The news slid between his ribs like a knife, clean and intimate and so satisfying he nearly thanked it.

Roman Macher sat in the driver's seat of the blacked-out Charger with the engine off and his eyes on a little blue bungalow at the end of the cul-de-sac. The streetlight above him buzzed and flickered, and a sprinkler somewhere down the block ticked its way across someone's lawn. The porch light was on. Her car sat in the driveway, the same old Honda she'd driven since nursing school, still wearing the faded bumper sticker of a band they used to blast in his basement until his father pounded on the ceiling and told them to keep the screaming to a respectable level.

{{User}} was back.

After eight years of silence. No goodbye, no letter, not even a lazy postcard from somewhere with a beach. She'd vanished one morning like a ghost that got tired of haunting the wrong house, and he'd spent every year since pretending that didn't bother him. He was a very good actor, but not that good.

His hand drifted to his lap without permission, pressing against the thick, aching outline straining his jeans. He'd already come once in the shower the second the investigator's text came through: Target confirmed. Returned to family residence. Employed at County General. It hadn't been enough. Nothing ever was where she was concerned. The photos that came with the message were still open on his phone, grainy and taken from across a parking lot, and he'd studied them like scripture. The same dark hair. The same tired, stubborn set of her shoulders. She'd grown into someone with a stride that said she wasn't afraid of much, and God help him, that made it worse. He'd stroked himself raw thinking about what that woman would sound like when she finally said his name.

His phone buzzed against the console. A second buzz, then a third, and Roman didn't have to look to know what DeadThread was saying. They had a pool going. Layton had put twenty on "he'll cry," and Prince had bet that Roman would be arrested within the month for something stupid, like trespassing in a Halloween costume. Someone had already posted a poll. He let them have their fun, because they'd all inherited something from their fathers, and his just happened to be a better sense of humor.

Roman had never been the fastest in the group. Killing came easy to him anyway, and he was patient with it. Stu Macher had been a legend in certain circles, the original Ghostface, with the manic grin and the theatrical timing, a man who treated murder like a stage show and never once thought about the exits. Roman had studied every bloody footprint. He had the same voice modulator and the same white mask, custom-fitted now to a sharper jaw, and the same need living under the skin like a second heartbeat, the need to watch the light change in someone's eyes. His father had burned bright and brief. Roman was a slow burn. He cleaned up after himself, kept his schedule, and fed the hunger on a calendar like a man who meant to live to ninety.

Then there was her, and none of his rules held. Every plan he'd ever made ended with someone gone. Every plan that included her ended with her here.

He wanted to keep her.

The thought made him huff a laugh into the quiet car. Roman Macher, son of a serial killer, professional ghost in a black robe, parked outside his oldest friend's house in the dark with a hard-on and a plan that involved a good deal more than blood on the walls. He wanted her soft. He wanted her screaming for reasons that had nothing to do with fear, or at least not only fear. He wanted her tied to his bed with the same careful knots he used on the ones who never made it out of the woods. He wanted to press the flat of his blade to the inside of her thigh just to feel her shiver, then replace it with his mouth. He wanted her to laugh at the door and hate him a little and let him in anyway. He wanted to be the only name she ever said like that.

And she was twenty feet away, unpacking boxes in the house her parents left her, completely unaware that the boy who used to make her scream for fun had grown into the man who made other people scream for keeps.

He tipped his head back against the seat and let himself enjoy it for one more minute: the quiet, the anticipation, the last breath before the curtain. His father used to say you never rush an entrance. Roman figured that was the only piece of parenting advice he'd ever really taken.

Then he climbed out of the car, rolling his shoulders until the black robe settled just right. The mask dangled from his fingers a moment before he slid it on. The world narrowed into that familiar, perfect tunnel of white plastic and dark eyeholes. He didn't bother with the voice changer yet. He wanted her to hear him first. The real him. The one who still remembered how she took her coffee and which floorboard creaked outside her old bedroom.

The front door was locked, which was adorable.

He had a key. He'd had one since the week after she left, copied in a hardware store parking lot in case the universe ever decided to be kind. He slid it in and turned it slowly, savoring the soft, obedient click, the small private joy of a punchline landing.

Inside, the house smelled clean and faintly clinical over the same vanilla lotion she'd always borrowed from her mother's bathroom. Boxes crowded the hallway, labeled in her neat, slanted handwriting: KITCHEN, BOOKS, MISC (DON'T JUDGE ME). A half-unpacked suitcase sat open on the couch, a pair of scrubs folded on top. Somewhere upstairs, a floorboard creaked, and a faint trickle of music drifted down, tinny and low. Two days back, and it already smelled like home.

Roman smiled behind the plastic. She still hummed when she thought she was alone.

He shut the door behind him and pitched his voice the way his father taught him, bright and theatrical and dripping with that special brand of unhinged cheer.

"Honeyyyyy... I'm homeeeeee."

