I felt thick, dry mouthed, fuzzy with the same aftereffects of the vampire venom that I'd felt before.

For a minute, I stopped fighting. I just lay there, weak and thirsty and hurting and sick, curled up into a ball. I would have started crying again if I'd had that much feeling left in me. I would have wept and waited to die.

Instead, some merciless, steady voice in my head drove me to open my eyes. I hesitated, afraid. I didn't want to open my eyes and see nothing. I didn't want to find myself in that same darkness. That darkness, with hissing things all around me. Maybe there, still, just waiting for me to awaken so that they-

Panic swept me for a moment, and gave me enough strength to shiver and push myself up into a sitting position. I took a deep breath, and opened my eyes.

I could see. Light seared at my eyes, a thin line of it surrounding a tall rectangle-a doorway. I had to squint for a moment, so used were my eyes to the darkness.

I looked around the room, wary. It wasn't big. Maybe twelve by twelve, or a little more. I lay in a corner. The smell was violently rotten. My jailors, apparently, had no problems with letting me lie in my own filth. Some of it had crusted onto me, onto my legs and arms. Vomit, I guessed. There was blood in it. An early symptom of the mushroom poisoning.

There were other shapes in the dimness. A lump of cloth in one corner, like a pile of dirty laundry. Several laundry baskets, as well. A washer and dryer, on the far wall from the door.

And Justine, dressed in as little as I, curled up and sitting with her back to the wall, her arms wrapped loosely around her drawn-up knees, watching me with dark, feverish eyes.

"You're awake," Justine said. "I didn't think you'd ever wake up."

Gone was the glamorous girl I'd seen at the ball. Her hair hung lank and greasy. Her pale body looked lean, almost gaunt, and her limbs, what I could see of them, were stained and dirty, as was her face.

Her eyes disturbed me. There was something feral in them, something unsettling. I didn't look at her for too long. Even as bad off as I was, I had enough presence of mind to not want to look into her eyes.

"I'm not crazy," she said, her voice sharp, edged. "I know what you're thinking."

I had to cough before I could talk, and it made pains shoot through my belly again. "That wasn't what I was thinking."

"Of course it wasn't," the girl snarled. She rose, all lean grace and tension, and stalked toward me. "I know what you were thinking. That they'd shut you in here with that stupid little whore ."

"No," I said. "I … that isn't what-"