Page 22 of Tick Tock, Darling

Her voice didn’t sound like a woman. It was more guttural, more of a growl. God, what was inside her?

“No.” He kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll leave you two alone. Let me know when she agrees to find my shadow.”

He shut the door quietly.

“You’re going to do this the hard way?”

Obviously. Unlike her, I had morals. I never used my magic for evil.

She slowly approached the bed. I trembled waiting for her to beat the living crap out of me. Maybe I could fake passing out.

Wendy studied me. Her head tipped a little to one side and she didn’t blink. She’d been watching my face the whole time. “You think I’m going to beat you?”

I wet my trembling lips. “You’re not?”

“No. Beatings can be unreliable.” She reached into the pocket of her cape and pulled out a black velvet box.

I cringed. Something was inside that box. Then it moved. Oh, God. Something alive was inside it.

“You’ve never been to the Elder Dimension, have you?”

I swallowed back my dread. I couldn’t take my eyes off that box. “No.”

She came toward the bed and the box tilted in her hands, back and forth, like something inside was throwing itself at the walls.

She flicked it open.

Two white worms, fat as grubs. They had red eyes. They lifted the front halves of their bodies and turned them toward me, and they knew where I was.

My whole body tried to get away from them at once and the chains held me exactly where I was. I heard a noise come out of me. It didn’t sound like anything I’d ever made before.

“Scrivens.” Wendy tilted the box so I could see them better. She smiled, and there were more teeth in it than a woman ought to have. “They eat flesh. They’re white now. Once they feed, they go red.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. I didn’t want to see them. Didn’t want to watch them turn red.

“No. Never.”

“You say that now, little witch. But I think you’ll change your mind.”

Something crawled onto my stomach.

Then teeth. Not like a spider. Not like a mosquito. Something with jaws opened me up and kept going.

My eyes came open. I couldn’t help it — the pain took them open, and there it was, two white bodies working at my stomach and the blood running down my sides into the sheets.

I arched off the bed and screamed. I threw my body sideways as hard as the chains would let me and they dug in harder for it, chewing deeper, working.

“Stop!” I screamed.

Bitch!

“Not until you agree to help us.”

Us. She said it like she’d earned a place in it.

They bit down together, both of them at once, deeper than anything had gone into me in my life. Something tore. The scream that came out of me wasn’t a word and it didn’t sound like me and it went on until there was no air left behind it.

And somewhere in the middle of it I saw Caspian tearing that strip off his own jeans. Standing in the rubble with his shirt off, ripping up his own pants so I wouldn't have to hold that shard in my bare hand.