“Let me go get it,” I say, and when he moves to follow me, I give a firm, “stay here.” He doesn’t need to see the state of my room. When I got dressed earlier to meet him, I had cleaned up all the trash, but it’s still a mess. Half-unpacked boxes are stacked in the corner, and I know I need to change the sheets.

Hale peeks into the room anyway as I’m picking my way over dirty laundry to get the Beretta out of the nightstand drawer. When I hand it over, he removes the magazine and checks the tip-up barrel. He hates guns too much to take it with him, but he’ll remove the threat, all the same.

“As much laundry as I can get done during Princess Bride,” he says. “Then I’ll leave you alone.”

“One loadstarted,” I counter, trying to soothe him with normalcy. I’m desperately holding myself together at the seams, doing my best to make him think I’ve got it under control.

I don’t—at all. But I think crying in his lap won’t help this time. All I want is to be alone.

“I also get to change your sheets. I can see the crumbs and blood stains from here.”

“Listen, those blood bags are hard?—”

“—to open,” he finishes with me, smile as radiant as always.

“Yeah. Listen, thanks for being here for me…even when…well, you know.”

“Sorry I didn’t come sooner,” he says—even though he doesn’t have to apologize. He shoves the magazine into his pocket and starts stripping my bed. We don’t talk, moving together to do this. It’s not the first time he’s helped me in this way, but maybe it will be the last. For one reason or another.

Later, after he’s left, and I’m spooning Zuul on a bed covered in fresh blankets, I break. My soul dog startles for a second, but I pet him and reassure him as I sob into his fur. I want to sleep, but I can’t close my eyes. Tattooed on my lids is a man whose only crime had been speaking to me. I can hear Sasha try to justify it in my mind, positing that perhaps he was a bad person or maybe even a neutral person. And he could have been, for all I know.

But it doesn’t matter.

What I did to him was unforgivable. I replay the moment he walked out of that bathroom on my mind in a loop. As he pulled away, did I not lick his puncture wounds to make sure they healed? Did I bite him too hard? Did I bite the wrong spot?

I mortally wounded him while I used him to make Roman jealous. He’d been a pawn in my psychological sex warfare, and it cost him his life.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

I roll over, back to back with my dog, and I look at the empty gun on the nightstand. How had there ever been a time that I thought I was better than the coven full of vampires? I’m just like them—always have been. How many innocents have been killed because vampires can’t fucking control themselves? How many innocents have been killed because a feckless waste of breath didn’t know what they were doing?

Perhaps it's time I revisit my original plan with Agnarr.

Maybe I will eat his heart after all. Maybe I command every single one of us to die. Then maybe I finally will have the willpower to do what I’ve longed for.

I reach for the gun in a fit of fury before flopping onto my back. Slowly, I place the barrel in my mouth—just to see how it feels.

Zuul doesn’t even startle when I pull the trigger.

I knew it was empty, but at this moment, I have a hard time telling the difference between relief and disappointment.

24

ROMAN

“I’m thinking a Blood Eagle Ritual,”I say, and Remy groans from the back deck. Margot sits beside him, looking ridiculous in a thick snowsuit, hat, and mittens. She’s even wearing a balaclava. The back door of the garage is open so we can see each other, but only I’m subjected to the horrors I’m inflicting upon the demon within.

“Please just stop,” Remy says, and I set down the whip I’m using on the pale, slender man, and step out into the backyard. “I’m serious. I don’t want him here.”

“I thought you wanted vengeance,” I say, wiping my blood-covered hands on my jeans. The demon inside my garage laughs, and I pull the door shut behind me.

Margot sighs, setting her e-reader down in her lap. She’d switched to it when she realized turning pages and mittens don’t mix. She says she’s grumpy that she had to switch to something else, but I know the true source of her irritation is the fact she’s outside in January in Chicago. No matter how many times I’ve reminded her that she’s a vampire, so it really can’t be that bad, she maintains that it’s entirely too frigid. It’s only gotten worse since the sun set.

Remy looks comfortable in sweats and a hoodie, and he’s holding a mug of hot chocolate in one hand and Margot’s book in the other. The light from inside the house is enough for him to read by easily, so the two of them have made themselves comfortable. They look ridiculous, nestled together on the wooden swing she bought for me two summers ago in an attempt to decorate my ‘sterile serial killer pad.’

“I did want vengeance, sure,” Remy volunteers. “But at this point it feels gratuitous.”

Margot snorts. “Gratuitous is his middle name.”