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Abigail is a good hunter. She learned to track a deer before she learned how to kiss a boy. She knows how to find prey, knows how to mask her scent and move silently through the underbrush. Abigail might be young, but she’s been hunting for a long, long time. She knows the difference between predator and prey, knows everyone is one or the other.
She knows the minute Doctor Lecter puts his hands on her throat that he is not prey. It’s there in the way his fingers curve around her neck, practiced and easy. It’s there in the dead glint of his eyes, unmoved while his friend shivers and shakes in the corner. Even bleeding out, choking on her own blood while the room goes fuzzy and dark around the edges—even then she knows, notes it in her brain on the off chance she survives.
She’s less sure about Will Graham.
He’s twitchy and strange, but he shows up in her hospital room to guard her while she sleeps. He snaps and snarls at Freddie Lounds when she comes by with her oozy smile and slick business card.
He also killed her dad, so maybe a predator after all.
He’s dangerous, whatever he is. Doctor Lecter is a killer, but she doesn’t know what Will Graham is, and that’s worse. Abigail resolves to stay away from him, shows her teeth when he makes overtures of paternal kindness. Hits him where it hurts, you killed my dad.
They don’t want to fuck her, so that’s something. They do want to be her dads, which is weirder but not necessarily worse.
She likes them better than Doctor Bloom, at least. Prefers the sleek red walls of Doctor Lecter’s office with its paintings and shelves of books to the antiseptic, bleached nothingness of the Port Haven psychiatric facility. She sneaks out, and he lets her stay. She likes that.
Someone is always crying in Port Haven. It makes her want to stick a pen in their eyes.
* * *
Abigail has to be a lot of different things. At Port Haven, for Doctor Bloom, she’s traumatized and trembling. For Freddie Lounds, she’s defiant and brave. For Doctor Lecter, she’s a daughter and a dupe.
She cries when she’s supposed to, complains of bad dreams and survivor’s guilt when in truth all her dreams are full of triumph.
She asks Will how killing is supposed to feel.
It’s the ugliest thing in the world, he says, and she thinks liar.
Abigail doesn’t have to ask. She knows how it’s supposed to feel. It’s supposed to feel like you’re better. Faster. Stronger. It’s supposed to feel like the world lives and dies by your say-so.
She feels sorry for him then, but only a little. He can’t know what he doesn’t know.
She’ll feel sorrier for him later. Actually sorry, which doesn’t happen to her often, and she’ll resent the feeling. She’ll pity him when she sees how Hannibal loves him because predators only understand blood, and she knows then how it will end.
* * *
Hannibal helps her fake her own death. They spray her blood all over the floor and walls, and it’s fun. It’s the first decent bit of fun she’s had since found Nick Boyle in her house. Since she took her knife and stuck it in. Hannibal looks at her like he’s proud.
Abigail Hobbs is dead; long live Abigail Hobbs.
He thinks he’s her dad. She does too.
It turns out death isn’t so bad. Abigail goes to live with Hannibal, and the first time she sees the inside of his home, she thinks two of her old houses could fit in one of his. Living with him isn’t strange at all. He’s decent and funny and never treats her unkindly. His eyes don’t linger on her body the way men’s eyes usually do. He doesn’t look at her the way her father did either—her other father, the one before.
She’s a curiosity to him, a favored addition to his collection of fine things. He doesn’t love her obsessively, with a fever that demands blood. He doesn’t love her at all, and she likes that.
He isn’t safe, but he’s something better. He’s one of her kind.
Living with him isn’t awkward despite its newness because awkwardness requires self-consciousness and shame, two things Abigail can manufacture on command but doesn’t actually feel. She settles into her new life, which involves fitting herself into the cracks in Hannibal’s. She makes herself as unobtrusive and pleasant as possible—good cubs are kept and tended, given meat and hidden from the cops.
She learns how to play the harpsichord although she hates it. Hannibal lets her pick out new clothes from catalogues, and she likes that better. The things he buys her are nicer than anything she had before. The rich fabrics feel luxurious as they glide across her skin, and she admires herself in the mirror when she’s alone. She studies her clear blue eyes and the bone china sheen of her skin with a dispassionate gaze. She’s growing up and growing more beautiful—it’s not vanity if it’s fact. She’ll be a more excellent lure soon, and the thought gives her a thrill.
