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I’m in the Div School basement library, on my side against the awful gray carpet in the carrels. Gritting my teeth, I work my wrists. They’ve been tied with something narrow that bites hard into my skin. Maybe twine? But my ankles are free. I rub my face against the ground, over and over, until the shroud over my eyes pulls down.

I blink into the dark. Oh, motion-sensor lights. I rock side to side, and when that isn’t enough, I stand.

I immediately fall, my head blaring with impossible pain, but the lights click on. Swinging my head side to side, I take stock. I’m on the lower of the two levels—if Marcella hated the top one, she would despise this one even more. It smells like a grave in here, earthen and heavy. The bookshelves lean helter-skelter, the result of some freshman prank no one ever bothered to fix; students clamber above and below leaning bookcases to find their reading work, and it’s better that way. So Dean Shea says.

And now, I suppose, I know why: this is the lair of the vættir. Not only the graves beneath the chapel but here, too. The Classics building. Everywhere.

How long did I claw through this miserable obstacle course before I had to realize how wretched it truly was? And instead of climbing, was I digging the space for my own coffin?

Breathing hard, I force my spinning brain to refocus. Marcella. I hope she’s okay. I know she can hold her own, but the thought of Dean Shea or any of the others who rose again hurting her?

I need to get out of here. For her sake, and for mine. To expose these assholes.

I get to my feet just in time to hear footsteps on the concrete stairs. I make a quick calculation: I can’t run, not with what I assume is a concussion. I can’t even whack whoever it is with a book. I have to bide my time. Sinking down, a groan of frustration swallowed by my gag, I curl up again on my side.

I see their shoes first. Brooks Brothers loafers, dusted by the frayed hem of khakis. I turn my head to look up.

“How did you do that?” Lyle stares at me from above, then drops to a crouch. He picks up the blindfold and casts his gaze over me suspiciously.

Lyle? Fucking—Lyle?! Lyle, Therese’s boyfriend, who would never hurt a fly. Lyle, so worried about breaking all the rules that when Marcella asked him to check the Rare Book Room, he waffled and quailed. Lyle—knocked me out and brought me here?

His eyes burn with pent-up rage. “I’m sorry to have to do this to you, Lacie, I really am.”

I growl with annoyance, wishing I could yell past my gag.

“I know,” he says, his voice lethal. “I wanted my life to be easy, too. And I thought I had it made, you know? When I got into Preston, when Therese transferred in, when I got some attention on my last paper. Publish or perish, and I was publishing. I was riding high. And then Therese. And now this.” He stands up. “When everything’s taken away from you…” He spreads his hands. “I’m going to have at least one thing. Revenge.”

The noises I make behind my gag aren’t enough. I understand him. All I want is to destroy the people—the things—that hurt Laurel, who maybe have hurt Marcella. I want to rip their throats out, too, the way they destroyed Therese, left her to rot in that alley. I think of their crumpled bodies, what they might do to me. And I wonder: why play into the dean’s plans if he’s the one leading this sick, murderous show?

Why would Lyle hurt me?

“I suppose you’re wondering what’s in it for you, huh?” Lyle laughs, and it’s so much like he read my thoughts that I shudder. “The dean is mobilizing against the others. The vættir. Oh, don’t look at me like that,” he says when my brow furrows, “you knew these people weren’t human. Not with how they drove us against one another, fighting it out with every other department, some disappearing, some excelling. I watched Therese waste away in this fucking library,” he yells, his voice echoing in the grave-silent room. “There was nothing I could do. And then they killed her.”

He’s gulping breaths now, fists tightened. He loved her. He loved her so damn much, and it brings tears to my eyes to realize he’s only helping Dean Shea to hurt him even more.

Lyle shakes his head. The LEDs deepen the circles under his eyes, deadening his gaze. “I’m sorry, Lacie. You’re the perfect bait. While the dean is preoccupied with my other alliance—” His grief fades and he smiles, and it’s full—too full—of teeth. In the darkness, his eyes glow. “—I’ll take this fucking place out at the knees.”

His other alliance can only be Marcella. That’s why he has me. He has her. We’ve been each other’s unmaking.

He plucks Marcella’s diary out of his back pocket and waves it in front of my face. “See now, I have a good solution. I’m about to have your girlfriend’s true name. And with that, I can use her. Command her. She’s already devoured the wrong blood—did you notice? She’s really sick, isn’t she? And she’s about to have no brain in that head of hers.” He huffs a laugh. “But I can give her something to do.”

“No,” I try to scream around my gag. “Let me go!”

But Lyle is already hauling me to my feet and, for a dizzying moment, my head spins and I slump against him.

“Fuck, sorry,” he says, his voice cracking, like he’s not sure if he’s the villain or the savior. “I didn’t mean to hit you that hard. And I’m sorry you’re the one who has to take the fall, but someone always has to. You know that. I—I always liked you. I appreciated you, all the time.”

I wrench against him and he hisses as he pulls me back.

I will not go lying down. I will not let his gallows kindness soothe me. The deep pit of flame inside me springs higher, burning my insides. A bitten growl escapes me as I tear myself from him. When I fall, it’s onto my face; my nose crushes beneath me, blood spurting. An animal screech of pain loosens from me, but adrenaline surges me onto my feet. I pound toward the corridor, the concrete stairs, Lyle hot behind me.

“You will not take this from me!” he roars, grabbing the back of my shirt. My head slams against the stairwell wall.

His words distend between my ears, my brain splitting with a headache so large it drowns my vision. Lyle walks me up the stairs, muttering things I can’t make out, screaming as I throw up over my gag, bile spilling onto his shoes. My bare feet slip and he hauls me forward.

I must black out for a moment, because when I come to again, I’m in a room by the ocean.

No.