"I hope everyone has started with their profiles."

Tahlia dropped her gaze down to her textbook, swiftly avoiding eye contact with Turner at those words.

If something that over a year of college had thoroughly taught Tahlia, was to know that by the word hope, Professor Turner meant 'you-goddamn-better-have'.

"In the real world, it all comes down to a criminal profile." The professor spoke in a monotone, "So make it count."

Her words made Tahlia flinch a little. She hadn't even touched her file yet.

While others talked in hushed tones about the victims and backgrounds of their diverse subjects, Tahlia could only mentally sigh at her limited knowledge about the mystery that was Logan Hunt.

And what information did she have about him, other than the fact that he thought of his deranged self as an artist? Nothing. Nothing at all.

All that she had managed to get from the past four meetings she'd had with that man, was, shit scared.

A huge part of her nagged at her obvious slack in schoolwork, making mental points to not let him sidetrack her from her priority.

She needed to be stronger. She had to.

Otherwise, it was going to cost her everything she'd worked for.

Suddenly, as if in a response triggered from her memory at her attempts to keep her shit together, their conversation from last time emerged in her mind, leaving her entirely unsettled.

"Every blood spilt tells a story."

She shook her head to force the horrid recollection away, mahogany curls flying everywhere.

"Tal, I think you're scaring the girl behind you."

She turned to Jace's voice, not bothering to see where he was pointing. She shot him a brief glare, before turning back to her book.

"Mr. Montgomery."

A strident tone turned both of their attention to an impassive faced Turner.

"Is there something interesting you need to discuss with Miss Meyers that you'd perhaps, like to share with the rest of the hall?"

Unlike other professors who did not give a single shit about what students did in class, Turner was quite the stickler for decorum.

With a very Jace Montgomery-esque grin on his face, he began, "Not at all, Miss T."

It most certainly didn't take a masters in deciphering expressions to know that the little nickname Jace had for Professor Turner, pissed her off on every pivotal level.

"Mr. Montgomery," She approached his seat with the stealth of a calculated panther.

"The entry to the Human Resources department had been spray painted with some very colorful choice of words, earlier this morning." She smiled, "You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, now would you?"

Tahlia watched as the smugness slowly desiccated from her friend's face for a small millisecond, before being plastered right back as it was before.

"Nope, Miss T."

She shot him a definitive look, before turning back around and dismissing the lecture for the day.

"Fucking bitch." Tahlia heard Jace mutter under his breath as he got up.

"You didn't do it..Right?" Tahlia questioned, her words sounding more skeptic than she'd intended them to.

And just like that, the signature Jace Montgomery grin, unforced, was right back on his face.

"Of course I did, my dear Tahlia."

She let out an exasperated exhale, "I can't believe it." Let's just say Jace had a bit of a penchant for defacing public property.

"Yo Tal." Her shoulder was nudged.

"You sure you're not coming? It's going to be lit." Jace said, putting unnecessary emphasis on the last word.

"I've been telling you for a year that parties are not my thing at all."

"And I've been telling you, I don't give a shit."

She sighed, "It's still a no Jace, I don't care for it." She paused,

"Besides I have to go to Westerly tonight."

"Yeah, well, it's not just any party. It's the frat party of the year. Not to mention, you got an invitation from Dean Jackson." He smirked, wriggling his eyebrows suggestively.

"So?"

He sighed, shaking his head at the clueless girl. "I love you Tal but," He placed a hand on her shoulder, mockingly. "You're a square with a capital S, aren't you?"

Tahlia elbowed him, earning herself a grin. He ruffled her hair, bolting past her out of the hall.

She tepidly fixed her hair, sighing as she got up to leave.

She'd have to go to the sanatorium tonight, alone.

✴✴✴

Tahlia had finally figured it out.

For the past week, all Tahlia could wonder, was how a human being could kill another human being in cold blood.

How could Logan Hunt be so cold blooded?

But now as he sat in front of her, in a shirt wet in spots that highlighted the contours of his firm chest, sticking to places it shouldn't be sticking to so tightly, outlining the veins on the length of his arms; Tahlia now knew why.

