Haunting Adeline

“I can’t explain why I have the need to stick it out. Test this mystery person. Challenge them and show them I’m not scared of them. Though that’s a big fat fucking lie. I’m absolutely terrified. However, I’m just as stubborn. And as already established—stupid, too. But I can’t find it in me to care right now. Ask me later when they’re standing over my bed watching me sleep, I’ll feel differently, I’m sure.”

Though Adeline admits that she is afraid of Zade, like Gigi, she is also excited. The foreshadowing of the person standing over her bed is meant to imply a divergence of feelings that will likely happen later in the novel. For the time being, the implication is that Adeline will be more likely to flee the house if the intruder comes into her bedroom while she sleeps.

“And what if it evolves into more? What if I’m saying no to something beautiful? Those are a little girl’s hopes and dreams, but I can’t help thinking them anyways. He looks like a man that I could settle down with but dangerous enough to keep me excited.”

Adeline reveals an element of her desires that has not been expressed yet in the story. Usually, Adeline is indifferent to men, or she is only interested in sex, but, here, she gives in to a desire for a lasting relationship. She tries to deny this pull, but she still thinks about how she “could settle down.” Nonetheless, maintaining her characterization thus far, she also expresses a desire for danger to maintain her excitement.

“‘That rose was personal, Adeline. Do you know what it means?’ ‘I…I have a stalker. I’ve made several reports lately about my house being broken into and roses popping up everywhere I go.’ The sheriff’s brows scrunch. ‘I looked into your files. There are no reports made about a stalker.’ My spine snaps straight as shock blasts through me. ‘What do you mean?’ I ask, my voice shrill and angry. ‘I’ve made several!’”

The revelation that Adeline’s reports have disappeared emphasizes the vulnerability that Adeline is experiencing in Parsons Manor. At the club, she assumed that her reports would give the police cause to investigate if she went missing, but she finds out now that those reports do not exist. This passage indicates that institutional assistance may not be reliable for Adeline’s situation, and Zade seems capable of evading detection altogether.

“I rip out the screwdriver and take a deep breath. I have to remind myself she doesn’t know me yet. She doesn’t understand what true need is. Not yet, but she will. Because she’s going to hate the way she needs me. She’s going to fight it, rebel against the craving and attempt to search for something else that makes her feel even a fraction of what I will. She’ll never find it. And I won’t let her try.”

This passage highlights the contradictions in Zade’s logic at this point in the novel. He criticizes Arch’s narcissism, but he also needs to remind himself that he, too, is acting narcissistically, abusing this man for being with Adeline, even though Adeline is not aware of Zade’s identity. His comments on how he will emotionally abuse Adeline are not entirely distinct from the physical abuses that Arch perpetrated on his ex-wife and other women.

“God, he could crush me if he wanted to. His hand looks big enough to cover the entirety of my face. Or wrap around my neck. Would he do it to cause pain or pleasure? Does my shadow want to hurt me or love me? He’s still, his back facing me. He can feel me watching him, just like I felt him outside my door.”

Adeline is torn between attraction and fear in this passage, as she is both frightened that Zade might intend to hurt her, but she is also excited that he might want to have sex with her. There is an element of imbalance in the last lines of this passage, though, as Zade maintains a power position, in which he has control over the situation. As such, Zade feeling Adeline’s stare is not comparable to Adeline knowing that Zade was outside her door, as Adeline is powerless.

“Sometimes witnessing the torture they go through makes me want to slice open my own skin and feel the pain alongside them. I want to ease their pain by creating my own. Maybe if I’m bleeding out on an altar next to them, they won’t feel so fucking alone. But I don’t. The urge is unfounded and I recognize that. I recognize that I need to be strong, not weakened from blood loss and my mental state hanging on by a fraying thread. If I’m going to save innocents and destroy the skin trade, then I need to be at my best. They need me to be strong and capable because they can’t be.”

Zade exposes a contradiction as he describes the need to create his own pain, reflecting on the pains of torture that he sees in these videos onto others, including bad people like Josh and Arch, but also on innocent people like Adeline. Further, his insistence on remaining focused on his goal contradicts his overwhelming desire to interfere with and possess Adeline.

“Because evidently, there’s something wrong with me. I’m playing with fire. The more I provoke him, the more likely he is to come after me. But I can’t stop myself. I can’t stop the sharp thrill that I get every time I push back. It’s as addicting as it is stupid. I can’t see his face under the deep hood, but I know he’s smiling at me. Knowing that doesn’t give me the reaction it should. I should be repulsed. I should be scared. I suppose I am scared, but what I’m really feeling is the urge to smile back.”

