He doesn’t miss a beat. “I’m sorry,” he says, dispassionate, with a hint of condescension. Some pity. Sorrow. “I think you’re very attractive. And I enjoy spending time with you. I enjoyed—” His voice almost breaks. “I enjoyed fucking you. And I wish you the best, but. . . .” He shakes his head.

I open my mouth, hoping for a good comeback, only to find that I cannot breathe. And then the worst of it happens: Lowe wipes the back of his hand where, if I could cry, a tear would streak my cheek.

The pain of his rejection is a fist around my heart.

“I see that this was a mistake,” he continues. “But it’s for the best. You don’t want to be tied to someone like me. You should be free.” He almost stumbles on the last word, but recovers quickly. “And from now on, you and I should probably be apart.”

“Apart?”

“I can find another place for you to live.” His eyes are trained on a spot behind my shoulders. “You’re getting the wrong ideas, and I frankly don’t want you to—”

A phone rings.

His eyes dart away, annoyed, but when he steps back from me, it’s a reprieve. I stare down at my feet, tuning out the soft conversation that ensues, trying to breathe through the crushing cold lodged behind my sternum.

I was wrong.

I misunderstood.

I was mistaken, and he isn’t—he doesn’t . . .

“I’ll be right there.”

Lowe hangs up. When he addresses me, it’s with his usual calm, as though our conversation never took place. As though nothing between us ever took place.

“I need to leave.” He adjusts his jeans.

I nod. With difficulty. “Okay. I—”

“I’m going to have someone come pick you up and take you back into Were territory.”

“It’s fine. I can just—”

“It’s dangerous,” he interrupts flatly. “So no, you can’t. You may persist in not caring about your safety, but I . . .” He doesn’t continue. Just looks and looks and looks at me, and the silence between us grows intolerable.

“Okay. You can let yourself out. I’m going to shower and get changed.” I head blindly toward my bedroom, but barely manage two feet before a strong grip around my fingers stops me in my tracks.

I don’t want to turn to him, but I do. And tremble when he leans in to kiss my forehead. He inhales once, hard. I feel his lips move against my skin into what feels like three short words, but probably isn’t. For a second I wonder if maybe I was right after all, and my heart soars.

Then he pulls back, and it collapses on itself once again.

“Go,” he orders, and I do. I’ve had enough of this careless, cruel brand of honesty for tonight.

I walk into my room and don’t wait for him to leave before I close the door behind me.

CHAPTER 26

He is being kinder to her than to himself, and hopes she can never realize it.

There was never a bed in this apartment. I was happy in the closet, and whenever Serena stayed over, she made do on the couch. For the first time in my life, though, I wish I’d done the Human thing and bought something soft to fall on.

As it is, I settle for sliding to the floor and spending way too long with my forehead on my knees, trying to regain my bearings.

Baby’s first heartbreak, I guess.

Whatever this pitiful, soul-rending feeling inside me is, it seems too dense to be borne. Because Lowe is right: I’ve spent years being at home nowhere, and my best friend disappeared after the worst argument of our lives—yes, probably voluntarily, and probably because she doesn’t give a fuck about me, not nearly as much as I do about her. I’m no stranger to pain, to loneliness, to disappointment, but this. This pressure inside me, it’s not solvable. The weight of it, how does one bear it?

I find no answer by pressing my fingers to my eyes until I see stars.

My shower takes five minutes. I valiantly try to scrape the rejection and humiliation off my skin, but fail. I barely have time to find a change of clothes before the buzzer rings, and Mick’s voice informs me that Lowe asked him to come get me. A heartbeat later I’m sliding into the passenger seat of his car. “How are you, Misery?”

“Good.” I try for a small smile. “You?”

“I’ve been better.”

“I’m sorry.” I give him a cursory look. Then another. Maybe taking care of someone else’s distress will alleviate mine. “Is there anything I can do?”

“No.”

I go back to focusing on the streetlights and wait impatiently for Mick to finish puttering around and start the car, but I don’t know why. I have no reason to be impatient, because I have nowhere to be. No place to call mine.

“Have you talked with Ana recently?” I ask. If Lowe sends me elsewhere, I likely won’t see her again. I guess I’ve grown overly attached to her, too, because my heart squeezes even tighter.

“No,” Mick says. “But I think it’s for the best.”

I lean my temple against the window. My head pounds with a dull kind of ache. “Why is that?”

“It’s complicated.”

I huff out a sour laugh, and my breath mists the glass. The same fucking words as Lowe’s. What a cunning way to get out of telling the truth. “You Weres sure love to say—” A bug prickles my skin, and I swat it away. But when I turn around, what I find is not something I can make sense of.

Mick.

Holding a small syringe.

Injecting it in my arm.

I look up at his face, trying to parse what is happening. “I’m sorry, Misery,” he says. His voice is soft and his eyes are sad, down-tilted in a way that makes my battered chest hurt even more.

Why? I ask.

Or I don’t. The word doesn’t make it out, because I’m tired, and my limbs are heavy, and my eyelids so laden with iron that the darkness behind them feels too sweet to—

CHAPTER 27

There is very little he wouldn’t do, very few people he wouldn’t kill, just to ensure her well-being.

When we were young, eleven or maybe even twelve, before Serena managed to grasp the difference in our physiologies, she would sometimes get bored of spending her afternoons all alone doing homework or watching TV, and slink into my room to shake me awake when the sun was still too high in the sky. She’d be surprisingly ruthless, more forceful than her little body looked capable of. She’d grasp my shoulder and waggle it hard, with the force of a pack of rottweilers chewing their favorite toy into a slimy chunk of plastic.