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The water was ice-cold. That was the first thing Vivienne noticed. It lapped at her bare feet in a chilly hush, hush, hush that seemed to beckon her nearer. Beneath the oil-dark surface, she could just make out the clouded roil of human faces. They broke apart and then coalesced in a wriggling, grasping horror, pale and watery as wraiths.

She didn’t want to go in, but she didn’t know how to break away. She stared, transfixed, as the mirror glass of the surface showed her a single reflection: her own. Not eighteen years old and jaded, her face latticed in scrapes. Not leering and double-jointed, with a smile full of teeth.

In the water, she was four years old, her hair in braids as she chased after a cottontail.

Don’t let Him lure you , whispered that goblin voice deep inside her. He will drown us.

A sharp whistle brought her head veering up. For a moment—lost inside the watery glimpse of her past—she thought it was Philip, summoning her back to the car. The instant she tore her eyes from the water, time came rushing back and rushing back.

She was in the dark. In the damp. In a body that was both all her own and none. And there was Thomas Walsh, steadfast as ever. A buoy in the dark. He wasn’t looking at her. Instead—flanked by Reed—he stared down her father across the airless dark of the little root cellar.

“I want to make something clear,” said Thomas. His voice cast out like a line atop a lake. “If she goes in that water and doesn’t come out, I will raze this place to the ground.”

“Don’t be rash, son,” said Vivienne’s father. “You do that, and we all burn with it.”

“So then we burn,” said Thomas simply.

Wryly, Reed muttered, “I wish we’d workshopped the plan just a little bit more.”

In the water, there came a single, soft plop .

“Does she love you?” asked her father suddenly, and without preamble. The question vaulted, echoless, through the dark. The bluntness of it seemed to catch Thomas in the gut. His eyes flitted to Vivienne and away.

“What?”

“Are you important to Vivienne?” articulated her father, as though Thomas was being intentionally slow. “Does she care for you? Would it hurt her, to see you suffer?”

“I—”

All summer long, Vivienne had rarely seen Thomas at a loss for words. She’d almost never seen him falter. Now, he stammered, caught off guard. A few paces away, her father’s patience appeared to wear thin.

“Never mind that,” he said, and drew the handgun from its holster. “I can draw my own conclusions well enough.”

A safety clicked through the quiet and a muzzled scream worked its way into Vivienne’s throat. Before she could let it fly, a single shot rang out. It exploded through the dark, leaving the acrid sting of propellant behind.

There was a terrible, perfect stillness. For a moment, Vivienne thought he may have simply fired off a warning shot, just to frighten them.

But then Thomas fell.

He dropped like a stone, first to one knee, and then the other. A circle of red bloomed, bold and dark, across his torso. Reed’s hands were at his shoulders, bracing him, steadying him, so he didn’t sink farther. Thomas’s eyes met hers and clung.

“It’s only a graze,” said Price tetchily. “I didn’t hit anything vital.”

Vivienne was certain there was something important Reed should be doing—stanching the wound? Calling for help?—but she couldn’t think of it. She couldn’t bring herself to tear her eyes from Thomas. He was looking at her and looking at her, and she wanted to tell him he would be okay. She didn’t know how, but she would make sure of it.

The smell of his blood stained the air, turning the dark thick and coppery. It dripped from between his fingers, pressed over the wound. It ran along the floor in dark crimson runnels, until it reached the edge of the strange little pool. Behind her, the water began to stir. It rippled, waves slapping hurriedly at her feet, as though something was rising from the depths. Beneath the surface, the wraiths had all scattered.

“Time is certainly a factor here,” said her father. He’d turned to face her, peering at the water that stretched out and out at her feet. “The longer you wait, the less time he has. He needs a doctor’s care, or he could very well bleed out.”

Strange, how she used to wonder what sort of eyes her father had. Now that she was here in front of him, she saw that they were cold and unfeeling. Ambition carved itself into every line of his face. He was a man who desperately wanted something, and he’d do anything at all to get it.

It was the same sickness that lived in her. The same selfish drive.

But Thomas. Thomas.

“If you want him to live,” said her father, “you’ll descend. It’s a simple give and take.”

The darkness before her fractured with tears. The water churned, frothing now—thin white burbles of foam breaking over her feet.

“You,” she heard her father say. “What’s your name?”

“Reed” came the coarse reply. It sounded like screw you .

“Do you have a car nearby, Reed?” He must have nodded, because her father said, “The moment she’s under, get him out of here. Take him to the nearest hospital. Am I clear?”

“Crystal,” said Reed, but there was murder in it.

“There, now do you see,” said her father, as though he’d managed to negotiate a shopping clerk down from an unreasonable starting price. “It’s handled. The boy won’t die, Vivienne, so long as you do what you’re told.”

“Vivienne—”

Her name grated out of Thomas. She heard what he couldn’t bring himself to say. Don’t do it. Let me bleed. Selfless to a fault. Unfairly gallant, all the way until the end. She hadn’t done a thing to deserve his loyalty. She thought of the little room he’d made for himself out in the garage, the lopsided birthday cupcake he’d never gotten to eat.

You do everything for me , she’d told him. And I’ve done nothing for you.

Here was her chance.

She held out her hand to him one last time, three fingers elongated with ballerina grace. Pinkie, index, thumb—offering up the answer he’d been too good, too decent to presume.

I love you.

And then, before her courage could fail her, she descended.