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But Adrian shakes his head. “No, Sarah doesn’t think so. She said—” He stops, lifting his gaze to me. “Apparently two of the party guests were murdered last night.”

My stomach drops out beneath me. For a moment, the gorgeous room seems to spin around. “Two?” I manage to squeak out, hoping I sound normal. Inside, though, my whole body feels like a fire alarm is going off. Victor killed two people? And he didn’t see fit to mention that little detail to me?

That reckless motherfucker. This is why I should never fuck a god damn Hunter.

“Yeah.” Adrian plops down on the side of the bed, drapes his hands over his knees. “Felix Archer and Eleanor Wickham.” He looks at me like he expects me to know who these people are, but I don’t. “It wasn’t in Clifwell. They had apparently met up at some motel a couple of hours from here.”

I don’t know how I do it, but I keep my face completely blank.

“The staff grapevine is that they were having an affair, that’s why they were at the motel together. The party—” Adrian shakes his head. “Apparently Wolrath still wants to go forward with it? But that’s only happening if he beefs up security, and I have no fucking doubt that this entire town is going to be crawling with cops until they catch the killer.”

I manage to shuffle over to the bed and sink down onto the impossibly plush mattress next to Adrian, my gaze fixed on the pretty oil painting of a creek bed hanging on the wall. “We should call it off,” I say numbly.

“Of course we should,” Adrian replies. I hear the unspoken but, though, and I don’t like it one bit. I only have to wait a few seconds to hear the rest.

“We probably won’t get a chance like this again,” he says, not looking at me. “Sarah getting us those tickets was a complete fluke. I just—I don’t want to waste them.”

I sigh out my frustration, stand up, whirl around to face him. Adrian just gives me a sheepish grin from underneath the flop of his brown hair. There was a time, not that long ago, when I found that grin cute, that floppy hair charming. It’s part of why I agreed to all of this, if I’m being honest.

But after Victor⁠—

No. Do not think about Victor. Victor is the reason our plans got all fucked up in the first place.

“We can’t disrupt that party,” I say. “They’re not going to solve the murder in three days⁠—”

I hope not, anyway.

“—and if we do anything, we’re shooting to the top of the suspect list.”

Adrian grins again. “We won’t do anything, though.” He stands up, and he’s got that look that means he’s excited about something, despite his otherwise extremely nervous energy. “You’re right, we can’t fuck with their party, not if there are going to be cops everywhere. But we can still get in. Pretend to be guests. And we can film.”

“Film,” I say flatly.

“Yeah. I’ve been thinking this over since I found out about the murders. Sarah says they don’t confiscate phones or anything, remember? So we get footage of them partying it up after two of their own were killed.” Adrian leans close to me, his eyes glittering. “Listen, apparently the deaths were—they weren’t clean.”

My stomach tightens. I try very, very hard not to think about Victor slamming into my cunt, whispering about death.

“She doesn’t know the details, no one does, but Archer apparently got it pretty bad. And that dude’s worked with Nicholas Wolrath for freaking years. So he’s still going to have the party? That’s insane.”

I pull away from Adrian and his brimming, nervous excitement. The one window in the room looks down at a courtyard, wrought-iron furniture arranged on homey cobblestone. Autumn leaves spill across the space, writhing together on the wind.

The wind. I can’t hear it up here, and I wonder if I would hear voices on it if I were down in that courtyard, whispering at me that I shouldn’t be here, that this world, Adrian’s world, isn’t actually mine at all.

“Penny?” Adrian’s voice slices through my thoughts. “What do you think? We go in, we get some footage, we get out early. We wait ’til they’ve arrested someone, then we release the footage online. What do you say?”

Outside, the wind gusts harder, sending the leaves up in a tornado. I drag the curtain shut and turn to look at him.

“Still feels risky,” I say. Part of me thinks I should tell him—not the whole truth, of course, but enough of it. Ask him the motel name, then put on a show that I was at the motel and oh my god, what if I’d been killed? After all, he doesn’t know the truth about my family, doesn’t know that I sort of killed my sister when I was fifteen and that I’ve watched her and my mom kill dozens of people since. All he knows is the carefully crafted persona I give to people I can’t completely trust.

“Sarah will be there,” he says. “She can keep her ear to the ground, get us in and out as needed.”

I breathe out. It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that Adrian is going to do this regardless of what I say. Maybe I should let him.

Or maybe not. It’s not like I can just leave town on my own. Do whatever you want with my car, I told Victor. Now I’m stranded.

“In and out,” I finally say. “One hour max.”

Adrian nods, keeping his expression serious. He’s scared—he’s not a complete fool—but he’s excited, too. The thought of that footage, of showing the whole world what callous, cruel assholes these people are, is too sweet to pass by. And I can’t say I totally disagree. Honestly, there’s a part of me that appreciates learning that Victor killed a couple of wealthy leeches. Whoever they were, they weren’t innocent.