Adeline’s language in this passage mirrors the language Z has used thus far in explaining his feelings for Adeline. He says that he is addicted to her, worries he might do something stupid, and resists the urge to hurt her or those around her. Here, Adeline is also addicted to her interactions with Z, which she thinks makes her stupid, and she fights the urge to engage with him further.

“My body is full of rage, humiliation, and shame—I know this. But it’s like my brain just can’t process those emotions, so it’s just choosing to feel nothing at all. Is this what trauma does? Knowing you’ve been violated but your body chooses to go numb instead? Like a magic trick, his hand comes back into view with a rose that must’ve been in his back pocket. The petals are crushed, likely from our struggle, but he doesn’t seem to care. He twirls the rose in his hand before tossing it on me, the flower fluttering to my stomach. With one last lingering look, he turns and walks out without a word. And finally, the dam bursts as emotions crash through my body and flood out of my eyes.”

In the immediate aftermath of the sexual assault, Adeline seems to be experiencing shock from the trauma, expressed as a feeling of numbness. Zade leaves another rose, implying that he is still courting Adeline in some way, but her emotional response highlights that this was not a consensual encounter. Again, Zade is treating Adeline as an object without agency or will, and leaving the rose on her stomach highlights his perception of her as just a body.

“I’m a dangerous man, and I kill people daily. Not only that, but I enjoy it too. She should fear me, but only because once she ultimately submits to me, she’ll have no chance of escaping me. She’s already started to and hasn’t even realized it yet.”

Z presents some conflicting patterns in this passage, as he essentially plans to force Adeline into a case of Stockholm Syndrome, in which victims fall in love with their abusers. He admits to sadism, which implies that he would kill or harm others for pleasure even without moral justification for doing so. He looks forward to breaking Adeline’s will and seems to conflate Adeline’s love with her complete submission. Zade’s insistence that she just does not know her own feelings highlights his perception of Adeline as lacking autonomy and agency.

“I feel the break. The moment when my body decides it needs what he’s giving me more than the need for him to stop. I fight against the dark part of me that wants to beg for more. A dark part that has found a voice and is trying to break free. Take over and give in to this man so we both can find relief. I thrash against it, entering a silent battlefield and trying to choke the life out of it so it never comes to light.”

Here, Adeline refers to the distinction between physical arousal and emotional consent. It has been determined that a person’s body can respond with arousal even when the person is not aroused emotionally and does not welcome the interaction. This same rationale often leads to accusations regarding victims of sexual assault, including arguments from abusers that physical arousal equals consent. The “dark part” that Adeline is fighting is a biological response to stimuli, and, though she is later ashamed of this response, that only adds to the deception and violence of Zade’s assault.

“And I know how fucked up that is—to take something without consent. I know that’s what I’m fighting against every day. She hasn’t given it to me yet, but she will. I know my little mouse better than she knows herself. She’s in too much denial to see how drawn she is to me. […] Her actions speak an entirely different language than her words. A language filled with desire and pleasure—she just hasn’t learned to translate it yet. Doesn’t make it right, nor does it justify it. But I can’t make myself regret tasting something so fucking sweet—so fucking perfect.”

Zade tries to justify his sexual assault on Adeline here. Though he notes at the end that his rationalizations do not “make it right,” he expressly refuses to feel remorse for this crime. He insists that he knows Adeline’s feelings and uses this supposed telepathy and foresight to justify ignoring her telling him to stop. Most important in this passage is Zade’s use of the word “something,” referring to the sex acts he perpetrates on Adeline without her consent. To Zade, Adeline is a thing, not a person or a thinking subject, and he can therefore rationalize the acts he commits upon her.

“Maybe I just want to be able to say that all stalkers are crazy, and that it’s not possible to fall in love with one. I want to be able to say it’s never happened before. And I want to say it’s absolutely impossible to find myself in a loving, passionate, and healthy relationship with a person who invaded every aspect of my life unapologetically. As much as I hate to say it, my shadow might not be wrong either. The man has a magnetism about him that rocks me to my core. He’s shifted my entire life out of balance.”

