Sophie lay on her side, staring at the mutated rectangle of streetlamp shine reflected against the wall. The house smelled like caramelized onions and steak, musk and warmth. It took so little to make a place into a home.

Or a trap.

She closed her eyes. The Hammerheath mansion rose up behind her eyelids—granite-floored kitchen, God help you if you dropped an egg. The receiving room and parlor, the sweeping staircase. The bedroom with the huge princess bed she’d retreated to once every few months, after Mark beat her so bad she couldn’t stand. The maids, gliding on noiseless slippers—they went home every afternoon, and as soon as the prying eyes were out of the house Mark could come home and find fault with everything Sophie had done during the day. The landscapers constantly clipping, mowing, watering, spreading bark.

The parties, worrying over the caterers and avoiding Mark’s drunken fists afterward. The sense of being in a pressure cooker, the heat rising and the tension building, each moment a potential land mine waiting to go off.

Those goddamn copper pans, buzzing and rattling against one another. Sounding just like a lazy rattlesnake.

I’ll bet you’ve always heard weird things, seen things out of the corner of your eye. You were a daydreamer when you were a kid, right?

That didn’t prove anything. But the vampires did. And the faces in the mist—and the crackling that went through all of them before they changed into lean graceful figures, nothing like werewolves in the movies.

She sighed, turned over, rested her head on her arm. She hadn’t wanted to use someone else’s pillow, though Zach probably wouldn’t have minded. He’d watched her all evening, quiet except for when Julia got a little too rowdy, his dark eyes following every move Sophie made.

Not like Mark’s eyes, assessing, judging, weighing. No, Zach looked at her like he was hungry, but too mannerly to insist on eating. Just like a stray cat, careful not to wear out his welcome. Though she didn’t think of cats when she smelled them. That musk, for one thing.

I wonder what Carcajou means? He never said.

Did it matter?

Someone was right outside her door. She’d heard him settle down about a half hour after retreating to this room—the biggest one in the house, upstairs and along a short hall. The shaman’s room. They really wanted to please her. Even Julia, who kept shooting her sly little glances. Checking to make sure she was watching, just like a kid.

Julia wasn’t afraid of Zach at all. Each time she got a little overexcited, Zach would corral her. It didn’t escalate, and it was strange to see.

The someone shifted right outside her door. Oh, let’s be honest, we know it’s him. She was helpless to stop imagining Zach leaning against the jamb, or maybe settled down with his long legs across the hall, that one stubborn curl falling across his forehead. Was he standing guard, or making sure she wasn’t going to escape?

Her back ached. The scab on her hand throbbed. She had the peculiar head-stuffed feeling of having spent all day tramping around in the rain, following Zach’s broad back. The side of her face hurt a little, too, dully. Her eyes drifted closed, and the faces drew closer. The reedy cricket sound was faraway, but definitely louder than it had been.

He tasted like wildness. Like pure sugared heat on a summer night.

That was the thought she’d been avoiding. Sophie almost groaned, pulled the blankets—all smelling of musk and detergent—up a little farther. She was exhausted. Why couldn’t she sleep?

Because something was bothering her. Why would Mark sacrifice her? He didn’t care if she lived or died, right? That was what divorce meant. Still, there were the precautions she’d taken, because he was damn near unstoppable when he decided he wanted something.

He was quite capable of killing her, if he was enraged enough. She knew that now. Not just strangling her or drowning her in a fit of rage, but planning and lying in wait and striking, like a venomous snake.

But why would he want Lucy dead? Unless it was pure revenge. He had to have suspected Lucy helped her. But she’d been so careful, planned for every eventuality to cover their tracks….

Still, he wasn’t stupid. He had to have guessed, especially since Luce had showed up in the courtroom. Lucy was the only friend she had. Other than all the old-money wives, but none of them were in the least friendly.

And Delia Armitage, always watching, queen of the social scene, her beady little eyes fixed on Sophie as if she was always doing something wrong. That was one thing she didn’t miss—all those eyes, watching and weighing and judging.

But Zach was something different, and she could still feel his hands on her, calluses rasping against her skin. A gentle touch, as if she was precious, caressing fingers instead of hard biting knuckles.

Will you stop, Sophie?

The cricket voices got louder. She pushed them away, a warm lump of food in her belly. Finally, a meal that wasn’t all industrial grease. Julia was a good cook, if impatient. And Sophie had obsessed over every meal even before the chef was fired for burning Mark’s potatoes. Between the two of them, everything had turned out fine.

She was warm enough, and so tired. Every inch of her was weighed down.

The streetlamp shine faded a bit. Maybe her eyes were playing tricks on her. They closed, and when she opened them again the room seemed darker.

There was a sound of brushing cloth. Zach was outside her door, and he was moving. The cricket voices rose, then fell away as she concentrated on making them shut up so she could get some sleep. It was like a radio playing in a next-door room, too soft to discern the words but too loud just to tune out. And highly, highly annoying.

The mutating rectangle of streetlamp light blinked and fuzzed. The sense of someone breathing outside her door leached away, the hall floor squeaking slightly as he moved. There were other quick little sounds, too, as if others had gotten up.

