Chapter V
V
When Alice lurches back into her body, she’s standing in an elevator.
The darkened hallway of the club is gone, replaced by walls and doors of hammered copper, a hundred bits of warped reflection staring back.
Alice’s vision is stained red, as if she got blood in her eyes, but no matter how many times she blinks the color is still there, until she finally realizes that someone has changed out the overhead light, replaced the normal white with red, tinting the world inside the elevator crimson.
She’s not alone. Sabine leans against the other wall, humming softly to herself as the elevator rises up, and up, and up.
Panic floods Alice’s mouth like bile, because there’s a void where time should be, and she doesn’t remember leaving the club, doesn’t remember walking through the streets of Boston—she must have, because she can smell the night air on her skin—doesn’t remember getting here, but here she is, Sabine humming beside her as if nothing is wrong.
Alice shrinks back into the wall and tries to smother her racing mind, her frantic thoughts, tells herself—quietly, quietly—that this is what she wanted, or at least, what she needs.
The elevator dings as it reaches the top, and then the doors are sliding open, onto a penthouse, exposed brick with floor-to-ceiling views of Boston, the floor a stretch of black concrete, polished to a shine, and Alice remembers what Lottie said about Sabine’s love of luxury, her insistence on fine things.
Sabine strolls into the penthouse foyer as if it’s hers—which it might be now, but it was clearly someone else’s first. There are picture frames face down on all the shelves, marks on the floor where the low furniture has been dragged into a new shape.
The scent on the air is leather, cologne, musk.
Sabine glances back at Alice pressed into the elevator walls, clearly waiting for her to follow.
Alice pushes herself off the copper, starts forward, but something happens at the elevator doors.
A sudden force, heavy as stone, holding her back, and she thinks it must be her own body trying to protect her, until Sabine chuckles.
“Of course. Apologies. Come in. ”
And just like that, the air loosens, the boundary dissolves, and Alice steps into the penthouse. The elevator doors slide shut behind her with grim finality as she forces herself forward.
Sabine sinks onto the edge of a low suede sofa, and leans down to slip off her shoes, and while her head is bowed Alice steals a look around the massive room for anything that might serve as a makeshift weapon, but apparently the businessman Sabine has stolen this place from cared more about fine art and books than weaponry.
“Relax,” says Sabine without looking up. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.”
Alice tenses, tries to rein her thoughts back in, even as she says, “I am.”
Sabine tuts. “Death is rot and ruin. Death is bones and dirt. You are a rose that grew out of it.” Her gaze drifts up, and Alice sees that the light in her eyes isn’t entirely gone. It flickers, somehow dark and bright at once, like coals. “You should be grateful.”
Alice clenches her teeth against the words she’d like to say to that. But one still hisses out. “ Grateful? ”
Sabine’s mouth twitches, and she rises, bare feet padding across the concrete floor as she approaches, and Alice, to her credit, doesn’t retreat, even though it takes every modicum of strength to let the distance close between them.
Sabine is almost to her when she says, “Sit.”
The word lands like a hand on Alice’s shoulder, and her knees fold before her mind can register, a chair catching her before she hits the floor. And she doesn’t know how she’s going to do this, do anything, when her own body listens to Sabine instead of her.
Why didn’t Lottie warn her this would happen?
Why did she let her think she had a chance?
Sabine drifts behind Alice, and she listens to the soft padding of her steps as she looks around for something, anything she might be able to use.
But if there was clutter, Sabine has done away with almost all of it.
On the table in front of her there is a single photography book, the cover showing the Scottish Highlands of all places.
On the kitchen island, the knife block has been emptied, but beside it there’s a vase of flowers just beginning to wilt.
On a bar cart against the wall, she spots something that clearly didn’t come with the house: a glass carafe atop a warming plate, the contents thick and crimson.
Alice’s throat tightens at the sight, and then she notices the steps have stopped, a heady silence pooling behind her back right before a cold hand slides along her collarbone. Sabine drapes her arms around Alice’s shoulders, a coil of red hair snaking down her front.
“Tell me, Alice,” she whispers in that voice like sand and silk, “why are you here?”
Alice frowns, forces one truth from her head in favor of another. “You made me follow you.”
She feels Sabine’s mouth twitch against her cheek. “Did I?”
Alice blinks, and she’s back in the club, the world dropping into darkness. “You compelled me.”
