“Leave,” he told the others. “Find another way out.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Eric in a whisper.
“I’ll handle her.”
“How?”
He didn’t know. But he’d made her a promise. “I’ll figure it out.”
Out in the sanctuary, Vivienne traipsed down the aisle as though she were in a wedding processional. Step, step, stop. Step, step, stop. Her hospital gown was torn at the collar, the papery-white shreds fluttering off her shoulder. There was something predatory in the way she moved, each step suffused with a wrongness that struck him cold.
“We need a token,” whispered Delaney suddenly.
“Lane’s right,” said Colton. “Do you have something of hers? A bit of fingernail, maybe. Or even a lock of hair.”
Eric made a thinly veiled sound of disgust. “Why the hell would Walsh be carrying around her fingernail clippings?”
Quickly, Thomas said, “I have a baby tooth.”
“You—” Eric cut a look in his direction. “Hertooth?”
“Yeah.” Thomas held up his wrist. The silver chain links sat nestled against the pink-and-white pony beads she’d given him the day of the gala. The wordcrybabyleered up at him alongside the pale white opal of her molar. “Will this work?”
“It should,” said Colton. “Free will is a uniquely human trait. Whatever’s driving Vivienne, it’s not human, which theoretically means it can be controlled.”
Thomas thought of the teeth scattered across Philip’s office. The signet ring he wore on his pinkie, flat and dull. Vivienne’s voice on the recording:I have to do what I’m told, or else it hurts all over.
He closed his fingers over the tooth. “What if you’re wrong?”
“Then you’d better run faster than you did downstairs,” said Colton.
“Funny.”
He braced himself, gathering up the shreds of his courage and stepping out from behind the column. Vivienne stood directly before him, bent forward as though she’d been eavesdropping. He drew up short, inches away from careering clear into her. The dogs sat at her side, ears pricked and muzzles bloodied.
“Hi,” he said.
Her eyes were black all the way through, her fingers long and knuckles knobbled. There was nothing of Vivienne in her expression. She was all creature. Its head turned on a swivel and it peered sideways up at him, intrigued.
“You look nice,” he added. “A little murderous, maybe, but pretty.”
The thing wearing her face hadn’t blinked. Not once. “Why don’t you bleed?” it asked, and it pinched his chest to hear Vivienne’s voice, low and sweet. “You and your friends—you don’t even flinch.”
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. “That’s a good question. I don’t know, actually. Luck?”
“You reek of death.” It sniffed at his throat, scenting him like a huntress. “You carry it with you like a talisman. How?”
“Death and I are pretty good friends,” he said, and shrugged. “Maybe that’s it. Hey—do me a favor?”
Its head quirked to the side.
“Tell Vivienne to wake up.”
Its eyes dropped to his wrist. To the white milk tooth embedded in his bracelet. “Oh, you’re very clever. Do you think one little token is all it takes?”
“We’ll see,” said Thomas. “Wake her up.”
“I won’t,” said the creature, and now it didn’t sound like a girl at all. Its voice distorted, dropping a register. “She needs me. She has no one.”
