Page 150 of Where the Snakes Sleep

“And I need you not dead.”

“I will do my best.”

“That’s a terrible fucking promise.”

“It is the only honest one I can make.”

My eyes burn. I squeeze his wrists harder, then something crashes somewhere in the house.

Glass.

Definitely glass.

Camille jerks away from me, and everything changes again. “Lock the door.” He backs into the hallway.

“Camille.”

“Lock it, Ryan.”

I stand there, shaking.

He looks directly at me and begins to shut the door. “Please.”

“I—Wait—”

He shakes his head and murmurs, “Je t’aime.”

I love you.

And then he’s gone.

23

Camille

The door closes between us. My hand stays wrapped around the cold brass handle until I hear the lock engage from the other side. I stand motionless in the unlit hallway as a violent impulse rises in me, so physical it feels like a hand shoving between my shoulder blades to make me turn around, break the door down, and run with him.

I told him I love him.

I had been keeping those words to myself as I understood that saying them while he was still angry would only give him one more feeling he never asked to carry. I didn’t want love to become another argument in my defense—another weight placed on some invisible scale, trying to prove that the good in me might somehow outweigh the harm. If I ever said it, I wanted the words to be a gift rather than a weapon.

But not a gift thrown at him right as I’m abandoning him.

If I survive the next twenty minutes, he may just kill me himself.

He’s probably cursing me out right this very minute.

He can be angry; the important part is that he is safe.

The laboratory walls are reinforced because several of the environmental systems require independent containment, and the exterior exit gives him a route away from the main residence if the interior becomes compromised. I have activated the emergency response. If the alert was transmitted before the network failed, help is coming.

The hallway ahead is almost completely black, lit only by the flashlight on my phone. I reduce the brightness and angle it toward the floor, unwilling to announce my position any more than necessary.

A noise sounds from the western side of the ground floor.

Not glass this time, but a door.

Someone has entered.