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“I’m a Hunter,” he snarls. “My whole purpose is to kill. I didn’t save her from suffering, so I save them.”

“Save them?” I shriek. “You think killing me would have saved me somehow?”

Victor looks away from me and doesn’t say anything.

“I’m not sick,” I continue. “I don’t have fucking consumption. And whoever else you killed, they didn’t either.”

“You don't understand,” Victor says darkly.

“Yes, I do.” I shoot back. “You felt guilty, but since you’re a Hunter, you can’t deal with it like a normal god damn person, so you just destroyed a bunch of lives instead. Because that’s all you can do. All any of you can do.”

My anger floods through me, and I can feel my body constricting, my blood pressure soaring. I fumble for the door handle and shove the door open, letting in a sweep of cold mountain air.

“I knew better than this,” I snarl as I drag myself out of the car. I’m speaking more to myself than to him.

“Penelope, don’t⁠—”

I slam the door shut and stumble backward across the rocky, uneven parking lot. The wind is up, howling around me, and I’m not surprised when Victor steps out of the car, too, even though it annoys the shit out of me.

“I don’t need your help,” I say. “Go kill Nicholas Wolrath if you think that’ll make things better for you. I don’t give a shit. I’ve got to figure out how to get Adrian out of jail.”

Victor reaches out to me, eyes pleading. “You can’t go back to town,” he says. “The police⁠—“

“Fuck the police!” I shout. “I’ve been taking care of myself since I was a child. Because Hunters don’t give a shit about humans. Not my mom, not my sister, and not you.”

As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I realize I’m not sure I really believe them, even if they feel right in this moment. Because this is always how it is with Hunters. They fool you. They make you think they’re just like you, but it’s a trap so they can slice your throat and bathe in your blood.

I think of Chloe and Abi and their two Hunter boyfriends and how happy they are, and I know I need to save them, too. Prey has to band together against our predators.

“Penelope,” Victor says desperately. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t even know what you’re fucking apologizing for.” I keep stepping backward, squeezing my purse up against my chest. “Don’t follow me. I don’t need your help.”

And then I turn and run.

25

VICTOR

Iwatch her go, and then, when I can’t see her anymore, I listen. I listen to her racing heartbeat and her thudding footsteps. I breathe in the human scent of her blood and the equally human scent of her rage until it fades away, nothing but a trail leading into the woods.

I know I should go after her. Getting back to town on foot will take at least a couple of hours, assuming the GPS on her phone works. And what will she even find there? Fucking cops?

But instead, I sink down into the driver’s seat of the car and stare out at the overlook. My whole body feels numb.

That was the first time I’d ever told someone, anyone, about what happened to the original Mary. The first time I’d ever elucidated out loud what I was looking for when I watched for Marys from the back room of the Gas and Go, evaluating every woman who walked through that door by her hair and her eyes, the way she moved, the way she smiled. I’ve spent the last century looking for traces of Mary in every woman I see, and of course Penelope was right—I wasn’t trying to save them. I was trying to save her. Re-enacting a scene that I didn’t have the strength to do the first time.

I slump further down in the seat, watching the flames in the sky slowly go out. It’s not so different from watching someone’s life seep out of them, really. Humans have a fire in them, too, and it never extinguishes quickly. It fades to an ember before turning to smoke.

Maybe that fire is a soul. I don’t know. If it is, Hunters don’t have one. That’s actually always been my theory as to why we can’t die, our lack of a soul. Why I’ve had to live this long, lonely life without Mary. Without anyone.

Until Penelope.

I close my eyes shut, not wanting to think about her. But of course I do. I rarely think about Mary anymore, not really—the false Marys take her place, for the most part, and the actual woman has become an abstract. The truth is, I can barely conjure up the memory of her face by itself. I’m so used to seeing it in the faces of others.

But I can see Penelope’s face. Her big dark eyes and thick hair. Her wide, easy smile. The way she gasped and panted in the motel, the heat of her body warming me against the cold outside. Her scowl of determination when she fought me in the woods outside the cabin, slashing at me with her pretty knife and then grunting in pleasure when I grabbed her by the throat, threw her to the ground, and sank into her.

I can see all of that, and there’s no Mary in it anymore. I can’t even remember what made me think Penelope was a Mary at all.