Weeks?
Seconds?
Forever?
Forever… Sophia.
Gold hair. Green eyes. The weight of her in my hands. The feel of her against my chest. Her mouth on mine. Silk. Velvet. Real. The only real thing I have left.
“I need you,” I mutter, roughing my hands through my hair, pulling until it hurts. “I need you I need you I need you.”
Mary shifts. “I’m right here.”
“Not you,” I spit out. “Her.”
Her head leans to the side, the hole in her throat gaping.
“The therapist. You love her.”
My mind scatters like shattered glass. “I told her I loved her. Once.”
“Does she know who you really are?”
I nod frantically, clinging to the memory like a lifeline.
“You’ll hurt her.”
“No. No, I’ll never hurt Sophia.”
“That’s what you said about me, and now look at me.”
I don’t look.
“Look at me!” The voice erupts, slamming against the walls. Not Mary’s voice—something wearing Mary’s voice, something ancient and wrong that climbed inside her and stretched it into a shape it was never meant to make. Low and resonant and vibrating in my back teeth, in the base of my skull, in the place behind my eyes where the drugs live and breed.
I look.
She’s moved. She’s right in front of me now, and I didn’t see her cross the room.
The hole in her throat is wider. Something pulses inside it—dark and rhythmic, like a second heartbeat living in the wound. Her hair hangs in ropes, heavy and dark, and her eyes—Mary’s eyes—are wrong. Pupils too large. Whites too white. The expression behind them not Mary’s at all.
“Look at what you did.”
“I didn’t—” My voice splinters. “Mary, I didn’t. I was right there, I saw?—”
“You were always right there!” The sound that comes out of her fills the room, fills my skull, fills every crack in me until I feel like I’m going to come apart. “Right there, and you never saved me. Not once. Not ever.”
“I tried.” The words barely make it out. The guilt is a living thing, clawing at my insides, tearing me open from the inside out. “I tried, Mary. I swear to God I tried?—”
The craving spikes again, sharper this time, a wave of fire that makes my hands shake so badly I can barely keep them still. The suspense of waiting for the next hit is torture.
I know it’s coming. I know she’ll make me beg for it, and the dread of how low I’ll have to go coils in my gut like a snake ready to strike.
Valeria’s voice returns, soft and intimate, like a lover’s whisper in the dark. “She’s next, Nazareth.”
My gaze snaps up.
“Your little therapist. You’ll kill her too. Like you did me.”
