Archie remained perfectly still. Gretchen knew where to put a blade in where it would hurt the worst without actually killing him. He didn’t want to pull away and risk throwing off her aim. She directed the scalpel slightly upward, and Archie inhaled sharply. The pain was intense now, a worsening cramp. He made himself take a few long, slow breaths. Use the pain. Let it do its work. His senses sharpened. She smelled like lilacs. The back of his neck was on fire. “Pull it out,” he said between gritted teeth.

She smiled at him and with a casual flick of her elbow slid the blade out of his flesh. It was three inches, Archie guessed, the surgical steel stained with his blood. He brought his hand to the wound. The slit in his shirt was already darkened with red.

“Does the blade feel the same going in,” Gretchen asked, “with all that scar tissue?”

Blood oozed from the wound. Archie pulled up his shirt to look at the half-inch dark red notch in his flesh. “It still hurts, if that’s what you mean,” Archie said.

Gretchen smirked. “Good,” she said. She slipped the blade into an envelope case in her dress pocket. His blood was on her hand. She withdrew a folded white handkerchief out of her other pocket, gave it a shake, and then started cleaning off her fingers. “You’re not leaving me,” she said, wiping his blood from the curve of her thumb. “When he comes for the knife, you’ll have him on tape.”

She refolded the handkerchief neatly and then pressed it on Archie’s wound and held it there. The wound was tender, and the pressure hurt, but Archie didn’t pull away. There was a new stain on the front of her dress, a red smear on her hip, about the size of a quarter. It saturated the fabric differently from the fake blood spatter around it, both uglier and more vivid. Real blood was messy that way.

The handkerchief was reddening.

Archie blamed himself. He’d let himself get distracted by Lisa Watson’s killer. But that wasn’t why he was here, despite Gretchen’s intentions.

“I want to see her,” Archie said.

Gretchen lifted the cloth and then pressed it back into place. “Patience, darling,” she said.

Archie put his hand under her chin and lifted her face up to his. The tiny drops of fake blood along her jawline were sticky under his fingers. Her makeup was in place. Her coloring was even. Stabbing him had not even elevated her heart rate. He touched the side of her face. “Please,” he said.

She met his gaze without emotion. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. After a long moment she took his hand in hers and lowered it from her face and pressed it to the handkerchief. “Since you’ve learned to ask nicely,” she said.