Jacob tried to sit up, but several points of agony screamed at him simultaneously to stop that shit and lie down again. So he stopped that shit and lay down again.

Then the voice said, “Are you a dog? Please don’t be a dog,” and memory came to him like a bolt of lightning.

He croaked accusingly, “Eve.”

She was supposed to wilt with guilt under the mighty power of his voice, but all she did was sigh, “Oh, thank goodness you’re not a dog.”

Rage was an excellent method of clearing the head. Jacob forced his eyes open, even though he couldn’t see for shit and felt kind of dizzy. The sky above him was a sickly yellow, staticky with the motion of still-falling rain. He didn’t spot any Eve-shaped blobs in his line of sight, but he hoped she could see him—or more specifically, that she could see the burning hate in his eyes. “You’d rather hit me than hit a dog?” he demanded. “Interview was . . . so bad?” His words were wonky. Goddamn it. He didn’t want his words to be wonky.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said primly. “It has nothing to do with you in particular. I meant that I’d rather hit a person than a dog.”

His lurching mind grappled with that drivel for a moment before he announced, “You are joking. This is a joke.”

“Of course I’m not joking! Dogs are so small and sweet and vulnerable. Humans are much sturdier. See how well you’re handling this?”

Jacob might be having an out-of-body rage experience right now, because his pain was growing oddly distant, and he barely even noticed that the storm was slowing as suddenly as it had begun, and really, all he could feel was this overwhelming urge to bury Eve Brown in a hole somewhere, or possibly dump her at the bottom of a well. “How well I’m handling this?” he echoed, his shout making his battered lungs ache. “Woman, I am one wrong move from vomiting blood.”

There was a slight pause before Eve said reasonably, “Ah, but if you were a dog, you might be dead right now.”

Jacob was searching for the strength to drag himself up and strangle her, even if it killed him, when a new smudge of blurry color appeared before his eyes: an oval of rich brown, surrounded by ribbons of pastel purple. She came closer, closer, and he made out the details he’d rather forget. The rounded cheeks and the big, dark eyes behind rain-wet, spiky eyelashes. The stubbornly pointed chin and glittery, glossy lips. She was biting those lips, if he wasn’t mistaken, and quite violently, too. Not to mention, there was a deep furrow on her formerly smooth forehead. Maybe she was racked with guilt.

Or maybe she was just worried about a potential manslaughter charge if he died.

Probably the latter.

“Would it take your mind off things if I showed you my tits?” she asked out of the blue.