She wondered, not for the first time, if maybe she hadn’t done it to herself—if she hadn’t calcified the bits of her that were tender to the touch. Turned her fury to poison, growing angrier and angrier, until it spilt clean out of her.
No creature ever started out with venom in their bite. They evolved.
Theysurvived, and so had she.
Stretching out her limbs, she rolled onto her side.
Thomas lay beside her, flat on his back and breathing deeply, one arm crooked over a stomach bound in gauze. On his wrist sat the bracelet she’d given him, the wordCRYBABYspelled out in black-and-white lettering. They’d fallen asleep hand in hand the previous night, too tired to even turn down the sheets. At the sight of him lying there, the flare in her chest shone brighter still.
He’d come after her.
Over and over. Again and again.
Just like he’d promised.
She’d given him a hundred reasons to walk away. A thousand. Anyone else would have turned tail and run at the first gnash of her teeth. But not Thomas. He’d stayed. Until the end, and then beyond it. She hadn’t known it was possible to be loved like that.
She hadn’t known it was possibleto lovelike that.
She’d been told, after—after the ambulance, after the hospital, after the sleepy drive home in the predawn haze—that the House had been constructed atop a great locus of power. It concentrated her own nightmarish abilities, brought Thomas’s into overdrive. In his fury, he’d shouldered through worlds.
He’d shattered the skies for her.
Beneath the soft light in the window, she could just make out the tattoo inscribed along his forearm.Non omnis moriar.The handiwork was a blocky stick and poke, as if it had been done by an amateur. Reaching for him, she traced the lettering with a whisper-light touch.
“It means, ‘I shall not wholly die,’” spoke Thomas, startling her.
She glanced up and found him wide-awake, the morning light pooling in his eyes. Dimly, she wondered how long he’d been watching her. Probably as long as she’d been watching him. A single butterfly fluttered through her stomach at the thought.
“I’m pretty sure it’s from a poem,” he said, angling his arm to better see the ink. “Everyone in my fraternity has one. It was a mandatory part of initiation. That, and the occasional reconnaissance mission through gaps in the sky.”
Did you use a steak knife?she asked, thinking of Frankie.
He frowned. “What?”
Nothing. Never mind. What were you looking for?
His focus dropped to her hands, cradled between them. He didn’t ask why she still wasn’t speaking, after everything. Anyone else might have, but not Thomas. He understood. He’d always understood. She felt suddenly and unequivocally seen, all the way down to her marrow.
Quietly, he said, “We were supposed to see if anything would follow us back.”
She thought of the bottom of the gorge, that interminable voice slithering out from the dark, and suppressed a shiver.Why didn’t you tell me?
“Tell you what? That I used to experiment with the occult? It’s not exactly something you bring up in casual conversation.”
We’ve never had a casual conversation.
“True. You were too busy trying to get me fired.” He smiled at the look on her face. “I don’t know, it just didn’t seem like relevant job experience at the time.”
What about now?
He considered her question, ribboning a strand of her hair through his fingers. “Now that we’re on the other side, I have a strong suspicion that it’s why Philip hired me. I think he assumed I’d dealt with a situation like yours before.”
Have you?
“Vivienne,” he said, fixing her in a solemn gaze, “I’ve never metanyonelike you.”
She’d been asking about the Vivienne in the glass, but it was clear from the look on his face that he meant the Vivienne right in front of him. Too late, she understood that was all he’d cared about from the start. She’d spent so much time trying to hide the parts of her that were rotten, she’d neglected the rest. The girl in her skin. The flesh and blood bits.
