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She was part of it.

A corpse. Buried and rotted. Decayed. Not just in the ground…but becoming it.

She was nothing.

She was nothing, and she was waiting.

Waiting for him to come for her.

“No!”Her heart pounded in her ears. Terror joined her anger. “Get out. Get the fuck out!” Storming at him, she had every intention of sticking her kitchen knife into his stomach. She had never once figured herself as a violent person, lamp incident notwithstanding. But apparently, she had it in her.

“I’m going. I’m going.” He quickly headed for the door. “But…Marguerite? If you need my help…please. Call me. None of this is your fault. None of it.”

And with that, he was gone. She stood alone in her apartment, shaking. She waited a few beats before rushing to the door and throwing the deadbolts. She dragged a chair over and wedged it under the doorknob for good measure.

It was ten minutes later that she realized she was still standing at the door, holding up her knife. She was shaking.

She was also crying.

Slamming the knife onto the kitchen table, she didn’t dare look at the photo and the card that Rinaldo had left behind. Half of her wished they were gone—that the whole experience had just been a hallucination.

The other half of her prayed they were still there. So that she wasn’t that insane.

She went to the bathroom, ran the sink, and, cupping her hands beneath the stream, splashed cold water onto her face. She felt overheated. She felt like she was having a panic attack.

Deep breaths.

Forcing herself to slow down, she ran cold water over her face again. Putting a washcloth under the stream, she placed it against the back of her neck and rested her forehead against the mirror.

There were three options ahead of her.

One, she hallucinated everything. She doubted that, but it was possible.

Two, Father Rinaldo Lenci was a lunatic, just like her, and had made it all up. Including, somehow, finding a fake vintage photo of Gideon. Or he’s a psycho with Photoshop.

Three…he was telling her the truth.

All of them sounded equally impossible. But one of them had to be right.

“Fuck all of this.” She picked up her bottle of medication beside the sink and tapped a few of the little pink pills into her palm before swallowing them down. She needed sleep. She needed all of the stupidity to go away. Crawling under the covers of her futon that she had long since given up treating like it was multi-purpose, she buried her head into her pillow and shut her eyes.

I’m not dead.

He’s not a necromancer.

I’m not anybody’s pawn.