Instead, I said, “I care enough to keep talking to you.”
It was almost true.
She didn’t reply. Her feet shifted again.
I grinned, splitting the silence. “You cold?”
She gritted her teeth, slow nod. “What’s it to you?”
“Nothing.” I rolled my neck. “Just curious how long you’ll last.”
This time, there was no comeback. Just a deep breath, air shivering in and out through her cracked lips.
But she didn’t give in. She never did. Not even when it would have been easier.
The hopeless part? I respected her for it.
And if I respected her—if I cared, at all—it would kill us both. Or maybe just me.
I heard a creak above, floorboards settling. My pulse kicked up. A jolt, then nothing. The darkness pressed closer, the glass a slippery, funhouse reflection of my own face, bloodshot eyes and a smear of stubble. Just a fucked-up animal in a box.
So I talked, just to keep my teeth from chattering. “You ever think about high school?”
She blinked. Stunned. Didn’t expect that.
“No,” she whispered. “Why would I?”
I shrugged. “Easy to forget when things were simple.”
Her face twisted. Bitter. “Simple? We hated each other.”
I almost said, did we? I didn’t. I caught the instinct, crushed it.
“Some things never change,” I said.
And for a moment, that was it. The world shrunk down to the drip of water, the ache in my temple, and her breathing, ragged and stubborn, across the glass.
I closed my eyes, counting the seconds between each sound. Easier than watching her come apart in slow motion.
Easier than watching myself do the same.
I stayed awake, teeth clenched, and let the hunger eat me alive.
The dark was a beast with a hundred teeth.
Sometimes it bit you slow. Sometimes it clamped down hard, straight through flesh and bone. That’s what it felt like as the minutes crawled by.
We were stilled in our corners, caught in the glue of exhaustion. I thought maybe she’d finally drifted off, but then?—
A sound.
I jerked upright, all nerves. At first, I thought it was her. A breath snagged, a throat catching, something weak and breakable in the dark. I almost called her name, but then the sound grew, and my blood iced over.
Crying. Sobbing. Deep, stuttering, horrible. The kind that made your skin crawl. It was a woman’s voice, warping in the echo of the basement, all the syllables slurred and overlapping.
Amelia snapped to, eyes wide. She glanced at me, panic splayed raw over her face.
“Do you hear that?” she whispered, barely moving her lips.
