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That’s not right.
The light spins murky overhead, like—like it’s coming through glass.
Groaning, I try to twitch upright, but now my knees and ankles have been bound. The sound rushes past me and coalesces into voices. The wide buttressing of the chapel shifts into view, the Gothic ceiling swimming above me. My vision focuses again and I’m staring at a dove, gilt in gold.
Acid stings my throat when I realize where I am: I’m on the altar. I’m the sacrifice.
“Lamb,” a smoky voice says, cutting clear through my disorientation. Marcella swims into view. “Oh, my darling. It’s going to be okay. I promise.”
Tears thicken inside of me, with grief, with anger. She’s unbound, unhurt. Her perfect face is done up, her lips dark red. She’s changed from this morning, in a short black dress now, its silk sides sliced to reveal her skin. A red amulet hangs at her throat, its matching pieces in her ears. She is beautiful. She is terrible.
She’s the cause of my death, I know it.
And I realize with a new concussion of grief that I knew it all along. I just didn’t know how much it would hurt when the monster finally hatched from her shell—when all those pretty whispered words would harden into knives.
Whimpering, I turn my face from her. She doesn’t deserve my tears.
THIRTY-ONEMarcella
Goddess, did he have to hurt her?
Lacie twitches her face away, closing her eyes, but she can’t hide the tears streaming down her cheeks, making rusty tracks through her blood. One eye is swelling already, her lid purpling. Her nose is shattered, snot and spit slicking her chin. Rage peels open inside me, blade sharp. I spin, looking for a target.
“You,” I snarl, cutting toward Lyle with predatory grace, “you did this to her. You motherfucker—”
He raises his palms, expression dispassionate. “Have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. You know that, Marcella.” He takes the journal out. “But look what she found for me. Familiar, isn’t it?”
“Should it be?” I snap.
Lyle grins, a sharp slash of red over hundreds of needle-sharp teeth. “I do believe you’re about to meet your new master.”
I lunge at him, but my head sings with pain, the wriggling of the worm inside me overwhelming and searing. Lyle snaps his fingers and then slips the book back into the pocket of his blazer. “There he is. It’s time. Remember your role, Marcella.”
He jogs off toward Dean Shea and I’m left there with nothing but slow-rising panic, my bones vibrating with frantic energy. In a few short moments, I won’t be my own anymore.
All around us, vættir arrive from the crypt below. They’re in their faces, their real faces: monstrous and warped, black-smoked at the edges. Some disappear in part into the shadows, incorporeal until they’re fed. From the Div School side entrance arrives the rest of the Classics department: old men and women, their lips tight and eyes terrified. They’ve learned to stay silent. They’ve buckled under this threat to their safety. They could have rooted out this horror but instead they have decided to give in to it—no matter whether it hurts them or others, dragging them into the destructive orbit of the vættir.
Eventually, all of them will become like the monsters they abetted: hungry enough, scared enough, to be turned, too.
Madame Kehane, a puff of French rosewater and powder, hurries past the altar, sinking into a pew toward the back. Let her think she isn’t a part of this—I hope the guilt will eat her alive.
They drift through the monsters all around them, placing their masks from the Winter Ball on their heads, turning into a menagerie of lesser animals for the vættir to herd. Their finery hushes and sparkles, lace and Swarovski crystals and glitter and silk. But they can’t hide behind sartorial riches and masks.
For them, and for the vættir, this is an unmasking. The mortals won’t look at me, though. Only the immortal monsters. Their eyes gleam silver as they study Lacie, then turn to me with denuded hunger.
They can smell me. They know what I am. They want a piece.
They’ll get some, soon.
“Lyle,” Dean Shea shouts. “What is this about?” He stomps toward the chapel’s dais with Whittaker close behind. They both have shucked their mortal skins, Dean Shea a shriveled half human in creased golf pants, his eyes beady and silver. Whittaker is nearly twice as tall, his leering, reaching form tailor-made to kill. He hisses at me, all lance-sharp arms and folding, egret-like legs, a prehensile tongue slipping between bladed teeth.
Fuck it. There’s nothing else I can do but let the chips fall.
I stalk back to Lacie, twitchy. Her eyes have closed again, which, frankly, is good. If she can’t see the monstrosities here for their dinner, it will be easier. What did I tell her? We have to do the next right thing.
It’s impossible to know if what I’m going to do will endanger her in the long run, but it’s the only way to keep her from becoming a revenant for the vættir, or a lackey for John Shea.
I have to do something.
