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III

The clothes spill from the shopping bag as Lottie empties it onto the bed.

A pile of shimmery fabric that turns out to be short dresses—all of them in autumn colors, emerald and goldenrod and violet—along with some makeup and a pair of heeled boots in Alice’s size, as if she knew she would say yes.

“Get dressed,” she says. “We’re going out.”

Alice runs her hand over the clothes, frowns at the fabric, or really, at the lack of it, remembering what Ezra said about the cold, and blending in. “To where ?”

Lottie doesn’t answer, just grabs her hand and pulls her toward the bathroom.

The grieving girl Alice met last night is gone, replaced by someone happy, effervescent.

She guides Alice to a stool before the bathroom mirror and begins running a brush through her hair, untangling the snarls of blonde until the teeth slide smooth.

“We won’t have to go looking for Sabine,” she says. “She’ll come to us.” She tosses the brush aside and begins looping locks of hair around her fingers, pinning it up into a messy bun. “In fact, she’s probably been following you this whole time.”

“Why?” asks Alice, meeting Lottie’s gaze in the mirror. Her brown eyes are lit with that strange light, but when she looks at herself, she sees it, too, a kind of backlit glow. That one small piece of them, unnatural, alike, and with it, the understanding settles over her.

“Because you didn’t kill me.”

Lottie purses her lips, gives a tight nod.

“To her, it’s always been a game. Her game, which means her rules.

Stay and die, or run, and live, and lose.

” Her expression darkens. “Sabine knew what she was doing when she planted Penny in the midnight soil. She knew I would rather kill a girl I loved than let her walk this road with me, knowing where it goes. She knew, and made me prove it.”

For the first time, Alice wonders if there were others, between Penny and herself.

Other girls Sabine caught, and turned, and killed.

The list of names in the back of The Secret History was long, longer than she thought it would be.

Did they all survive their one-night stands, their brief encounters?

Lottie spins the stool toward her, and the mirror is gone, and they are face-to-face as she kneels.

“But now, with you, I’ve stopped playing by her rules.

And she’ll want to know why. Hold still,” she adds, and Alice’s mouth twitches, because that’s one command she can obey.

Lottie leans close, close enough that her breath would tickle Alice’s face if she were breathing, and draws two expert lines of black along the outer corners of her lids, one cold and steady hand guiding her chin.

“How do I kill her?” asks Alice as Lottie dabs a plum tint on her bottom lip. A shadow crosses her face, and Alice wonders if it’s the memory of her failed attempt or the idea of Alice’s success that troubles her. If, no matter how badly Lottie hates Sabine, some part still loves her, too.

But then the shadow’s gone. And maybe it was just a trick of the harsh bathroom light, because Lottie takes up a mascara, and wields it like a stake, resting the tip between Alice’s bottom ribs.

“You have to kill the heart,” she says. “Sunlight makes us weak, and grave dirt makes us ill. But only our hearts stay mortal.”

The imaginary weapon drops away, but Alice brings her fingers to the place it was, touching the soft dip of skin between the bones, and that’s when the absurdity of the task rolls over her.

What was she thinking? Sabine is five hundred years old, and she is eighteen, there’s no way she’ll get close enough to try, and even if she does—

Lottie raps her gently on the forehead with the wand.

“Too loud,” she warns. “You can’t let her hear you think like that, or you’ll never pull it off.”

“Then I’ll never pull it off,” snaps Alice, panic building now. “This is insane. I don’t know how you expect me to do this, let alone do it without tipping my hand—or head. She’s going to feel how scared I am.”

She wishes Ezra were still there, his presence like a steady hand, but he’s not, and Lottie’s the one who reaches out and cups her face.

“You can be afraid of Sabine—she’s always had a taste for fear, and it would be strange, given what you know, if you weren’t awash in it.

Just remember what I told you. If you can’t stop your mind from latching onto something, make sure it’s something else.

And when in doubt,” she adds, “think about me. ”

Alice lets herself look up, into Lottie’s eyes, wishes she could see behind them, feel the shape of her mind, but the air is quiet, steady, and maybe it’s the madness of what she’s about to do, or maybe it’s just the way Lottie’s leaning over her, but the question slips out.

“Why me?”

Lottie blinks, a furrow forming between her brows. “Hm?”

