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His lips, frigid and strangely turgid, corpses in rigor mortis, press against the crest of my ear.

He is death. He is not a human being, not anything I recognize anymore. The thing inside of me spasms and I jerk hard.

“We all know Lacie would’ve taken herself to the slaughter one way or another. Whether by your hand—” I fist his shirt in my hand but I’m weakening, my vision twisting, hallucinatory, and he grabs me back so our foreheads are touching and I can feel just how icy his skin is against mine. “—or mine.”

“What do you want?” I manage. “What do you want for her safety?”

He thrusts me away and I fall back against the floor, retching black bile. “It’s very simple, really. You’ll help me destroy the vættir and you’ll live.” He holds up my phone, shaking it gently side to side. On its screen there’s an unsent text:

It would be remiss of me not to tell you, Dean Shea. I believe Lacie has the key that Lyle lost. Meet me in the chapel at midnight and I’ll have both of them. Your secret is safe with me.

He even got my cadence right, damn him. He knew how the cards would fall. He engineered this entire charade.

I spit blood at Lyle’s feet. “I won’t endanger her.” The words scrape out of me, inhuman and sharp as daggers. Black blood streams down my chin. “I am not an instrument of death.”

But I am. I am, I am, I am. Tears prick my eyes, hot and sudden and acid.

“I’m sending it whether or not you agree,” Lyle says, his eyes burning hard white as he steps into shadow. A smile crooks his lips: crazed, grief-stricken, mad. “Whether you are alive with the warning you need to save her…”

Hissing, I pull myself up on the wall with my bloodied fingernails. I’m too weak to turn. Too weak to even run. I cannot fight him. I can only agree and hope to god I have my strength back to save Lacie when the time comes.

Finally, I sink my head to my chest.

“Good.” Lyle taps at my phone and slips it into his back pocket. “Now then, Marcella. What is your real name?”

TWENTY-NINELacie

God, I hope Marcella is okay. Not for the first time, I pick up my phone. The screen is empty of notifications. My knee bounces as I wait, panic gripping my throat in a fist. Why hasn’t she texted me?

My eyes drift to the key on the coffee table. I know it sounds strange, but it feels like it’s alive. It feels like it’s watching me.

This is ridiculous. It’s a key.

I stand up and start to pace.

There has to be something I can do in the impossible, too-quiet cell of my apartment. I don’t even have Bellatrix to warm me.

Antsy, I throw on a sweatshirt and check my reflection in the mirror. My glasses are dirty, my hair thrown into a messy topknot. I feel beige and gross and plain, the sleepless smudges beneath my eyes deepening to gray and dusky purple.

I pick up my phone again. Nothing. Dammit.

Slipping the cold brass key into my pocket, I sneak out of my apartment and into the hall. Lyle’s door remains firmly closed. I would have expected police by now, or at least weepy family members coming to check if he’s around. But there’s been nothing since Marcella broke in this morning.

Huh. I take my phone out of my pocket again and flip through my own messages. I … didn’t get that missing person notification. A knuckle of cold fear ladders my spine. It’s possible I was out of service, isn’t it? I check my emails; usually they’ll send notices there, too.

Nothing. Just stuff about how I suck shit in my classes now (I know). Dean Shea is OOO for the rest of the evening and tomorrow, something about a fundraising golf trip. Not a single thing about Lyle.

“Shit,” I mutter, fretting at the worn edge of my sweatshirt. For a moment I’m frozen, unable to think of what to do next.

Why isn’t anything happening?

Down the hall, a door slams. I jump, skin goose bumping, hair rising on the back of my neck. In their niches, the philosophers seem to smile, their dark eyes watchful. The Persian rugs look like bloody trails down the dorm’s hall, beckoning me toward the bloodbath happening just behind Preston’s pretty Gothic curtains.

No. I shake myself.

This is silly. How would they even send a fake Security Alert notification? That’s—that would require more coordination than I imagine is possible.

This time when I take out my phone, I text Marcella.