Page 10 of On Edge

Something heated flickers behind his eyes, and then it’s gone. “She’s dead?” His grip on me tightens. “How?”

“S-She fell,” I repeat exactly what I was told.

“An accident?”

He doesn’t know? Frantically, I nod my head because I’m suddenly not sure I should be telling the suspect anything. I’m supposed to be investigating him, not feeding him details.

But his eyes flatten. “I see. My—” He averts his gaze. “My condolences.”

“C-can you let me go now?” I sound ready to fall apart.Not like me at all, then.

He frowns, his gaze still averted, stuck on something around my neck. “Not until you tell me where you got that.” He almost spits the wordthat.

I glance at the necklace I’m wearing. It’s the one Nell gave me.

The memory of her leaving swarms before my eyes. The string of pearls she never took off was left on the bed with a Post-it stuck to it.

For protection.

“Nell gave it to me.”

“Right.” He doesn’t seem convinced.

“She said it was for protection,” I add, more like a prayer.

Something flashes across his face, something I can’t quite read, as though his mind is elsewhere. His fingers brush my collarbone as he strokes over the pearls around my throat. A pretty noose he could easily choke me with…

For a moment, neither of us moves. Outside crackles with something that could be lightning, but I can’t breathe, let alone see.

“There’s no such thing.” Severin, finally, grits out, pulling his hand away.

I don’t know what to say to that, and then it doesn’t matter. He releases my wrists and moves back from the bed, a look of disgust marring his perfect face, jaw clenched as though he wants to say something more but doesn’t.

I sit up slowly, eyeing the door. “I’ll go?—”

“No.” I freeze. “Stay here. I’ll sleep elsewhere.”

I want to leave, be anywhere but here. But he doesn’t give me a choice. He turns and stalks out. The sound of the door banging closed is enough to wake the dead.

And just like that, he’s gone.

Breathing hard, I sit in shock for a long time after, goosebumps prickling at the bare skin of my arms. I know I should lock the door, but I can’t make myself move.

After a while, I force myself to, securing the door by sticking a chair under it because the lock obviously doesn’t work, I catch myself in the mirror. Nell’s necklace has slipped free of my silken top, gleaming dully against the dark bruises beginning to imprint around my throat. A disheveled girl with brown hair and hazel eyes, looking pale as the pearls around her neck, stares back.

Did he really not know she was dead? No, of course, he knows!

He’s lying.

He was covered in blood.

Whose blood?

A ragged sob sticks in my throat, seeking to escape. I don’t let it. Not yet. Not until I’ve buried myself under the covers.Only then do I allow the tears to come.

Killing that man is going to be harder than I ever imagined.

I survived the night.