She slammed her hand against the granite countertop, sending bobby pins scattering over the bath mat. “Say.Something.”
“That hasn’t worked for you yet,” Adya said, from her place in the empty bathtub. She flipped through a thick leather book, pages rustling. “I can’t imagine why you’d expect it to work now.”
“I don’t know what else to do.”
“I don’t know, either, but the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” Adya sat up a little straighter, her face brightening. “We could call an exterminator.”
Delaney slumped down onto the toilet lid. “I’m not infested with roaches.”
“Fine. We’ll table that idea for now.” Adya flipped to another page. “How about a Catholic priest? In all the movies they always come and do the thing with the water.”
Delaney let out a groan and dropped her head into her hands. Somewhere unseen, her phone rang. Again. She ignored it. Again. The voice inside her remain silent.
“You don’t want to talk to me?” She jabbed herself in the temple. “I heard you. I know you can speak.”
Silence, again, save for the sound of Adya tossing yet another book on the growing pile of discards. Delaney slid down onto the floor. Her bruised tailbone thunked tile, and she barked out a laugh that felt entirely wild. Her stomach gnawed at itself, like a starveling winter’s wolf running its teeth along a bone.
On the floor in front of her sat the silver snuff box she’d taken from Colton’s house. She opened it and stared at the sliver of bone within. Picking it up, she turned it over and over, inspecting it from all angles, careless of whether or not Colton could feel it. She hoped he would. She hoped it made him crawl out of his skin, the way she was close to crawling out of hers. At her feet, Petrie wound in and out of her legs in a lazy figure eight, mewling contentedly.
“It’s kind of creepy,” Adya said, folding her arms over the lip of the tub. “How do you think he got it out?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe he had some sort of surgery and asked to keep it after. I have a friend who kept her appendix in a jar after her appendectomy.”
“Gross.”
“You’re literally holding a severed piece of our TA,” Adya said, resting her chin on her forearm. “You’re not allowed to judge.”
Delaney didn’t answer. She only ran a finger along the outer curve, where the bone was smooth and white as a shell. She pressed it into the tip of her thumb, hard enough to puncture skin.
If we carved a piece of you away, what do we think would come out?
The voice thrummed through her head like a clarion bell. She tucked the bone into her pocket and leapt to her feet, nearly earning a claw to the ankle from Petrie as she went.
“I’ve been talking to you for hours,” she snapped.
“Me?” Adya looked momentarily affronted. Then, realization dawning, she sank back into the tub. “Not me. Got it.”
Deep inside Delaney’s head, the voice said,I am not a plaything.
“What are you, then?”
Today, I am Delaney Meyers-Petrov.
Downstairs, the doorbell rang.
Adya frowned, halfway through scooping Petrie into her arms. “Who do you think that is?”
“I don’t know.” Delaney’s heart was a hammer, her ribs the anvil. The feel of the bell reverberated all through her. “I’ll be right back.”
Fumbling out into the narrow hall, she all but tripped down the steps. She was aware of how wild she looked—how feral and on edge. The doorbell rang a second time. A third. A fourth.
She wrenched the door ajar to find Colton standing on the stoop, a garment bag hooked over his shoulder, his finger poised to jab the button again. He stared up at her, his pupils dilated and the tips of his ears a bright, bold pink. In her pocket, the shard weighted against her thigh like an anchor. He opened his mouth to speak, and she promptly slammed the door in his face.
“Delaney.” His fist hammered wood. “Delaney, open the door.”
“I’m not home.”
