Page 266 of Craving Venom

“There’s a pattern,” he continues. “Every girl who goes missing has a recruiter. It’s never a stranger. It’s someone familiar. A classmate. A professor. A TA. Someone they’re seen with constantly until they’re not. When a girl goes missing, I follow her last seven days frame by frame. Location. Time. Interaction. I line it up with three years of auction data. Reassignments. Sales. Discipline reports. That’s how I found her recruiter. He had Nina’s name encoded into a buyer’s log three days before she disappeared.”

He lifts the mask from the case, turns it in his hands. The sharp gold teeth flash in the light.

“Each recruiter hands the girl off to someone they call Master.”

“If you can find the recruiters,” I say, “why not use them to lead you straight to the auction? Save the girls before they’re taken?”

“Recruiters never go to the auction. They don’t deserve it. They just deliver the offering. The buyer is the one who claims her. Who funds the Circle.”

I set my mug down.

“I’ll go with you.”

Zane stiffens.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re not part of this.”

“You’re wrong.”

His jaw tics. “You’re not going.”

“You keep saying that,” I snap, “but why should I trust you? Why should I believe you’re not a recruiter?”

The words taste like betrayal, but I say them anyway.

“I’m not.”

“How do I know that? How do I know you’re not just grooming me like all the rest?”

“Because I killed the one who was.”

I go still.

“I was on the list?” I whisper. “They were coming for me?”

Zane doesn’t answer.

He doesn’t need to.

I cover my mouth with one hand, trying to swallow the sudden burn in my throat. The coffee’s gone sour in my stomach. My legs pull tighter under me.

I was on the list.

Someone had picked me.

Someone had almost delivered me.

My thoughts start moving too fast looping back over the last few months. The unease I felt for weeks but couldn’t name.

Trevor.

He’d show up on my floor and say he was looking for someone else. He’d stand by the vending machine outside my class, linger too long after study sessions he wasn’t even part of. I thought he liked me, but he wasn’t trying to get close because he cared.

He was trying to sell me.

---