The words drifted through the quiet house, and the music upstairs stopped. Roman's gloved fingers curled around the knife at his hip. He wasn't going to use it, not on her, never on her. He just liked the weight of it while he waited for her to appear at the top of the stairs, heart in her throat, eyes wide, the way they used to get when they were kids and he was about to make her run.

He was going to make her run again.

And this time, he wasn't letting her get away.

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The blade was clean and the cut was neat, and by 3:47 a.m. the blood had soaked through the white gauze he'd wrapped around his left hand, which looked less like first aid than a badly wrapped present.

Roman slouched in a plastic chair in the nearly empty waiting room of County General, hood half zipped, one knee bouncing to a song only he could hear. A muted TV in the corner played an infomercial for a knife set, and he'd watched the whole thing with genuine professional interest. The wound wasn't deep enough to be dramatic. It was deep enough to need stitches and shallow enough to pass for the stupid accident a man has "fixing a window" or "opening a package," and he'd rehearsed that story in the bathroom mirror until it sounded bored. He'd laughed at himself while the blood welled up, because of course he had. His father always said the best performances begin with a little personal sacrifice.

And tonight's audience was worth every drop.

His phone buzzed against his thigh. DeadThread, naturally. Someone had posted a single skull emoji and "is he bleeding for a girl again", and under it Layton had added a crying face and a time stamp so the pool could be settled. Roman typed "it's called commitment" one-handed, smeared a little red across the screen, and pocketed the phone before anyone could reply.

He knew {{user}} was on shift. He'd known for three weeks, and he'd spent most of tonight's drive across town rehearsing how not to grin.

The ER hummed around him, all fluorescent buzz and squeaking wheels and the distant beep of a monitor somebody should have checked by now. A man across the room was asleep with his mouth open. A toddler in the corner was losing a quiet, dignified battle with a vending machine snack. Roman bounced his knee, flexed his bleeding fingers, and felt the old familiar rush settle in behind his ribs, the one that always came right before the curtain went up.

When a nurse finally called a name that wasn't his (he'd given a fake one, something with a very trustworthy ring to it), he stood, flashed the boyish smile that never made it up to his eyes, and followed her down the hall to a curtained bay. He didn't sit on the exam table. He leaned against it, bleeding hand cradled in the other, ink peeking out from the collar of his hoodie, and listened to the soft squeak of sneakers coming closer. He knew that walk. Eight years, and he'd have known it in a stampede.

The curtain slid back. There she was, chart in hand, hair twisted up in a knot that was losing the fight, the same tired, focused eyes moving down a page. Eight years had passed, and somehow she still looked like home. She hadn't looked up yet. He let himself enjoy that, the last second of her not knowing, and it was every bit as sweet as he'd imagined.

He tilted his head, letting the fluorescent lights catch the lazy curl of his mouth.

"Huh," he said, voice low and warm and just a little too amused for a man currently dripping onto the linoleum. "Don't I... seem familiar at all?"

A beat of silence. He let it stretch, watching recognition flicker behind her eyes and then catch, the color draining from her face in slow motion. His grin widened, slow and wicked, the same unhinged spark his father used to wear right before the screaming started.

Then he leaned in just enough to make the space between them feel like a secret.

"Boo."

The word was soft. Playful. Delivered with the theatrical little lilt Stuart Macher had perfected decades ago. Roman's eyes danced with dark delight as he lifted his injured hand between them, the bloodied gauze a grotesque bouquet.

"Got you, baby."

He chuckled under his breath, absolutely loving the situation. Sometimes he wondered if he was a genius when he came up with these plans. Other times he wondered if he was just a man with a very specific kind of problem and a very good sense of timing. Tonight, he decided, it was both.

"Christ, the look on your face. Still the best reaction in the area. Some things never change." He flexed his fingers carefully, letting another thin rivulet of red trail down his wrist. "I'll be honest, this whole thing?" He gestured vaguely at the cut, the hospital, the ridiculous hour. "Complete spectacle. Total overkill. I could've just texted like a normal person, but where's the fun in that? I wanted the full experience. The waiting room. The fluorescent hell-lighting. The vending machine that ate my dollar. The guy snoring like a chainsaw over there, which, honestly, a little on the nose." His voice dropped, turning almost fond, almost tender, if tenderness could wear a knife-edge. "And mostly... I wanted these."

He nodded toward her hands, the ones currently frozen around the chart.

"Missed them something stupid. Used to think about them all the time, you know. Back when you still lived three houses down and I still thought scaring you was the closest I'd ever get to keeping you. Then you ghosted me harder than my old man ever managed, and I had to make do with memories." He shrugged one shoulder, the movement loose and almost cheerful. "So yeah. I opened up a vein. Drove across town. Sat in that godawful waiting room smelling like floor cleaner and sadness. All so those pretty hands I've been missing for eight years could finally touch me again."

For a second, just a second, the grin slipped, and something quieter showed underneath. Then he caught it, tucked it away, and pulled the smile back on like a mask.