The dark romance genre trope of the heroine falling in love with a villainous or morally questionable character is on display here as Adeline continues to justify her feelings for Zade. Dark romance situates love as dangerous, and within the novel’s context, that danger is part of the thrill. Of course, no additional reasoning is needed to justify Adeline hating her abuser, but her counterintuitive romantic response to him highlights the psychological and moral complexity of her situation. From one point of view, she is succumbing to Stockholm Syndrome and falling in love with her abuser as a means of self-preservation in the face of inescapable trauma. From another, Zade’s prediction about Adeline’s response to him is coming true, and she attributes her ability to overlook his violence and abuse to his “magnetism,” creating a transcendent justification for Zade’s actions and the idea that their relationship is fated.

“I suck in a deep breath, coughing and hacking as I try to regain everything I lost. Air. Morals. Even some of my hair. But I didn’t lose my damn dignity. Not when I took control of that situation. That was on my terms, not his.”

Though Adeline claims she initiated the sex act here, it was only after Zade forced her to the ground and tied a belt around her neck, choking her and pulling out her hair. As such, Adeline’s response is really an attempt at preserving her sense of self in the face of repeated assault and trauma. This raises the issue of Adeline’s reliability as a narrator. She asserts that she maintained her “dignity” by controlling the sex act in the moment, but she also recognizes that she was coerced and physically harmed during the encounter. It’s never entirely clear how much Adeline believes in her self-empowerment monologues during her coerced interactions with Zade and how much she is rationalizing to maintain her sanity.

“She wanted her power back in that moment, and I was more than happy to show her that she never lost it. This beautiful woman holds my life in the palm of her hand, she’s just incapable of seeing it that way. The only one who’s truly in danger is me.”

In this passage, Zade attempts to reverse the sexual and emotional power dynamic between himself and Adeline by claiming that he is so intensely in love with Adeline that she is really the one with the power in their situation. However, his comment that she is not capable of understanding her power reinforces his perception of himself as having superior perspective and intelligence.

“You’re allowed to be angry and frustrated with your situation. You’re even allowed to be angry with my stalking you. Life strips you of power often, but what you can control is pointing the blame in the right direction. Don’t misplace Max’s and Mark’s ill intentions onto me when I’ve been doing my best to keep you safe from them. What we’ve been doing all week is to keep you safe. So, you can either redirect all the effort you’ve been putting into acting like a brat and apply it towards something useful, or you can continue to be powerless in the situation life throws you in. You choose, baby, because I’m not going to keep making these decisions for you.”

When Adeline points out, correctly, that Zade is the cause of the struggles Adeline faces, this passage is Zade’s response, in which he essentially diverts blame onto Max and Mark. Likewise, Adeline points out that Zade has assaulted her multiple times, which is dangerous on its own. The crucial element of this quote is that it sounds reasonable when removed from context, but, in context, “life” is Zade, as he is the one that makes Adeline feel powerless.

“I frown. All I can feel is disappointment. Not because of what he said, but because of how fucking easy it was for him to accomplish what he set out to do. Just like he wants, a reckless, impulsive feeling consumes me. All I ache to do is let him have me. So many nights, where he’d sneak into my bed and take advantage of my weakness—whether the weakness was in my body or brain—he used that against me time and time again. But he never took it all the way, and every morsel inside my being has been waiting for this moment. Anticipating it.”

After finally getting the chance to turn down Zade’s advances, Adeline seems to view her predicament as a matter of conditioning. This framing is accurate to the idea of Stockholm Syndrome, as Adeline acknowledges just before this passage that there is no way to escape Zade’s pursuit. Her decision to have sex with Zade is driven primarily by the foundational sex acts that Zade perpetrated on Adeline during “so many” prior instances of sexual assault.

“It never mattered whether I came into her life or not—Addie was destined for human trafficking, and the fact that she happens to be the girl I’m absolutely crazy about feels like kismet. It feels like fucking destiny that the man who haunts her is the same man who dedicated his life to destroying the people set out to take her life.”

The two points at which Zade excuses himself are that Adeline was fated to suffer trauma and that Zade is her savior, not her abuser. By framing Adeline’s life as a guaranteed slope ending in trafficking, Zade excuses his own actions that have brought Adeline into more danger, implying that, without Zade, she still would have been assaulted and kidnapped.

“I was genuinely surprised that the haunted fair didn’t come under fire sooner with so many reports connected to them, but then I had learned that most of the victims were lowlifes, with very few people that cared enough to look for them. Whether Sibby was correct in thinking they were demons is subjective. But what I can say is that even though none of them have records, save for a few petty crimes, it doesn’t seem like they were good people either.”