Abigail hides when Doctor Bloom comes over. She stays in her room when her former psychiatrist stays the night, and she wonders if Will would be jealous if he knew.
* * *
Abigail and Hannibal cook together often—him butchering something slow and unworthy, her preparing the salad. They fall into a rhythm working around each other, and it’s quiet and easy. Two killers in a kitchen with knives.
Tonight she’s thinking of something else. She heard a song on the radio, and it reminded her of before. Of her old life. She’s moving mechanically, relying on muscle memory as she slides the shallots from her knife and accidentally slices her finger open. The blade is so sharp that she sees red before it registers as pain.
Abigail watches the blood well up and drip on the cutting board, and then Hannibal is there by her side without making a sound. He guides her to the sink and holds her hand under the faucet. He presses on the wound with a clean kitchen towel and bandages her with care, as if she weren’t old enough to do it herself.
It’s kind of funny, she thinks. Tenderness among psychopaths like honor among thieves.
* * *
The night Will tries to kill Hannibal, Abigail makes dinner for herself and wonders where Hannibal’s gone. (He’s gone to the hospital to have all the blood put back in his body, but she doesn’t know that yet.)
She sits in Hannibal’s chair at the head of the table and eats flank steak served bloody and rare. She decides what she’ll steal if Hannibal doesn’t come back. His watches first, she thinks. They’re small and light and expensive. Then the car and whatever cash she can find. His credit cards, too. He won’t miss them if he’s dead. She’s always wanted to see Santa Fe. She had pictures of it papered over the walls in her old room.
Hannibal keeps the house dark at all times. The curtains are always drawn, have been as long as Abigail’s lived here. In the two days it takes him to return, Abigail fills the house with light. She throws open all the windows by day and turns on all the lamps at night.
She’s lying on her bed looking up hostels in New Mexico when she hears the front door open and close. She grabs the knife on her nightstand and doesn’t relax her grip until she hears a voice calling her name in a familiar accent.
Hannibal looks older and more pale when she sees him. He looks diminished, and Abigail has to fight the impulse to wrinkle her nose at the sight of his weakness. She crushes it down and brings him tea instead. Earl grey with lemon and honey.
He tells her what happened—a pool, a noose, a stranger with a knife—and he sounds so proud of Will. Abigail is proud too. She decides then that having two dads wouldn’t be so bad.
* * *
Hannibal tells her stories now. Not all the time, but sometimes. While they’re doing little domestic things like cleaning the house or tending the garden. When they linger in the sitting room after dinner, or when Abigail keeps Hannibal company while he works in the basement.
Today she’s sitting on a stainless steel table kicking her feet against its legs while Hannibal breaks down a body into butcher’s cuts. He’s promised to teach her how to use the band saw to cut through the largest bones, although Abigail thinks she could joint a body faster by hand. She wants to race him one day to find out.
Mostly he tells her stories of his kills.
She’s not interested in the parts he likes best, all the displays and theater. She’s too polite to say so, but Hannibal can always tell. Abigail isn’t a performer; she’s a hunter, and she likes hearing about the hunt best of all, the way he stalks and kills them. Hannibal indulges her, making sure to linger on the parts of the stories that make her heart race and bring a fierce, sharp smile to her face.
When he lets Will out of jail, it’s not long before he starts telling her stories of Will’s kills too. He gets this look in his eye when he does, and it reminds her of the way her dad used to look at her. Fanatical. Adoring. It’s then that she starts feeling sorry for Will.
Abigail knows what Hannibal’s doing. He’s getting her used to the idea of Will, making sure she knows that Will is one of them, one of their kind. He doesn’t need to because she already knows, but Abigail doesn’t say that.
If he’s making the effort to manipulate her, it means at least he isn’t bored. She doesn’t know what Hannibal’s like when he’s bored, but she has the good sense to know she doesn’t want to find out. Let him scheme and plan and plot. She’ll do the same.
* * *
Her old family died because they were weak. Not cunning or fast or brutal enough. Her old family lost. Her new family never would.
Sometimes at night Abigail lets herself dream about the kind of family they could be. A better family, a more perfect one. Deadly and beautiful, and more worthy than anyone else.