After Jane, he recovered in two and a half hours.
His form shifted, in half-second flashes—Dr. Wayland to boy-child to shadow-splatter to their old groundskeeper with the midnight-black skin and cloud of white hair to Val’s own grandmother, and back into the gloom of the woods. Then the cycle began again, and again—a horrifying movie on a rapid-fire loop.
And Val realized, with a sinking-stone feeling, that he was playing.
He could change forms easily now, like snapping one’s fingers and suddenly donning a new outfit in the blink of an eye, and clearly this delighted him. As the towheaded boy, he crawled happily out of the trees, laughing so hard his face turned red. He collapsed in the center of the stones, clutching his stomach and wriggling in delight.
Gritting her teeth, grasping for calm that wouldn’t come, Val began cleaning up the evidence of his feeding. It was a process that would take days to complete, but she liked to get started right away.
Besides, she wanted to see how long he would require, this time, to regain control over his body. Once, he would have needed hours, days, weeks.
He caught her sneaking glances at him.
“Do you see something you like, Val?” he asked her, as Dr. Wayland now, lying in the mud with glazed eyes, blood-caked lips, a round belly. He picked his teeth with one long white finger. Then he stood up, stretched, flexed his muscles, popped the joints in his neck and shoulders. The air around him seemed to quiver. A ripple of movement passed underneath his pale skin, like his bones were rearranging themselves.
“I was just making sure you’ve had all you need,” Val answered smoothly, gathering the shreds of Jane’s torn clothing from the undergrowth, trying not to think about Jane, trying not to think about Zoey throwing her behind the police station, trying not to think about anything but her own two feet on the solid ground, and her own two blood-spattered hands.
“You’re worried this will all end soon,” he replied. “That I won’t need you.”
Val did not trust her voice enough to answer him. Her stomach jerked, as though he’d hooked his claws in her innards and given them a tug, just to remind her that he could.
When his hands cupped her shoulders—warm, paternal, slick—she flinched. A chittering, wet-throated noise crept through the clearing like the flap of shining dark wings.
“You’re right to be worried,” he said at last, his voice clear and crisp. He’d lost the glutted slur; he had recovered himself, and so quickly that it made Val want to crawl into the trees and never come out. “Soon everything will change.”
It took Val ten seconds to find her voice. “How long?” she croaked. “How much longer do we have?”
He did not answer.
She turned to find him and saw only a wicked black crown of branches, nodding mournfully in the wind.
Val didn’t usually care about the blood on her hands, but this time it was different. This time she couldn’t get it off, no matter how fiercely she scrubbed under the scalding faucet.
“I don’t understand it,” she whispered, staring at her reddened palms.
“Don’t understand what?”
Val’s head snapped up. She was sitting on the floor, her back pressed against her white ruffled bedspread, and there was her mother, standing at the threshold to her bedroom, crisp white blouse and crisp navy-blue pencil skirt and crisp coils of blond hair pinned at her nape.
“I can’t stop thinking about it this time,” Val explained, and realized too late that it was stupid to confess such weakness, but she couldn’t seem to shut her mouth. “I can’t stop seeing her face.” She raised her hands and stared at her mother through shaking red fingers. Was it burned skin, or was it Jane’s blood? “I can’t get it off. I can’t get Jane off of me.”
For a long moment, Lucy Mortimer stood at the door and considered her daughter. Then she moved swiftly across the room, heels silent on the thick rug, and slapped Val so hard her head nearly flew off her neck. It wouldn’t have been such a bad thing, to lose her head. She’d considered it before—provoking her mother to such anger that she would do to Val what Val couldn’t find the guts to do to herself.
Val stared up at her. The slap had knocked tears from her eyes. She couldn’t find the will to hide them.
“He told me we don’t have long,” she whispered. “He said we should be worried.”
Her mother’s face was a porcelain mask with one too many cracks in it, too haggard for cosmetics to hide. She always looked this way as he digested, while he was at his most vulnerable and drew upon her own life force to steady himself. She held one hand flat against her abdomen, as if to soothe cramps. Val’s own stomach twinged in sympathy; she didn’t feel the drain on her strength as keenly as her mother did, but she felt enough to dread the future.
“He’ll need one more, I think,” her mother said, her voice tight and clipped. “Maybe two. Three, if we’re lucky.”
Val laughed, which hurt her tender cheek. “When have we ever been lucky?”
But Val’s mother was not moved. “Pull yourself together, Valerie,” she said, her jaw working, and then she straightened her shirt and left the room without a backward glance.
So Val did. She pulled herself together.
She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin and undressed. She took a shower in silence, the scalding water battering her body, which hadn’t truly belonged to Val since she’d been born, not even for a second.
He owns your body, her grandmother had told her, and your mind, but he doesn’t own your soul, Val. Not all of it.
Her grandmother had been a goddamn liar.
