Chapter 12

12

MINA

The Present

I woke up well rested after having slept in for the first time in months. Sure, I'd had that bad dream, but after that, it was a night of blissful nothingness.

Was that what it would be like, when I had died?

If so, you could sign me the fuck up.

"Finally," Sylas intoned the moment my eyes fluttered open.

"Let me guess," I said, sitting up. The light penetrating the hotel's dingy curtains only served to glint off the motes of dust circling around him, giving him a strange halo. "You're hungry."

"Always," he said, standing. "So—your plan?"

I blinked, then reached for my purse, which I'd set beside me the night prior, all the better to sleep closer to my gun. I had a small notepad inside, where I'd carefully recorded all of the guys' movements and patterns, watching all five of them have the lives they'd denied me and Ella. "Logan Whitmore."

My Nightmare crossed his arms. "Who is he?"

"Better to ask what." I could tick off all of Logan's life attributes on one hand. "Devastatingly handsome, rich, and stupid as a baked potato. He's a legacy RRP, and the only reason he hasn't flunked out yet is because he has access to their testing bank, plus he pays a tutor on the regular." I put air quotes around the word tutor —the RRP had other kids in the same classes essentially on payroll to help.

"And he's the first of your five why?" Sylas asked. His tone was neutral, indifferent even, but the tilt of his head gave his interest away.

I made a face. "Because I won't mind us killing him—and also because I know exactly where he'll be tonight."

Sylas looked around. "I take it we're trading up in the world."

"As long as I'm not bringing any bedbugs back to my apartment," I said, crawling out of my sleeping bag at last.

I didn't brush my teeth at the hotel. It wasn't worth bothering with, when civilization was so close at hand. I was surprised when we left though to find out that the door down the hall was open but there wasn't any police tape around—then I remembered Sylas had totally disappeared the corpse. No one had noticed that guy was missing, or called the cops.

"I don't want you doing that with Logan," I said, once we were both inside my car. Sylas was harder to see now with more ambient light, but I could sense his curiosity as I drove us away. "I need for there to be a body. The rest of them need to know it happened."

Sylas gave a malevolent chuckle. "Good. I like that. More fear for me to feed off of."

I nodded strongly. "Yes."

The only reason I'd come to this hotel was because it was the only place in town where I could pay cash for a room. If I'd had to go through with my plans alone, with just the gun, I needed to be untraceable, and when someone started putting two and two together, the first place their concerned fingers would point would be at the "lying" ex-girlfriend.

But I had a feeling that now, with Sylas, the murders would be so atrocious that no one would think they could be committed by little old me—until it was too late.

"He'll be at his tutor's from six to eight tonight. He's got a final coming up, and he needs a C to pass. We just have to wait for him to walk to his car to drive home when he's done."

And that was a good thing, too. His tutor lived off campus, far away from the rest of the frat. If Logan's corpse was found near RRP house, they'd view it as an attack, whereas if he was murdered a few miles away, it could be a wrong-time, wrong-place scenario.

A mugging gone wrong.

"Do you have any weaknesses?" I asked Sylas.

He seemed affronted—I could tell by the way he dispersed, letting more of the sunlight show through him. "Excuse me?"

"That I should know about," I quickly explained. "Like some way he can capture or hurt you? "

There was a still between us in the car, like when you were in the eye of a storm, and then raucous laughter poured out of him. "Me? Be hurt?"

I rolled my eyes. "I'm just asking."

"Curious for yourself, I bet," he said, his smoke forming a tongue for long enough for him to lick it across his now showing sharp black teeth.

"No, I don't renege on deals."

"That's what everyone who hires me thinks, at first," he said, with a shrug. "And then, for some reason, as their sands run out, they all seem to change their mind."

I frowned. I hadn't laid eyes on my hourglass today, but the mark didn't hurt as much as it had the night prior. I was going to have to keep wearing long sleeves to hide it, I wouldn't want anyone putting two and two together until it was too late, but it was a crisp October, and I had plenty of reasons to be wearing sweaters.

I'd given away three-quarters of my wardrobe after Ella had gone away. Any girl my size who hit the Goodwill that week was going to think she won the lottery. I just couldn't stand the thought of wearing anything I'd worn with Trent ever again, and seeing as we'd dated for six months, that was most of my clothing.