Zade seems to forget, here, that Sibby also planned to kill him, implying that Zade, too, is not a “good” person. In this passage, Zade’s surprise that no one has caught on to the missing persons reports surrounding Satan’s Affair lines up with his overall body of work, in which he exposes and catches people involved in trafficking. However, his assumption that Sibby’s victims are all bad people runs contrary to his efforts to save victims of violence and kidnapping.

“I’ve been holding so tightly onto the notion that all murder is wrong, but I need to let that go. Because Zade is right, whether he came into my life or not, I would always end up in danger. And I can’t get upset every time he kills someone who meant me harm. If that makes me selfish, then I don’t care anymore. Whether I like it or not…Zade isn’t going anywhere. And it’s far more exhausting holding onto morals that do nothing but fight against the one thing keeping me safe.”

This passage shows the culmination of the arguments Zade has used to guarantee Adeline’s descent into Stockholm Syndrome. Murder is not the main crime that Zade has committed in relation to Adeline, and, by framing murder as the reason to hate Zade, Adeline is diverting attention from the fact that Zade has sexually assaulted her numerous times. Her acceptance that Zade “isn’t going anywhere,” and her exhaustion at fighting him are both in line with the process through which victims fall in love with their abusers.

“‘Trapped?’ he volleys back. My mouth tightens because while a part of me wants to say yes, the truth is that I don’t. I feel…safe. Protected. Treasured. ‘One day, you will realize that you are not trapped in a prison,’ he murmurs roughly. ‘You are in my church where I am your God, and you are my equal. I’m not a jail, little mouse, I am your sanctuary.’ My mouth dries. The tip of my tongue darts out, wetting my bottom lip and swiping across his lips. Just a brush, but enough to light a spark. An answering growl arises as I ask, ‘Does that make me a goddess?’”

Zade is telling Adeline that they are equals in this relationship, ignoring the ways in which he has abused Adeline and forced her into situations and actions against her will. The real issue at hand is that Zade paints himself as Adeline’s “God,” her sanctuary, and her protector, all of which imply Adeline’s subordination to him. He even uses his nickname for her, “little mouse,” which implies that she is small, weak, and inferior to Zade as a “cat” chasing her. These assertions contradict the claim that she is his equal in the relationship.

“‘But knowing that Z is your stalker oddly reassures me. I never knew him personally, obviously. I didn’t even know what he looks like, but what he does…it’s incredibly admirable. He puts his life on the line every day, walks into the lion’s den himself and saves a lot of innocent souls. He’s helped countless people and taken down so many rings already. And I don’t have to see what’s in the videos to know that Z takes them to heart.’ She sighs, and a sardonic smile flashes on her face. ‘He stalks people for a living, so I suppose it’s no surprise that tendency has bled into his love life.’”

Daya excuses Zade’s behavior by virtue of his redeeming profession: Because Zade saves children, Daya can accept that he also sexually assaulted and stalked Adeline. Following this passage, Daya further excuses Zade’s behavior by reason of his appearance, following the same apologetic format as Adeline and Zade earlier in the novel. Notably, there is no voice of reason in the novel warning Adeline that she should end her association with Zade. The romance genre best friend role that Daya occupies often attempts to be the voice of reason or at least questions the wisdom of the female protagonist’s choices. In this novel, Daya only supports Adeline’s decisions.

“I’ll never understand why innocent people must die to feed their delusions. I’ll never understand the desire to hurt someone innocent. But that’s what attracts them. That’s what draws the devil to the angel. They want to corrupt. To hurt. To taint. To cause harm and suffering upon those that never asked for it. That’s the sick thrill of it.”

The irony of Zade’s statement comes in the following chapter when Adeline compares herself to an angel and Zade to a demon, calling back to Zade’s claim of not understanding the Society’s motivations. Initially, Zade is correct in distancing himself from human sacrifices and child abuse, but, as he reduces the Society’s motivation down to enjoying hurting innocent people, he seems unaware that he is describing exactly what he has done to Adeline.

“Although I’ve taken advantage of Addie on several occasions, at least her being awake and coherent allowed me to watch her body’s reactions. Doesn’t make it right. But her body has always wept for me. And if it ever didn’t, I wouldn’t have touched her until it did.”

Again, Zade seems to conflate physical with emotional arousal, using Adeline’s body’s reactions to stimulation as an excuse to assault her. He acknowledges that it is not “right” of him, but he claims that he would not have assaulted Adeline if her body were not aroused though it’s not clear how he confirms her arousal before he forces himself on her. Zade draws a line at assaulting Adeline while she is sleeping, implying that he does not enjoy assaulting her unless she struggles or responds physically.