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Who’s been dead for over a century.

I freeze, the thought bringing me up short. A century without her, with only her replacements to keep me company. Dark-haired women frozen in time, the blood pooling out of their faces.

And Penelope. Who’s not dead. Who’s alive, watching TV with her chin on her fist.

Who’s speaking.

To me.

“Are you just going to stand in the corner like a weirdo all night?” She doesn’t look away from the TV.

“No,” I say, rather defensively.

Penelope turns her gaze to me, sly and coy and smirking, and my stomach knots up because she’s beautiful and I’m drawn to her and it’s not because she’s a Mary. It’s because she’s not Mary.

“Why don’t you come sit down?” She pats the bed. “We can figure out what we’re going to do for dinner. I’m starving.”

I peel myself away from the wall, stepping out of the shadows and into the thin, yellowish light of the bedside lamp. Penelope watches me the whole time, and it burns up my skin.

“Storm’s dying down a bit,” I say. “But I doubt the roads’ll be clear.” I sit on the bed beside her, and it feels nice, being out of the shadows.

“Vending machine it is, I suppose.” She stretches her legs out in front of her, her feet bare. “I’ve survived on less.”

“I could walk somewhere,” I offer. “There’s a burger place down the road.”

“Nah. And they shouldn’t be open anyway. Not fair to their workers.”

“Fair enough.”

We sit like that, the TV blaring in front of us. I look at it, but I don’t register any of what I’m watching. I never got into TV, not really. Movies, those were something special. I remember when the first theater opened up in Arcadia, where I was living at the time. It felt like magic to go sit in the dark and watch someone else’s dream play out in front of me. Television never had the same magic. And right now, it just feels like a distraction, the cheap laugh track masking the sound of Penelope’s breath.

I scoot closer to her, expecting her to protest. When our hips bump together, though, she looks over at me, and I can feel the tightness of her anxiety even if I don’t see it on her face.

“Cold?” she asks.

“A little.”

Then I put my arm around her shoulder, pulling her into me. I don’t know why. It just feels right. Feels good. I want her heat against mine, I think. Want to feel her blood pumping.

She stiffens for a half second. Then she melts against me, dropping her head against my shoulder. The TV blares on. Commercials now, bright and jangly. I hate them.

“You said you didn’t know a storm was coming,” she says.

I’m not sure what she’s getting at. “I didn’t pay that much attention to the weather. Wasn’t expecting to leave.”

“I did.” Her voice is strangely flat, a little breathless. “I’d been checking it every morning since I left Chicago. There wasn’t supposed to be snow.”

I don’t say anything.

“Like, it was going to be cold,” she continues, staring straight ahead. “I saw that. But nothing about a snowstorm.”

“The storms can kick up quickly in the mountains.”

“Yeah, but they should know.” She twists toward me, her eyes big and luminous, and I let myself feel what she’s feeling because I don’t understand what the hell she’s getting at. She’s unsettled about something, too unsettled to just be the weather. “The meteorologists, right? They would know if the conditions say snow is possible. There’d be a ten percent chance or whatever. This just came in out of nowhere.”

“What are you saying?” I smile at her. “You think I can control the weather?”

“No.” Penelope’s expression darkens. “Yesterday. In the woods, when we—” Her eyes flash. “Afterward, I felt the wind change.”