What’s going on? She rolled over again, irritated, and rested her head on her arm again. God, can’t I just sleep? Please?

The room darkened. The wind picked up outside, and a bitter taste invaded her tongue. Sophie sighed. Maybe it was indigestion.

But it didn’t taste like indigestion. It tasted like dirt. Something dangerous, ugly, and covered with grimy slime.

She pushed herself up on her hands, her left palm sending a bolt of red pain up her arm. Ow. I hope that’s not getting infected, that would just cap the whole damn—

Crash!

The window exploded inward, glass raining down. Sophie cried out, her arms jerking up to protect her head. There was a staticky half-breath sense of a thunderstorm building, the hair-lifting moment before the first lightning strike cracks the night like an egg.

They poured into the room, a tide of half-seen, jerky shapes. There wasn’t even time to scream before they were on her, cold hands gripping like iron vises, their eyes dripping bleeding hellfire. They breathed on her, a tidal wave of rank foulness. The blankets tangled around her like a shroud before she thrashed, striking out with hands and feet, realizing she was, after all, screaming.

The last thing she heard were crashing howls and Zach yelling her name before darkness closed over her head.

She lay on her side. It was utterly black in here, and it felt like a very, very small space. Hardness under her, it felt cold as concrete. Something was dripping, and there was an odd cacophony—screeching, clicking, a sound like thick dark meat pulled from a recalcitrant bone.

“That’s just fine,” a woman said, and she recognized the voice just as she realized she was tied up, thick coils of rope cocooning her body. “We’ll make an example.”

Oh, God.

“She’s my sacrifice,” Mark said petulantly. He actually lisped over the sibilants, and Sophie had a sudden, horrible vision of malformed teeth, canines long and sharp, curving in and affecting the way the tongue moved.

It was so dark. She couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or closed; she only knew that she could see the ghostly faces. They pressed close, and the cricket sound of their voices as their lips moved had a hard time getting through the squealing and ripping.

“She’ll suffer later. We’re going to send a little message to those animals. That’s enough, children.” Delia Armitage sounded normal, at least. Except for the cruel glee in her voice, as if she was leaning over a table at a charity dinner, gossiping. Sophie had heard that particular tone many times, usually just before Delia fixed her with a gaze dark and cold as leftover coffee. “Be mannerly, now.”

Sophie strained to see. Her entire body ached, and it smelled so horrible she thought she was about to faint again. The crunching, slurping noises tapered away, and in the pregnant silence afterward the reedy cricket sounds became clearer. They almost, almost became real words. The faces pressed close, some of them contorted with worry. Others looked sad, and a few of them had sharp teeth, looking like the lean graceful forms Zach and his family took.

Zach. Had they hurt him?

Another question rose, foggy at first through the various noises competing for her attention. Why didn’t they kill me? I thought that was what they wanted, right?

She was already dead as far as the newspapers were concerned. Logic dictated that Mark had something bad in store for her. Really bad, not just a shot to the kidneys or a bloody nose, or the sudden blow to her stomach that made her lose all her air, or—

Did they kill Zach?

The faces crowded around. They whispered to each other, the cricket sounds growing louder.

No, it was the other sounds that were growing fainter. “Come along, children. You too, Harris.”

“What if she’s awake?” Mark, petulant again. And with the edge of bafflement that meant he hadn’t gotten something he wanted. The edge that used to make her mouth dry and her heart pound.

He sounded so petty. So spoiled. Had he always sounded that way?

“Leave the little mouse in the dark, we’ll deal with her soon enough.” Delia Armitage laughed, a giggling little titter like razors drawn through broken glass. There was one final wet sound, a hungry little moan, and Sophie had a sudden, vivid mental image of Delia, her eyes bright with liquid crimson, pulling Mark’s blond head down, her tongue sliding snakelike into his mouth, and the heavy smacking of a deep, violent kiss echoing in a small space. It was dark, and a single dim bulb hung from a cord over the two. The walls were splashed with black liquid, and the light flickered out as Sophie tried to shake her head.

The unwelcome vision vanished.

Her head dropped, her temple hitting the concrete floor as if she’d been punched, and she saw stars threading through the wall of foggy faces pressing close, closer, closer to her.

Silence, now, except for the cricket song. It almost made words.

Hot tears filled Sophie’s eyes. Oh, God. All I wanted was a night out. She wriggled a little bit, testing the ropes. Nothing. No give.

As if she’d know how to wriggle out of this, anyway.

The ghosts—spirits, majir, whatever they were—drew closer. They brushed her with spectral fingers, their voices the soft rushing of wind and water now. Each touch was insubstantial as smoke, and yet left a strange sort of calm in its wake. They ruffled her hair, brushed her wet cheeks, drew the pain out of her fingers and soothed the burning in her legs. One of them drifted closer—a girl’s face, wide shadowy eyes full of terrible knowledge, her small mouth moving soundlessly.

I’m going crazy. Sophie lay still, petrified, and wished the darkness would take her again.