Page 99
She sneers. “Please. I’m not terrorizing anyone.”
The simmering anger in me flares to boiling. “Isn’t that exactly what you do? Terrorize people? Murder them because it’s fun and easy and you’re just hungry? Get what you want with magic and wiles and pretend like you got it through hard work?” I thrust a finger at her. “How dare you come here and decide to keep me as a plaything! How dare you come here and decide to tangle yourself in my life! I didn’t want this. Any of this!”
Marcella bares her teeth at me. “Getting cold feet about that transparency thing, lambie?”
“You’re murdering everyone! They’re murdering everyone! Of course I’m terrified!”
“Fine. Get out.”
Even though I knew it was coming, a chill shivers across my skin, making goose bumps rise. “And, what, you’ll no longer protect me, or whatever?”
She laughs, a blade-thin sound. “I’m not that petty. I’ll finish my fucking work. But this? You and me?” She gestures between the two of us with her black-tipped claws. “We’re done. You’re not worth the trouble.”
You’re not worth the trouble echoes into my bones. She has no way of knowing it’s what my parents said to me the last time they saw me—the last time we spoke. Nevertheless, it cuts to the quick, my eyes sharpening with tears.
“Fine,” I manage. I turn and stomp to her door. “I never believed you wanted me anyway.”
“Lacie—”
“Shut. Up.”
There’s a groan from the floor—my heart leaps to my throat, terror eating my breath. “What the hell was that?” I breathe.
Marcella’s tense attack relents, the lines of her body softening as she twitches her eyes from mine. A cruel smile bends her features. “Well, well, isn’t that interesting.”
“What?” A tremor shakes its way through my bones, anxiety skimming the back of my teeth, adrenaline gritty and metallic.
“Looks like we might have a bit of an issue.”
TWENTY-THREEMarcella
“What do you mean, ‘a bit of an issue’?” Lacie gasps.
Between our feet, the torn throat of a very much alive William Quiggley opens and shuts like a second mouth. Black blood spurts onto the floor, dirtying my favorite throw rug.
Great.
“This is a massive problem,” she shouts, practically the color of tissue paper. “Fuck, fuck!”
I lay a hand on her shoulder, forcing myself to sound calmer than I actually am. “We will handle this. I will handle this.”
“The fuck you will!”
Quiggley gives another groan, moving his arms and legs as he squelches along the floor. His fingertips find their way to the rend in his skin I made with my teeth, the places where I shucked his skin clear off and ate it like sheets of phyllo pastry. Didn’t help with my energy, but it sure did feel good to murder him.
Or, well, almost. It was happy, if only briefly. But it’s not quiet inside me.
If anything, it’s only just waking up.
“I am sure that I simply … didn’t bring him to the church yet.”
Lacie swings to me, wide-eyed, a hand pressed to her mouth. “God, I’m going to be sick.”
“Bathroom’s off the sleeping nook.” I wave her away and she rushes off, the bathroom door slamming behind her. I should go take care of her; I feel badly I didn’t handle this all on my own in the first place. And the truth is, my own bile is rising. I’ve never had this happen in my hundreds of years. Usually you knock a vættr down and turn them into a bloody slurry out- and inside, and they don’t come back.
This is something else.
Bellatrix hisses from her cat tree, bright Halloween-orange eyes all pupil.