No warm blooded human could possibly look like that.

With the small beads of water that sat on his muscles, along with his hair drenched into oblivion, it didn't exactly take a Sherlock to know he'd just gotten out of shower.

"Uh..I-" She cut herself off as she realised her mind couldn't form coherent words with the outline of his chest peeking out of translucent material of the shirt, right up her eyes.

How is it even possible to have a body like that in an asylum? She wondered absent-mindedly.

Perhaps his physique was a result of all his killings. Perhaps murder was his kind of workout.

She watched him watch her, intentions not very apparent.

"G-good evening, Mr. Hunt."

She didn't look him in the eyes directly. She couldn't.

Not without seeing blood all over his hands. Not without hearing the blood curdling screams of his victims.

"Back to the stuttering, are we?" He quirked his lips, making Tahlia wonder if the smirk had been permanently engraved on his face.

"I was almost starting to think that you were beginning to enjoy the company of a psychopath."

Breathe in. Breathe out. Relax. She reminded herself, yet again.

"Well," She crossed her arms, attempting to look tough,

"You thought wrong."

Tahlia cleared her throat, refusing to let her resolve be diminished any further, and switched on the recorder.

"Did you find yourself fantasizing about the murders, before or after they took place?"

He curved his lips in the briefest of smiles.

"What do you think Miss Meyers?" He spoke in a tone that almost bordered cynicism.

"After all, you're the expert here, aren't you? I'm the crazy one."

She swallowed shrinkingly, shaking her head, "I'm- I'm just a student—"

"So you're admitting you don't know what you're doing?"

Her mouth instantly parted in disbelief, "I never said that! I just- I meant... I meant.." She struggled to find the correct words, flailing her hands in an attempt to communicate what she meant.

She paused as she spotted the enlivened expression on the face of the man across from her, simpering at her bamboozled stance.

Of course he was getting a kick out of it all.

She cleared her throat, yet again.

"Were you close to your family?"

Tahlia couldn't even anticipate how much of a catalyst the question would turn out to be. It was just like a chemistry experiment Tahlia had faint recollections about from middle school, where water speedily evaporates on being exposed to heat.

Any visible traces of amusement, too evaporated from his marine eyes almost immediately, as they hardened into cold stones.

Silence perpetuated the room for a good minute or two.

The iciness in his eyes battled the wariness in hers for a finite moment

"Is that one of your standardized questions too?"

His voice was stripped off of all the playfulness that it previously held.

"Tell me about your family." Ignoring the ominous change in his affect, she repeated her question in a tone slightly more heavier than before, to assert her firm resolve.

"No." He leaned forward suddenly, "My turn." He stared straight into her eyes, caging her like a trapped animal.

"You tell me about your family."

Tahlia stilled in her seat.

Had he threatened to break out of his chains and chop her body up into tiny little pieces, even then, she wouldn't have possibly been so wrecked.

Her family. He was asking about her family.

Immediately, she was cut out of her consciousness, thrown back into an achromatic sequence from her childhood.

A familiar enigmatic laugh suddenly rang in her subconsciousness.

It was all back. Back to get her.

"Come on now, Natalia. As much as I desperately wish we did, we don't have all day."

"Please." She paused, blinking as she felt a liquid starting to pool in her eyes. "Logan."

Her heart had almost dilated at her own mouth articulating his name.

It felt almost like a change of aura.

His eyes flickered to hers.

Even under the dimmer ceiling lights, as captivating his eyes were, they were ferocious. He inclined his shoulders, drawing himself forward.

Tahlia could reckon a faint scent, almost as of an ocean breeze.

Logan Hunt smelled like a cool ocean breeze.

"Careful there Natalia."

His voice sliced the air. It was a warning marvelled in subtlety.

"I might start thinking it's you that should be in my place."

She looked away, positively rattled, "I'm nothing like you." Once she caught her breath, she gazed back at him with a burning glare, "You're a sickening murderer."

