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His eyes glitter, and there’s a darkness there, a darkness I recognize. I’ve seen bloodlust in my mom and my sister enough times to see it here.

“What are you doing to do?” I say slowly, my heart pounding. Victor licks his lips like he can taste my worry.

“Make everything right,” he says.

24

PENELOPE

Victor takes me back to the inn so I can clear out all evidence of my presence there, which mostly just amounts to the suitcase I hadn’t bothered to unpack. I grab Adrian’s laptop, too—he didn’t commit the murders, but they’ll find evidence of our plan for the party on there. The tickets, of course, are still in my wallet. I leave his suitcase untouched save for the Phantom of the Opera mask he planned to wear to the party as a costume. Everything else is innocuous.

“I really wish you’d let me warn him,” I say as I slide back into the passenger seat of Victor’s car, all the potential evidence locked up in his trunk. It’s strange, settling into the worn, supple leather. I assumed I’d never see the inside of this car again.

“It’s better if he doesn’t know anything.” Victor pulls into the street, and I watch the Clifwell Inn disappear into the long, purplish shadows. It’s almost sunset. “Less suspicious that way.”

I know he’s right, but the guilt nags at me anyway. “I’m abandoning him,” I mutter, staring out the window at the glitzy shops and glimmering Halloween decorations and the orange-pink flames of the sunset rising above their roofs.

“You’re not.” Victor’s voice is surprisingly vehement. “I have a plan.”

“Maybe you should tell me what it is.” I look over at him. “Because my friend is about to go to jail for murder.”

“Jail, yes. Prison, no.” Victor turns the car sharply, veering us away from the scenic downtown and onto a little two-lane highway lined with trees. “He didn’t do it. And⁠—”

A car passes by us, heading into town. A cop car.

Then another. Another. I slump back against the seat, guilt thickening in my belly.

“Got you out just in time,” Victor says gravely.

“Could you just tell me what your fucking plan is?” We’re alone on the highway again, the car’s headlights sweeping across the asphalt.

Victor takes a deep breath, and I have the sense, sudden and certain, that he’s hesitating. I whip my head over to him, and he’s squeezing that steering wheel so tight his knuckles whiten.

“Well?” I ask.

“The murderer is going to kill again,” he says, all the words coming out in a rush. “While the prime suspect is in jail.”

“Excuse me?” I shriek, and there’s a split second where I think he’s going to kill me—but no, that doesn’t make sense, does it? The cops wouldn’t care about my death. “That’s your fucking plan? To go on a goddamn killing spree?”

“Not a spree,” Victor says sullenly. He looks like he’s going to wrench the steering wheel out of the dash, and the orange sunset flickers like film through the bare tree branches. “Just one person.”

I gape at him, blood pounding in my ears. “Who?”

I know, though, don’t I? He said he went to Nicholas Wolrath’s house.

Victor sucks in his breath again, and instead of answering, he says, “I haven’t been honest with you.”

It hurts more than it should, hearing him say that. I hate myself for hurting, in fact, because it means I trusted him, even a little, even though I knew better.

Never trust a Hunter, my mother always said, with her and my sister being the only exceptions. All my life, she made it clear that I was prey. Prey that knows how to use a knife, who can fight if she has to. But prey nonetheless.

“Are you going to kill me?” I say. The words anesthetize my tongue.

“No.” Victor answers quickly, even though he still won’t look at me. “No, I’m going to kill Nicholas Wolrath.”

“Why him?” I twist around in my seat so I can face him—not that he looks at me at all. “Is that why you agreed to drive me out here?” I spit out.

“Yes.” His shoulders sag a little, and the car slows down. I realize then just how fast we’d been going, like he thought he might be able to outrun whatever this fucking conversation is.