Val conditioned her long golden hair, moisturized the sweet turn of her jaw and the high planes of her cheekbones, and then stretched on the rug in her bedroom. She dressed in exercise pants and a sports bra and a loose gray tank top. When she got outside she pulled on her muck boots and went to the stables to work. She hardly noticed how her body ached, tender from the punishing shower. She hardly noticed the whuffing of the horses in their stalls as she shoveled out the old straw and the dung, and shoveled in new, fresh straw that smelled of summertime and horses and fresh growth. The exact opposite of the rot and ruin stewing inside her.
She hardly noticed anything at all.
Which was why she didn’t realize anyone had entered the stables until she felt a gentle hand on her arm.
Val whirled, sweaty hair clinging to her flushed cheeks, ready to swing her shovel and take the head off anyone who looked at her funny.
But it was only Marion.
At the sight of her, Val’s heart split in two. One half went floating and quietly giddy, like she’d dropped down a roller-coaster hill she hadn’t been expecting to ride.
The other half plunged to her toes, drawing sick fault lines down her body.
She resisted the urge to hide her hands behind her back. She wore work gloves, but still, she hadn’t scrubbed her fingers well enough, not by far. If Marion took one look at them, she’d see those stubborn clinging bits of gore and know them for what they were:
Jane residue. Lingering Thora.
The echoes of Charlotte.
“Marion,” Val said softly, taking a step back. “Hey.”
“I wanted to see if you were okay,” said Marion, steady gray eyes fixed on Val’s face.
“If I was . . . okay? You mean . . .”
“Jane.” Marion’s pale face was so pinched and tense that it made Val’s stomach knot up. “I heard about Jane.”
Val leaned heavily against her shovel. Her mouth and nose were full of familiar horse smells that suddenly made her want to gag. Did his own beastly scent linger upon her? Could Marion sense his ravenous appetite?
“Hey.” Marion moved closer, took the shovel from Val and set it aside. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to . . . Why don’t you sit down for a second?”
“I don’t want to sit down.” Val felt unsteady on her legs, out of place and ill-fitting. She had always pulled it together just fine, just as her mother wanted her to, just as she had been taught, and now nothing was working as it should.
Girl-ghosts swarmed Val’s brain. She could hear nothing but their wails, calling for her damnation.
Marion hovered close, hands twisting at her waist. “I’m so sorry about Jane. I don’t know what to say. Everyone’s freaking out, I . . . God, Val, what are we all going to do?”
“I’m trying not to think about it,” said Val shortly.
Think about what, exactly, Val?
About what had happened.
About what she had done.
Oh, how terribly Jane had screamed. Twenty-three times she’d called Val’s name, begging her for help, for mercy.
Well. Twenty-three and a half. And then . . .
“Val.” Marion stepped closer, searching Val’s face. “You’re crying.”
Val turned away, ripping off her gloves. Would Marion see the blood, the flesh scraps and girl-bits? Val didn’t care. She couldn’t wear those gloves for one more second, couldn’t stand the sensation of the stiff fabric imprisoning her fingers. She glanced at her nails—clean and gleaming, long enough to gouge. Maybe if she scratched out her eyes, she would stop seeing Jane’s face.
It had hardly looked like a face, at the end.
“I’m not,” Val said, her body so rigid it felt ready to snap.
Marion caught Val’s fingers in her own. “What can I do?”
“You?” Val’s laugh was bitter. “You’ve lost your sister. I should be the one helping you.”
“Cut the bullshit, Val. I don’t buy it.”
Val froze. She turned, saw Marion’s breath catch a little. Val had practiced crying in her mirror enough times to know that she was one of the fortunate few who looked even lovelier when weeping.
“Jane was your friend. Pain is pain. It’s not a contest.” Marion shook her head, her gaze bright. “I never feel like I can freak out around my mom because of everything that’s happened. She needs me to be strong. I look at her, and I think to myself, Pull it together, Marion.”
Val watched Marion, hardly daring to breathe. Pull yourself together, Valerie.
“I don’t want you to feel that way around me, Val,” said Marion, with a shy smile. “You don’t have to be strong. You can be what you need to be.”
And suddenly Val knew exactly what she needed.
“Say my name again,” Val breathed. Warmth uncoiled in her gut; a tingling ache spread from her belly to her spine to her fingers. This was reckless, this was not what she had been instructed to do. She was meant for Collin Hawthorne. He was a solid, respectable match and would serve her well. Someday he would plant a daughter in her, and the line would continue.
Or at least, that had been the plan.
But now? Now, soon enough, he would break free of Val and her mother, and they would no longer be needed.
Maybe then he would kill Val, just because he could.
Maybe then he would ignore her, let her do as she pleased.
Let her kiss who she pleased?
When Marion stepped closer, and said once again, “Val,” so close that her lips brushed Val’s cheek, Val let her eyes fall shut, and hooked her arms around Marion’s shoulders, and couldn’t bring herself to care about anything but the soft press of Marion’s lips, Marion’s warm thigh wedged between her own, the solid stretch of the wall against her back.
With Marion’s hands cupping her cheeks, Val forgot that her blood ran black and vile.
With Marion whispering her name against her hair, Val felt scrubbed bright and clean as the dawn.