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“What about her?” he snaps, cracking his knuckles. “She doesn’t have one.”

“She’s with me,” Marcella says, leaning in to stroke a finger down his chest.

“No can do, sorry.”

Marcella pouts. “Aw, just this once?” She gives him a kiss on the cheek and he slackens.

Blood prickles on his skin between lip marks. How could I never have seen this before? My eyes are open now, Marcella’s right. She’s a murderer.

But I have no time to think about it anymore, because the door is open and Marcella is crooning her thanks and she has her hand shackled around my wrist as she pulls me into the shadowed hallway.

The dean’s house is empty. Dust drifts down in the dark, and I immediately think, This is a trap, this can’t be right.

Marcella turns slowly, face upturned, eyes lightly closed. Listening, smelling. A predator on the hunt.

“This way,” she says, passing the library, moving into the hall where we had our first argument when she was unwell. Another dark space. Silence.

“Wait,” I whisper. This way.

Call it beginner’s luck or delusion or whatever, but I swear, I can feel something. I can smell it, sweet ichor, like drops of honeysuckle. It smells like home.

“What?” Marcella whispers, as I turn down another hallway, deeper and deeper into the labyrinth. The smell gets stronger, but she doesn’t notice it.

Interesting.

“Here.” I stop at an old door, maybe even older than the house itself—which of course, it couldn’t be, could it? How would that work? But this door is limned in heavy granite, its wood stained near black and carved with rune work. I wish I had my rune dictionary, but there’s no time to linger. If Marcella is missed, they’ll know, and then god knows what will happen.

My fingertips close around the brass handle; it’s hot, as though a fire burns behind the door. And maybe it does. For all I know, I could be walking into the inferno of hell.

The door squeals on its hinges, animal and warning, and the hair on the backs of my arms raises.

God, we could be walking into our deaths.

There’s a stone staircase diving deep into blackness. Bass thumps up from below, a myriad of voices vining together.

Taking a deep breath, I start down the stairs, feeling Marcella’s cold presence a single step behind. My feet slip; there’s no light, the door has closed behind us and we could be floating in space. I swear my heart’s going to crack my ribs. My fingertips tingle, my throat parched. Adrenaline beats my muscles in the same rhythm as the bass drum, a heady thrum.

We walk into a circle of firelight, torches illuminating a bare floor.

And people: so many people.

Their forms twist and change in the dark. A masked man beats a drum at the perimeter of torches. He looks unreal, sweat slicking his bronze skin inked with runic phrases. And in the center, naked bodies jostle and sigh, the sharp flash of knives warring with shadowed skin, masks occluding faces. They are animals, lolling and playing and fighting and fucking.

Blushing, I take a step backward, into Marcella. We’re the only people without masks.

“Ah, of course,” she whispers.

“Care to elaborate?” My voice shakes, swallowed by the drumming.

Her lips touch my ear and I shudder at their grave chill. “A party for the hereafter. It’s a funny tongue-in-cheek thing, isn’t it? Shea must think he’s so clever.”

I think I spy Evan, his chimpanzee mask baring its hard, toothed grin, but then he disappears into the twisting throng.

“Ah, Marcella. You could make it after all.” Dean Shea appears from the darkness. He alone is clothed. A voyeur, making his playthings dance.

“So good to be here,” Marcella says, as though we’re at a summer party and not an orgy with blood slicking the floor. “Thank you for inviting me. I brought Lacie, I hope that’s alright.”

Dean Shea meets my eyes from behind his golden lion’s mask, but even I can sense his scowl. “You really must stop bringing people along, Marcella.”