She shook her head. “I only have one dose left. I don’t know when I can get more, and I can’t be stuck here. Not like this. I’ll go crazy.”

“Eve, I can’t do this without you.”

“What if you go after him and you fail again?”

“I’m not going to fail.”

“You might not be able to deal with it. The stuff I get isn’t always pure. When it’s laced, sometimes strange things happen to me when I ride. Weird, scary shit.”

“I’ll take that risk.”

Her face softened. She put chapped hands on my cheeks and leaned forward, and I was surprised when she kissed me. Her lips were gentle and submissive, craving any kind of human connection. I didn’t stop her. I let her kiss me for a while, and then she sank back against the brick wall. She lifted up her sweatshirt, exposing her flat stomach and the slopes where her breasts swelled. A capped hypodermic was taped across her skin.

“Take it.”

I reached forward, peeling off the tape and taking the needle in my hands. I removed the cap and studied the clear liquid in the barrel. For all I knew, I was about to kill myself. OD.

“Where do you go?” she asked me.

“What do you mean?”

“When you ride. Where do you go? The crossroads.”

I understood now. “The Art Institute. The painting Nighthawks.”

“I’ll talk you through it,” Eve said, “but I don’t know what will happen. I’ll try to guide you there, but if it’s a bad batch—”

“That’s okay.”

I stared at the needle and then rolled up my sleeve. When the moment came to inject myself, I hesitated. I rolled it around in my fingers and couldn’t bring myself to put the metal tip to my vein.

“Do you want me to do it?” she asked.

I saw a steadiness in her eyes. “Yes.”

She took my arm in hers with surprising skill and gentleness. But then I realized that once upon a time, she’d been on her way to becoming a doctor. She pressed the point of the needle into the seam of my arm.

“Are you sure? Once it’s done, it’s done.”

“I’m sure.”

I watched the clear liquid disappearing through the needle as she injected me. The cocktail flowed like a cool river into my body, and the last thing I heard was Eve whispering in my ear.

“Kill him.”

Something was wrong. I knew it immediately.