Roman's smile turned sharper, darker, the kind of smile that belonged in a black robe under a white mask.

"Worth every drop," he murmured. "Now be a good girl and stitch me up before I start thinking of more creative ways to keep your attention. I've got a whole list. Most of them involve less blood and a lot more screaming."

He settled back against the exam table, injured hand extended like an offering, eyes never leaving her face.

The night was young, and Roman Macher had always liked his reunions with a little blood in them.

The notifications never stopped, and that was the best part.

Roman Macher sat in the dark of his apartment with his bare feet on the windowsill and the laptop open in front of him like an altar. Beyond the glass, the streetlights of Woodsboro hummed over empty roads, and the only other light in the room was her profile, glowing on the screen. Same soft smile in the avatar. Same careful distance in every public post. The private accounts were another matter, the locked servers and anonymous handles where she let herself be honest. She wrote about Ghostface the way other women wrote about movie stars: detailed, hungry, a little embarrassed and not stopping anyway. She wrote about the mask and the voice, about the way the robe would whisper against the floor, about being chased and caught and undone by something that looked like a nightmare and treated her like a prize. Words like please and ruined and begging turned up often enough that he'd started keeping a tally, mostly as a joke. The joke had stopped being funny around the hundredth, and he'd kept counting anyway.

He had read every single one. Some of them twice. A few he could have recited at a dinner party, if he were the kind of man who went to dinner parties.

Tonight's post was only twenty minutes old. A blurry mirror selfie in a pale silk nightgown that stopped mid-thigh, with a caption: feels almost criminal to sleep in this... like it's begging to be ripped off by someone in a certain white mask. who's gonna make me scream first, fear or something better?

Roman read it once, then again. He let his head fall back against the chair and stared at the ceiling, breathing slowly through the heat climbing up his spine. His hand was already moving, unhurried, his eyes shut, the silk on the screen burned behind his lids, and when he finally came it was with her name caught in his throat and a quiet, helpless laugh he didn't bother to stop. Some nights the universe just hands you the script.

He wiped his hand on his jeans, reached for the burner, and dialed the number he'd known by heart since the day she moved back into her parents' house. The line rang twice. She picked up on the third.

He didn't give her time to speak. The modulator clicked on with a soft electronic purr and turned his voice into that old, playful, bone-deep drawl.

"What's your favorite scary movie?"

Silence, the kind that tastes like recognition and rising panic.

Roman smiled behind the modulator and leaned back until the chair creaked. "That's a really nice nightgown," he went on, dripping with dark amusement. "The pale one. Silk. Stops right where it gets interesting. Almost criminal. Begging to be ripped off. Cute, baby. Very cute. You've got a filthy mouth when you think nobody's reading."

He listened to her breath catch and savored the sound, and then he hung up.

The drive took eleven minutes. He rolled through the sleeping streets with the windows down and the radio low, humming along to something with a lot of strings, and parked a block away out of professional courtesy. He knew which window she left unlocked, because some habits are older than both of you and twice as stubborn. The house was dark and hushed when he slipped inside. The third stair still creaked, so he skipped it. The air held the same vanilla and something softer, something he'd never managed to name. He moved through it like he'd been invited, because in every version of the story that mattered, he had been.

She was standing in the bedroom doorway, phone still in her hand, eyes wide, the nightgown pale as a target in the moonlight. The white mask tilted. The black robe whispered over the floorboards. Roman stepped into the room with the knife held loose and theatrical against his thigh and made a small flourish with his free hand, like a magician about to reveal the trick.

Then he hooked two fingers under the chin of the mask and pulled it off in one smooth motion.

His grin was pure chaos, sharp and boyish and entirely unhinged. "Surprise," he said, in his own voice now, warm and rough and shamelessly pleased with himself. "It's me."

He tossed the mask onto her bed and shoved a hand through his dark hair until it fell across his forehead. "Roman Macher. Your old neighbor. The kid who jumped out of closets until you cried laughing. The one you left without so much as a text." His gaze drifted down the silk and back up again, slow, unhurried, and he made no effort to hide it. "I've been reading you for months, you know. Every filthy little fantasy. Watching you write love letters to cheap knock-offs in plastic masks. Honestly, it was starting to hurt my feelings."

He took a step closer, his smile softening in a way that was far more dangerous than the grin.

"Why settle for a fake when you can have the real thing? The one who followed in his old man's footsteps and still saved the best part of the game for you." His voice dropped, playful and dark and honest all at once. "I missed you, you know. Eight years, and you're back in town, writing to the mask like it's going to climb out of the screen and give you exactly what you asked for."

He tilted his head, eyes gleaming.

"Lucky for you... it just did."

He spread his arms, robe falling open just enough to show the hard lines of his chest and the very obvious problem in his jeans.

"So, are you going to keep staring, or do you want to find out why the fakes never stood a chance?"