“I know what you wrote about me after,” Alice says. “But that night, why did you pick me? Is it just that I was there? And you thought I’d be an easy mark? Some sad, lonely girl hugging the wall, waiting—”

“No.” Lottie’s voice is low, but stern. “I chose you because you were special.”

Alice lets out a soft, mocking sound, but Lottie presses on.

“Do you remember what I told you, about Sabine, and what she said drew her to me on the stairs that night? That I was loud and full of longing. That whatever I felt, I couldn’t keep it in.

It took up space, even when I didn’t. That hunger to be seen.

” Lottie’s thumb brushes Alice’s cheek. “That’s why I chose you, too.

Because I looked at you, and I saw me. Who I was.

” Tears shimmer, crimson, at the corners of her eyes.

“And for all that happened after, for everything she did to me, I still remember what it felt like, to be noticed, to be wanted, to be seen. I wanted you to feel that, too.” She pulls away, wiping her eyes.

“But on top of all that,” she adds cheerfully, “I thought you were hot.”

Alice laughs, a small, sad sound that tears free from her chest. She shakes her head as Lottie turns away.

“I’ll let you get dressed,” she says, closing the bathroom door behind her.

In the end, Alice chooses the green dress. A rich emerald, like moss after rain, that makes her skin look even paler, the veins at her wrist and throat thin and blue and still. She studies herself in the mirror.

New Alice, she thinks. Just for one night.

But it’s not Alice staring back.

The girl in the mirror is someone else, the hem ending at her thigh, her legs made longer by the heeled boots, and with her blond hair pinned up, the dark color at her lips, she expects to look like a stranger, but she doesn’t.

She looks like Catty.

Alice swallows, and flicks off the light.

She steps out of the bathroom. “I look like bait,” she says, and she meant it as a joke, but Lottie doesn’t laugh.

She only smiles and says, “I’d fall for you again.”

Alice’s heart, silent as it is, seems to give a little lurch. The way it did when she first passed her in the dark. When she pulled her off the wall. When they fell into her bed.

Lottie smiles, flashing that dimple in her cheek. “Like that,” she says, reading the shape of her thoughts. And Alice is glad that Lottie doesn’t ask her if she’s ready, just takes her hand and says, “Let’s go.”

Lottie’s laugh rolls down the street.

The night yawns wide around them, full of movement, light, and life, and they walk together, arm in arm, Alice tucked against her side.

Right before they left the safety of the Taj, Lottie drew her close and whispered in her ear, “Once we leave, you have to want to be with me. You have to make her think that you are mine. ”

Alice stiffened when she said it. Most of her wanted to rebel, to pull away, but some small part wanted to lean in and that’s the one she listened to as they stepped into the street.

“Where are we going?” asks Alice now, but Lottie only grins.

“Don’t you worry about that.” Her voice is low, heady with pleasure, every inch of her radiating the same confidence that drew Alice toward her at the party, like a moth to a light, and she will never forgive Lottie for the part she played in leading Sabine to her, but there is no use dwelling on it now, not when there’s so much at stake.

She rests her head on Lottie’s shoulder every time they stop and stand, waiting for a light. Doesn’t resist when Lottie’s lips graze hers, when she tells Alice that she tastes like winter.

“Not grief?” Alice whispers back, and Lottie silences the question with a kiss.

“No, not grief at all,” she says, the words trapped between them.

It’s a two-person performance for an audience of one.

Sabine, who could be out there somewhere, watching them.

But every time her thoughts veer toward the word, the name, the woman it conjures—where she is, where she might be—Lottie gives her arm a warning squeeze, and Alice fights to quiet her mind, or at least, to turn her thoughts somewhere else.

Think about me, Lottie said, and Alice tries, she really does, tries to focus on the way her curls bounce with every step, the warm tan of her skin, the fact she seems so full of life, but then she tries to imagine the girl she was, before, standing on the ballroom stairs, the girl she could have been, and it’s a slippery slope from there to Sabine, and as soon as she even thinks the name it’s like quicksand, her mind struggling against the thought of what she has to do, of the layers of armor that surround a heart, and she has to drag herself free and think of something else.

Something else, which could be anything, but it’s not. Because her mind only goes one place when left alone, and already she can feel the past dragging its feet, looking back over its shoulder, and here’s the thing, it might surprise you, but Alice doesn’t want to think of Catty.

She doesn’t want to, but she can’t help it—

It’s the rope that keeps her from escaping—

The rope that hauls her back again.