What for, she wrote.
“You know exactly what for,” he said, before she’d even finished dotting her question mark. “My parents’ yearly charity gala is coming up. I don’t plan on going without a date. You get me Reed, talk that goth into wearing a suit for once, and I get you your anesthetic with no questions asked.”
She picked up her pen to scribble out a retort, but he held up a hand to stop her.
“Those are my terms. You scratch my back, I scratch yours.”
Reed is a delinquent, she jotted, her loops all coming loose.Your parents will hate him.
Hudson grinned. “Why do you think I want him?”
His voice winnowed strangely, as though someone had turned the volume as low as it could go. She glanced up, startled, and looked around to see if anyone else had noticed. Hudson was reaching for his wine, still grinning over at her. Thomas stood watching them from the bar. The rest of the restaurant carried out their muffled conversations, oblivious to the way the sound wobbled and skewed.
At the adjacent table, someone was watching her. There’d been a pair of businessmen there just before—both dressed in summer suits and sporting expensive timepieces. In their place sat a single bloated figure. He peered at her out of unseeing eyes, one side of his face thatched in barnacles. His lips were infection dark. A seeping putrefaction pocked his skin.
She knew him. She’d know him anywhere.
He’d driven her to school. He’d sat through her recitals. He’d held her when she cried.
“It is not so bad,” said Mikhail Popov. “You don’t need to be afraid.”
She lurched to her feet, sending cutlery flying. Several heads turned toward her.
“Viv?” Hudson glanced at the table. Mikhail stared back, as cold and immutable as he’d been in life. “You okay?”
“He does notwantto hurt you,” said Mikhail. His voice was wet, like he was full to the brim with water from the Sound. “He only wants you to come back home.”
Ice began to crackle over the windows, feathering the glass. Her breath plumed before her. Somewhere out of sight, there came the thready trickle of water. Hudson was speaking again, rising out of his chair to meet her. His voice was thin and distant.
Bathroom, she signed, snatching her bag off the back of her chair. She shoved into the aisle, the cold creeping into her skin, mist snaking around her ankles. At the bar, Thomas was already halfway off his stool.
Bathroom, she signed again. Then, as though he were a dog, she added,Sit.
He didn’t sit, but he didn’t follow her, either. Instead, he watched, his pale eyes flitting from Hudson and back to her as he tried, without success, to piece together what possibly could have happened.
Inside the bathroom, she collapsed against the door until it fell shut with a click. Under the yellow flush of lights, her reflection was pale as a wraith. She didn’t make eye contact as she turned on the water, splashing ice-cold droplets onto her neck.
When at last she glanced up, it was to find Mikhail standing just over her shoulder. She yelped, toppling into the hand dryer.
“He’s been searching for you.” His voice gurgled horribly. “Why do you hide yourself away? Don’t you want to be with the others?”
She scrabbled backward, slamming hard into the adjacent wall. The body—because she couldn’t think of it as Mikhail—stood between her and the door, blocking her exit. In the sink, the water ran without end. It poured over the edges, sluicing out onto the floor.
The corpse’s smile was silt dark. Seawater dribbled down its chin like slaver.
“It won’t be much longer,” it assured her. “Not now that He knows your name.”
The water rose fast—too fast—lapping at her ankles, her calves, the hem of her skirt. She rose with it, scrabbling desperately for a handhold, treading the surface until only a thin pocket of air remained at the ceiling. She was in a veritable tank, a forest of kelp weaving itself into impossible knots around her legs.
This was a nightmare. A hallucination.
It wasn’t real. Itcouldn’tbe real.
She took a final swallow of air just as the water engulfed her whole. Submerged, she sank like a stone. A sourceless light pierced the water in broad, crepuscular rays. It illuminated the muddy bottom, where a boy lay spread like a thin, dark crucifix. Beside him was a tiny pile of bones, phosphate black. A little gray fiddler crab scuttled along the bend of a rib. As she sank nearer, the boy opened his eyes and looked directly at her.
“You learn to like the cold,” he said. “You’ll see.”
“Vivienne?”