Too bad no one would wonder what Logan was wearing when they found his corpse.

The Nightmare and I reached my apartment at ten, but I turned to him before he could get out of the car. "Can other people see you? "

"As in, should I hide?" he asked, with a shrug. "Probably."

I squinted at him before taking off my seatbelt. "And you didn't think about that, yourself?"

He heaved a sigh. "You're going to be dead in seven days, my queen. So no, I don't really care about people seeing me—and, neither should you."

"What do you mean?"

"You'll see," he said, phasing out of my car.

He followed me up to my apartment on the stairs in front of the security cameras and I guessed he did have a point. Now that I was signed up to die, it wouldn't really matter if I left any evidence behind.

It was just hard to get out of that mode. And I couldn't stomach the thought of someone stopping me before I'd gotten my revenge. I was at a point where I didn't give a shit about what'd happened to me—or what would happen, clearly. But Ella? Ella needed me to stick around until the fourth quarter.

I unlocked my door and let us both inside, and Sylas diffused himself at once, nearly disappearing, until I heard his voice from my bedroom.

"Is this you?" he asked. I followed the sound, till I caught him rifling through the photos I'd tucked into the edges of my mirror frame. I hardly recognized myself in them anymore—I mostly kept them for the images of Ella.

Every picture I'd had of Trent and myself I'd burned in the trash.

"It used to be."

"And the other woman's room?" he asked .

"My friend. She's why you're here." I never went into Ella's room anymore. I had enough money to cover both halves of our lease—my parents had died in a tragic car accident my first year here, when a semi-truck swept into their lane. I'd gotten a massive payout, which I wasn't going to be around to spend.

But Ella's parents were still alive. They'd moved out most of her personal items, but what little they'd left behind—her bed, and a couple of scraps of clothing—I'd decided to leave where they were at, like a shrine.

I'd stolen some of her makeup before they'd come in too, so I still had a pot of Perfect Blue Pigment out on my vanity, and her toothbrush—which'd gone unused since May 25th—was still in the holder beside mine on my sink.

"She was pretty," Sylas intoned, from beside me, startling me. I'd forgotten he was there.

"Yeah, she was." I bit my lips. I tried not to think about the way she'd looked when I'd last seen her, because it hurt too bad.

"But you," he went on, sounding somewhat clinical. "What happened?" He plucked out a photo of me that someone had printed off on their mini-Polaroid when I'd been at a club. I'd been bleach blonde then, with smokey eyes and happily smiling red lips, looking sultry in a sheer top with a black bra on underneath.

It was pretty different than the Amish granddaughter look I was going for now.

"Life?" I said sarcastically, to deflect him. I should've known it wouldn't work.

"A lot of people go their entire lives without murdering a soul." He drew himself in so that his form had crisper boundaries, even as he went on trampling over all of mine. "So what kind of life?" he pressed .

"As long as you eat, why do you care?" I asked, shooing him away. I wanted to change clothes. Look at the mark on my arm. Maybe take a shower. Maybe take an Ativan.

"Because you only have a limited time left on this earth, Mina. And for as much as you are able, I want you to live it with me."

I whirled on him and frowned. He was between me and my bedroom door. My bed was behind me, and a particular kind of terror wound its tail around my spine. "What do you mean?"

"Do you want to murder people wearing this," he said, gesturing at my outfit. "Or wearing that?" He reached out to tap my clubbing photo.

"Are you giving me super-villain dressing tips?"

"It's one thing when you have a hope of escape. You might as well blend into the background, with thoughts of somehow getting a new identity," he said, before shaking his head gravely. "But since you don't, what's the harm in living it up while you can, so to speak?"

I huffed. "I'm not that girl anymore." That girl—stupid and innocent and carefree—was gone. She'd never come back, even if Sylas weren't in my bedroom.

"Yes—but you're not this, either," he said, giving my black sweater a disparaging look. "It doesn't suit you."

"How the fuck would you know what suits me?"

"Because I'm the only creature alive who has witnessed other people in your exact same shoes," he said, with a patience that was annoying. "You're between life and death, Mina. You're different from the rest of humanity right now, whether you like it or not. Shed your skin and become something glorious with me."