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I take a step back and brush my eyes over Therese’s crumpled form. It looks like a giant rolled her into a ball and then threw her. That’s likely not far from what happened. “Look closer, please. I need you to see this.”

Lacie shudders over, unsteady, breath clouding in the air.

“It’s like before, what else do you want me to say?” she snaps.

“Does this look human to you?”

“Why do you keep asking me that?” she growls. I get that she’s frustrated, truly, but the sooner she moves past this, the better.

I simply wait.

“I don’t believe in this shit,” she says, her voice cracking. “I don’t want to.”

Therese wasn’t just strangled but fully internally decapitated. I’ll spoil that level of force for you: it can happen in car accidents, or when skiers hit trees. Sometimes, when horseback riders fall off and hit the ground improperly. You can’t internally decapitate someone with your hands, it simply takes too much force. But this? This isn’t your typical murder. She also has a horrid bite mark on her neck, something that is not from any kind of scavenging animal. It’s almost the same as before, a calling card of sorts.

And I know Lacie sees that: she sees the spill of black bruise, the way Therese’s head and neck aren’t lined up properly. I know she sees that bite mark, the dozens of needlelike wounds.

“What do you want me to say?” she ekes out, her voice small and scared.

I want to gather her in my arms. But I don’t. I stand there and point. “What does that look like?”

“A wight killing. What do you want me to do about it?” she howls, then claps a hand over her mouth.

I take her shoulders gently. “No more lying to yourself. You need to take this seriously.”

Her eyes brim with tears. Salt twists on my tongue. “B-but—”

“Forget everything you know about this world. What you’ve learned does not any longer apply. There are things here, Lacie, things that will kill you if you’re not sly enough. You know what these things are. But we need to know specifics. Do you understand? It’s not just that this is a wight in the general sense. There are types. Different ways to destroy them. Yes?”

She closes her eyes and nods. “Yes. Yes, I—I have to go look at some books.”

“Come on then, lamb.”

Coffee forgotten, we leave Therese to rot.

TWELVELacie

The news of Therese’s death has crept around Preston, adding to a slow-simmering panic. One suicide was acceptable, but two deaths in close quarters has made the December drear seem portentous. My morning class was nearly empty; concerned parents are emailing and pulling kids earlier than break begins.

And honestly, I can’t blame them. The only thing I can see when I close my eyes is Therese’s broken neck, mixed with the chopped, bruised skin on Laurel’s legs. I knead my forehead and stare at the white walls of my apartment. Doing nothing. Thinking nothing is better. I find myself on the web page for the Catholic services at the chapel, paging around for reconciliation.

Like so many universities, Preston has denominational services for students before and after classes. For a university set in a place as Catholic as suburban Boston, that means after 8:40 PM. Anything to proselytize. Their efforts do work—I mean, look at me.

I reach the page with a soft exhale of relief, having managed to decipher the labyrinthian, dated website. Red-and-gold script about confessing our sins at Jesus’s feet wraps the header, and I find myself selecting an appointment time. Wouldn’t it feel better to simply submit?

I haven’t done this in so long, but I still know the words. What will I say now?

Forgive me Father for I have sinned. It has been seven years since my last confession. People I care about are being murdered and I haven’t found the killer yet even though I’m not the police. I think I’m falling in love with another woman. My sins are only mounting and it feels like I’m still sixteen and living in my parents’ home. It feels like I’m still living through that heavy self-hatred and judgment. I’m close to returning to the fold.

I close the church’s page almost as soon as I press the “submit reconciliation appointment” button. I think about the bloodied bodies of my friends and press the heels of my hands to my eyes until I see stars.

I have so much work to grade, but what’s work in the face of two murders on campus? God, I haven’t even seen Lyle. I haven’t even brought him a coffee, or some soup. Instead, I’ve holed up in my apartment. I need to do something.

Seized with a sudden, panic-induced spurt of energy, I throw a trench coat on and grab an umbrella. It’s 9 PM, and as I lock my apartment door, I notice that the undergrads below us are uncharacteristically quiet. Even exam week is louder than this.

I tiptoe down the hall, missing the eyes of the busts. They don’t feel watchful anymore: they feel accusatory. On some level, I know I should tell the head of campus security that I saw Laurel’s and Therese’s bodies before they were found. Help them get a better sense of time of death and all that.

But that would implicate me. That would implicate Marcella. I can’t do that, can I?