you?"

"I'm just asking about Andrei Radu, darling, and you should tell me where he is," the woman said, her words freezing over, crystallized sugar. "I highly recommend it."

"We," she said in her cobweb-thin voice, "are eating. Would you like some steak?"

"Oh, just stop," the woman snapped. She took a deep breath, letting the power build behind her words. "You shall listen to me speak and find my words pleasing," she said, tone changing, and Helena could recognize the warning phrase of this woman, sneaking into the conversation like it didn't matter.

But it did matter. Because once she gave the warning, she was legally allowed to use as much power on Helena as she said, filtering the silver through her tongue.

"Hey," a familiar voice said from behind her. Her friend slung an arm around Helena's shoulders. "I really wouldn't do that if I were you."

"Of course," the woman said, eyes suddenly vacant, voice losing power. "I wouldn't-I won't-" She shook her head. "Andrei Radu, I presume?"

"Present," he said, a half grin on his face. "So, we're eating dinner. Would you like some mashed potatoes?"