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“Here.” Marcella eases my clutched hands apart and puts a skin-warm glass of wine between them.

“I d-don’t want—”

“You need to. You need to give your brain a break.” She surveys me with her icy eyes, rocks back on her heels. Her night dress, short black satin, cups her thighs and breasts ever so perfectly.

It’s all fake, a glamour. I know this, I remind myself.

With a grunt, I bring the glass to my lips, the ruby liquid sliding over my tongue, bitter tannins and sweet red fruit glossing the bile and turning it softer.

Marcella clicks her tongue. “There now. Isn’t that better?”

“This doesn’t take what you did away, though. I want you to know that. Nothing you say is going to make me trust you, or them.”

She sniffs, imperious and feline. “No, I wouldn’t ever have imagined it so. But I never lied to you, either.”

I press my lips together. Lips, teeth, tongue. Lips, teeth, tongue. “A lie by omission—”

“Come now.” With her cocked head and dripping wet hair, she looks so goddamned innocent. But she’s not; even if she saved both our skins, she’s still a monster. A smile slinks, honeyed, across her full lips. They’re a dazzling red. In fact, all of her radiates life. “If I’d told you,” she continues, her voice raw and chipped, “would you have believed me? And if you had, wouldn’t you have pushed me away?”

She’s not wrong. But who wouldn’t have? “They’re all murderers. You’re a murderer.” I slop more wine into my glass from the bottle on the coffee table, then swallow it all down. Refill again.

Marcella only watches me.

Murderer.

“I am,” she says simply.

“I don’t trust you.”

Marcella stands abruptly, pacing across the apartment to peel open a Snickers. She pinches the chocolate between her front teeth and stares daggers at me. “After all that? After risking my life to haul Dr. Sims’s eroding body across campus and stick him into a hole in the ground, you don’t trust me? After we went to the after-party—that ceremony—and I made sure you didn’t get eaten? Really, Lacie. I thought you were smarter than that.”

“You can say anything you want to me right now, but I won’t believe it.” I tip more of the wine into my mouth, allowing it to unclasp my lips. “I don’t like any of this.”

“You don’t have to like it,” she hits back, “but it is reality. We’re really in this together, aren’t we? We might have killed Sims, but now? Now we have Lyle to worry about, or whatever is now living inside his body. And whatever devilry Dean Shea is or shills for. Preston is crawling with the undead.”

“You’re included in that number,” I cut in, not bothering to hide the sneer in my voice.

“I am aware, yes.” Marcella bares her teeth at me in an approximation of a smile.

“I should have stayed away from you from the start. I knew it—I knew when I first met you that you were dangerous. I shouldn’t ever—we shouldn’t have ever spoken.” My attempt comes out muddled, but I don’t care. I don’t care how acid my barbs are, nor how blunted. It just feels good to argue.

Marcella smirks. “How kind you are to me, sitting here on my couch, wrapped in my sweats and drinking my wine. May I remind you: you have been in danger since before we met. You just had no idea.”

Nettled and tongue-tied, I look into my half-empty wine glass. Without thinking too hard about it, I pour the rest of my wine down my throat, allow it to dribble over my freshly cleaned face.

“Do you feel better now?” Marcella goads.

Do I feel better, after discovering two dead friends, finding out my bosses are undead wights, after learning that Preston is infested with monstrosities and nearly being killed for the privilege of knowing that, after learning that the woman I was slowly but steadily falling for is a fucking draugr? Do I feel better?

“No.” I stand up, throwing the damp towel around my shoulders to the floor. Bellatrix, who’s been huddled under the couch behind my feet, bolts with a startled hiss. She bounds up her cat tree, clawing into a tail-lashing crouch. Her orange eyes study me, wary.

She should be. They both should.

“Listen, lamb, you should be thanking me. Falling at my feet. I showed you the path forward, and you even got some anthropology study out of the deal. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“How dare you,” I snarl, stalking toward Marcella. “How dare you put me in this position. All my life, I’ve worked so. Damned. Hard. To get where I am. To claw up to this little rarified place. I’ve never cracked even once.” Marcella only continues to smile at me, her eyes glowing a vivid chartreuse as I get closer to her. Like an animal in the dark caught inside the beam of a flashlight, eerie and strange.

“How dare you come into this place I love and kill someone and claim it’s for my own good? How dare you coerce me back to that fucking orgy and put me in mortal danger in the process?” My voice pitches higher, but I don’t care. I’m so tired of caring, so tired of the goals I’ve had always changing and the standards always raising. I’m so tired of being lied to, of being told I’m good enough as I am only to find out that there’s a never-ending climb to understand the next playing field.