“She’s not like the others. She’s not a predator. I swear to you, Asher. I know this seems bad, but she’s different. She’ssick. She can’t help herself.”
A soft chitter comes from under the door. A guttural clicking that sounds nothing and everything like her mother. Asher’s response is instinctive. All reflex, he swings the shotgun into position, finding his mark through the wood.
“Open the door,” he says again, pinching one eye shut. “And then get out of the way.”
She, too, is all reflex. She flings out a hand, unthinking, folding it over the barrel and pressing the muzzle toward the floor.
“Asher, look at me.”
He does. Not at her face, the way she’d intended, but at her wrist. With the cuffs of her blouse gathered at her elbows, Lys’s bite is painfully visible. It sits in a dozen raw half-moons along her forearm.
The mark of the devil, incisor deep.
She wrenches her hand to her chest, tugging the sleeve back into place. It’s too little, too late. He’s already seen. For the next several seconds, neither of them says a word. On the other side of the door, her mother has gone quiet. The only sound is the faint rattle of chains, theplinkof couplings dragged over wood.
Uselessly, Shea says, “It’s not what it looks like.”
“It looks,” he says, in a voice flat enough to be dead, “like you let him feed on you.”
Him, notone of them.Him, like he already knew. He looks unfairly resigned, like he’s always known they’d end up here. For a moment she’s sixteen again, standing outside the Thorley garage with her shoulders singed red by the sun, her voice a whisper: “There’s a rumor he’s recruiting.”
Asher’s astonishment had been decimating. “You want me to pledge fealty to the devil?”
“If it keeps you from dying in a watchtower, yes.”
“I’m not planning to die, Parker. How many times do I have to tell you? We have a plan. You and me. Yeah? We get out of here together—that hasn’t changed, it’s just delayed a little.”
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” he says now, as if he’s been remembering the same.
The resignation in his voice makes her hackles rise. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know exactly what it means.”
“Spell it out for me anyway.”
“Come on, Parker. You’ve always had one foot in the Gravewood.”
Shame threatens to saw her open. She refuses to let it. Once, she used to wish for Asher Thorley to come back home from the watch. She tallied the days, keeping careful track in the leaded margins of her math notebook. Now she tallies nights. She counts supplies and she watches them dwindle. The only promises she cares about are the ones she makes herself.
She won’t let anyone make her feel sorry about it.
“I think you should leave.”
He doesn’t. He says, “My sister is in the Gravewood.”
There’s no need for him to elaborate—she understands exactly what it is he’s implying. She shuts it down quickly. “Lys already told me he had nothing to do with Camellia’s disappearance.”
A thunderous silence follows. In a voice that has gone dangerously subdued, Asher says, “Well, ifLyssays so.”
“He’s never given me any reason not to trust him.”
“No, of course not. Aside from the fact that he’s a bloodsucking predator.”
She bristles, biting back a retort. She doesn’t need to stand here and spar with him, she needs to get him out of her house. She needs to figure out what to do next, now that her cover is blown. Shoving past him, she wrenches open the door. The cold night air spills into the foyer.
“Leave.”
He doesn’t. He remains firmly planted, his jaw set. “I want to meet him.”
