“Hurry!” She tossed her cup aside, bracing her hands against the shore. “Drink now. The sooner we spill our truths, the sooner we can dip Lou in the—” But her eyes too rolled backward, and though her body didn’t seize as Lou’s had, she fell sideways, comatose, her cheek hitting the sand. Eyes still rolling.

She’d looked like this once before. Seeing nothing. Seeing everything.

A man close to your heart will die.

Cursing bitterly—casting one last look at Lou, who’d gone limp on my lap—I tossed back the contents of my own chalice. If possible, the water tasted even colder than it’d felt. Unnaturally cold. Cruelly cold. It burned my throat all the way down, solidifying to ice in my stomach. In my limbs. In my veins. Within seconds, movement became difficult. Coughing, gagging, I slid Lou from my lap as the first tremor rocked my frame. When I collapsed forward on hands and knees, the edges of my vision paled to white. Strange. It should’ve gone dark, not light, and—

The burn in my lungs vanished abruptly, and my vision cleared. I blinked in surprise. Blinked again. This couldn’t be right. Had I not drunk enough? Straightening, I glanced first to my empty cup, then to Lou and Coco. Surprise withered to confusion. To fear. They’d disappeared in the mist as completely as the others. I shot to my feet. “Lou? Coco?”

“I’m here!” Lou called from down the shoreline. Surprised, relieved, I hurried after her voice, peering through the mist and darkness. Though the moon still suffused the scene in soft silver light, it illuminated little now. Shafts of it shone through the mist intermittently. Blinding me one moment. Disorienting me the next.

“Where are you? I can’t—”

Her hand caught mine, and she stepped into sight, grinning and whole. I stared at her in disbelief. Where her skin had been wan and sickly, it now shone gold, dusted with freckles. Where her hair had been shorn and white, it now spilled long and lustrous down her back, chestnut and sable once more. I caught a strand of it between my fingers. Even her scars had healed. Except . . . except one.

I traced a finger over the thorns and roses at her throat. At my touch, her eyes fluttered shut. Mist undulated around her face, casting her in an ethereal haze. “Do you like it? Coco could make a killing doing this—transforming the macabre into the macabrely beautiful.”

“You’re always beautiful.” Throat tight, I could barely speak the words. She wrapped her arms around my waist, resting her ear against my heart. “Are you . . . better?” I asked.

“Almost.” Grinning anew at my wary expression, she stood on her tiptoes to kiss me. “Come on. I want to show you something.”