Sabine hums in thought. “When you nudge a body, do you know which way it always falls?” The arms withdraw, and Sabine rounds the chair to face her. “It falls the way it’s leaning. Compulsion is a lie you tell yourself. The truth is, you’re here because some part of you wanted to come with me.”
Alice could deny it. But the thing is that she’s right.
On some level, if she’s being honest with herself, she wanted this, she needed it, not just for the plan to work, and not just because of what Sabine did, what Lottie did, what Alice has to find a way to do.
No, ever since she first woke up the day after the party, the world tipped off its axis, the ground gone out beneath her feet, Alice has felt like she is falling. She thought finding Lottie would make the feeling stop, but it didn’t, because Lottie wasn’t the one standing at the bottom.
Sabine is.
She’s the ground at the end of the long, long drop.
And now that Alice is here, the falling has stopped.
Sabine tips her head to one side. “Exactly. Now,” she says, “what are we going to do about our Charlotte?”
Our Charlotte.
Alice tries to conjure the warmth she felt when they were walking down the street, when Lottie turned and kissed her at the corner, but instead her mind goes to the club, the moment Lottie let go of her and slipped away.
Leaving her alone.
To be caught.
“She killed you,” says Sabine, and the words force her back.
“ You killed me,” says Alice, unable to stop the anger that rises up, can almost feel it wicking off of her. But Sabine only shakes her head.
“No,” she says, lowering herself onto the sofa.
She stretches her arms along the top, her hair cascading down the back.
A dozen pendants hang on brittle chains around her neck, tokens from her latest kills, and Alice searches, wondering if there is something of hers there, stolen with the rest, or if she doesn’t count.
“Charlotte knew what would happen if she took you to bed,” says Sabine, “and she did it anyway. Just like she did to all those other girls.” She lets her head fall back, her throat exposed as her gaze drifts over the ceiling high above.
“Even Penny.” The name hangs there before her chin tips down, her strange eyes finding Alice. “Did you hear about poor Penny?”
She nods, and Sabine sits forward, hands and hair trailing down the sofa in her wake.
“So tell me, dear Alice,” she says, those eyes searching her as if she’s a puzzle to be solved, “why our Charlotte didn’t do the same to you.”
Alice blinks and in that fraction of a second, she is back in the hotel, Lottie meeting her gaze in the mirror and mouthing the words before Alice says them.
“She told me I was special.”
At that, Sabine laughs. And it’s a horrible sound, not because of the tone—bright and high as bells—but because it’s just as hollow.
Indignation rises inside Alice, and it feels better than fear, so she doesn’t try to hold it back. “Maybe you’re just mad that she’s finally moved on,” she mutters. “Maybe you can’t stand that she’s found someone else.”
Sabine’s laughter dies. Her smile doesn’t, but it’s gone as cold and stiff as ice.
“Alice, sweet Alice,” she purrs, “Charlotte doesn’t care about you. She hates you. Hates what you are. What we are. She looks at you and all she feels is guilt.”
Alice winces.
“You’re just another broken toy discarded in her wake. But don’t worry. I won’t let you go to waste.”
Alice doesn’t know what Sabine’s planning to do, but she knows she’s running out of time, and she forces herself to breathe, in and then out, trying to think and unthink at the same time, trying to find a way out of this, or through.
The scent of blood wafts toward her from the cart against the wall, fills her nose and throat. And it gives her an idea.
She swallows, glances up.
“I’m thirsty.”
Sabine cocks her head, amused. “Of course you are.” She flicks her fingers toward the bar cart. “Help yourself.”
Alice feels her body come unstuck from the chair, has to force her legs not to betray her by surging up too fast. She stands, and tries to imagine the air is made of syrup.
She wades slowly toward the cart, fingers shaking as she reaches for the carafe with one hand, and her necklace with the other.
She doesn’t dare look back over her shoulder but she listens, as closely as she can, for any sign Sabine has moved.
Even without a heartbeat, without the steady in and out of breath, bodies make sound.
The suede sofa groans beneath the slightest motion.
Her hair will whisper if she rises, the lace will shift against her skin, and even as Alice thinks these things, she tries not to, instead fills her head with Lottie.
Think about her.
(And how she kissed you.)
Think about her.
(And how she promised you.)
Think about her.
(And how she left you again. )