She didn't care about ethics or politeness anymore.

He leered, "Am I now?" He leaned back in his chair, indurated fingers reaching out to touch his jaw in a patronizing fashion.

"God, you kill three worthless women, and suddenly you're the worst abomination to walk on the face of the earth."

His tone was animated, meant for sarcastic ridiculing of the girl seated opposite to him.

She opened her mouth, in a measly attempt to fire back, when suddenly it struck upon her;

"Three?"

He sat there, observing her, wordless.

She stood up, "You-you killed seven women, not three."

He rose up too, gazing into her dark eyes, towering over her height.

"Well then, at least you're not as naïve as we thought."

He taunted, the hint of frisk back in his tone. The hint of insanity back on his face.

It was like a pile of loaded bricks that suddenly fell upon her brain, as she suddenly recalled something she'd faintly pondered on before.

And then it clicked.

Briskly, her fingers reached out to open up the blue file, all while her eyes never leaving magnificent pair of blue ones in front of her.

She flicked through the documents until she landed on the one she was looking for, labelled in bold letters, Victimology.

"Do you know who this is?" She pointed towards a small photograph of a young girl, smiling as if it were from a yearbook photo.

Just below it, another one of the same girl. Except this time; her abdomen was sliced open, blood haloing all over the cemented footpath underneath her mangled body, her head twisted in a rather odd angle.

"Do you know who this is?" She repeated, albeit her voice coming out a bit more broken this time around.

"She had a beautiful laugh." He glimpsed at the photographs, then back at her, "Pretty girl, Marissa."

"Marissa Marano, the first girl you killed."

She then turned the page, the photos of another woman on display, "Do you recognize her?"

His eyes lingered on the sparkling dark orbs of the middle aged woman, as he nodded.

She flickered through some more pages, "And her?"

He nodded yet again, more sombre.

"Hailey Santos and Colleen Vutowski. The third and the last respectively."

With her breath held, she began.

"All three of them had disappeared when they were out in public. They had families, people who would look for them." She looked up at him, searching for something in his undeterred eyes.

For the first time in what felt like quite a while, Tahlia's voice wasn't shaky.

"These women were chosen randomly."

Some more pages were turned, and in a flash of white, more grisly pictures stuck out.

"But these women.."

Tahlia glimpsed downwards, eyes landing on the small fonts that spelt out the deceased women's names.

"They had been burnt. Mutilated and burnt with gasoline, alive."

Logan Hunt stood unflinching, face indifferent to whatever he was being subjected to hear.

"Ava Lockhart was a recluse, Kimberly Swain and Stacy Cooper were orphans, and Moira Jackson was a prostitute. No one to look for them." She put down the file, leaning in towards the monster involuntarily.

"Everyone except Ms. Jackson had either filed a report or told someone that they were being followed, few days before they disappeared."

She finished with a trembling spell of breath.

Logan Hunt's face remained impassive, not an ounce of human instinct, driving Tahlia to the edge.

Time was a tricky thing. Somedays, it could feel like Egyptian sand, trickling down from in between your hands rapidly; and somedays, it was the stock-still heart that refused to beat one last time again.

But today, time was a dangerous thing.

What it brought with it, could very well morph into Tahlia's darkest nightmares.

Gathering whatever shred of adrenaline that was left in her, she whispered, "Who are you?"

Her voice came out meeker and broken than she intended to. Than she thought it could possibly be.

"Are you scared Natalia?"

"No."

Her reply came within the span of a millisecond, leaving no space for debate.

Yet her pulsating heartbeat begged to differ.

"Why did you burn the four women?"

His gaze struck on the tip of her nose, awfully close to the lips, intense moments of silence passing by.

"What was different with those girls?Why did you kill them?" She repeated, her stance withering away slowly.

Their forms stood stoic against each other. Tahlia could feel each breath that Logan took and was positive, he could too.

He leaned in closer, the scent of ocean air intoxicating the entirety of her respiratory system.

"I didn't."

✴✴✴