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Hush, I tell it, swallowing hard over a thick knot.

Marcella’s fingertips slip from Sims’s clothes and she grits her teeth. Groaning, I come up next to her and heave his dense, slippery corpse up, too. My skin riots and seethes, a scream captured in a high, strangled whine at the back of my throat. We tip him and all at once let go; he hits the grave dirt with a wet thwap, a little like a banana peel slapping a floor. I gag and cover my face.

“There we go,” she says, kicking grave dirt over him. “I consign you to the earth and eternal rest, and may you never haunt these halls. May you know the dreamless peace of death.” She straightens. “Now, was that so hard?”

“Yes,” I mutter, contrary, as I run my hands up and down my dress, trying to wipe the feeling of his skin off me. And yet … if that’s all it was … we can do it again, can’t we?

No. I am not going to entertain this charlatanism. I press the heels of my hands to my face and wheeze out a sob. “I don’t like this at all.”

“The good news is, you don’t have to. You have neither the ability nor the strength to destroy a vættr. I can handle that. What we need is continued buy-in, to look innocent.” Marcella snaps her fingers, her red lips pursing as she walks toward me. “That is where you come in, my little lamb.”

“What if I just go to the police?” But immediately, I see the error of my reasoning: the police would just call a psych hold. My parents would be contacted as next of kin. They would put me in a ward. I would never study again, never prove to myself that despite all my shortcomings, I’m a good scholar, a damned good instructor. I would just waste away in some white box doing toddler sensory activities, loaded up on ketamine.

Marcella’s simply waiting for me to come around, because she already knows, of course, that no one would believe me if I cried wolf. She slots two fingers under my chin, tilts my eyes to meet hers. She’s so glitteringly perfect, even down here in the muck and the death. I take a shuddering breath.

“What do we do now?”

“Now? Now we go back and take part in the after-party, dearest. I’ll charm whoever’s in charge, and, quick as a rabbit, you’ll be in. With any luck, we’ll see what vættir exist here, and then we’ll take them out. One—” She walks her fingers up my face to cup my jaw. “—by one.”

A skitter of delight, much to my disgust, ripples through me. I twitch away from the monster I am unaccountably attracted to. She is too much: too learned, too wise, too old.

“I’m not in a partying mood,” I grumble. “And what if they see me? What if I get in trouble?”

“Trouble!” Marcella laughs. “My dearest, you’re already in trouble.”

“I—I’ve never been in trouble. I don’t want to be. You go. I’ll-I’ll—”

“So, what, you’ll stay down here and never get justice, simply because you don’t want them to give you a bad grade or a rap on the knuckles? You’ll slink away like the frightened little creature they all say you are?”

“What?” The word comes out as a half scream.

“Don’t be foolish,” she replies, her voice a blade. “My god, Lacie, they even gave you a kitty mask for tonight. Don’t let them win. Prove them wrong.”

I look down at my hands, how they’ve twisted themselves into knots and white knuckles. She’s right. They might be right, too.

But isn’t that why I came here? To prove that I’m more than the sum of my shaky, broken parts? I take a shuddering breath.

“From an anthropological and folkloric lens, this could be a unique observation exercise. Watching for vættir in their home environment could lead to drastic understanding of Nordic religious traditions and oral storytelling. Plus, from a human lens, it would solve the mystery of who killed Laurel and Therese.”

Marcella gives me a catlike smile, her eyes shining. “That’s my girl.” She pulls me up. “Let’s get back. We don’t want to be missed.”

It’s past midnight, the river of time bobbing us along through its rapids, thrashing us against rocks. Did we stop? Where are my shoes? My toes—god, they’re so cold, I can barely feel them anymore.

Distantly, I know I should worry about that.

I don’t know, I don’t know. Trauma is doing something funny to me, and I can’t hold everything all at once. I have a notebook. Where did that come from? I tuck it into my purse as we mount the rise of the small suburban street, the slate roof of the dean’s house thrusting high into the cold night.

Marcella grips my hand. “Do you know where the after-party is held?” she asks.

I yank away, terrified by the cold seeping into her body. Terrified that she’s not able to warm herself because she doesn’t have a heart beating inside of her.

“I’m not sure. But the music’s stopped.”

Marcella pulls the white after-party invitation out of the neckline of her dress and approaches the dean’s house. The same bouncer is there as before.

“Invitations,” he intones, stony as any sphinx.

Marcella offers it to him with a twinkling smile. I know what she’s doing, I can see it so clearly now: he’s glamoured by her, the way she swishes her hair.