“I don’t think so. I think you’re probably just going to sit there in that wheelbarrow, trying to breathe properly, until I take you out to the rift site and kill you. I’ll make it look like an accident. You were just so upset over your failure to contain the rift that you spent too much time out here. You took on too much and your poor heart couldn’t take it. I mean, you are carrying around a few extra pounds, your heart’s probably pretty strained already.”

“Fuck. Off,” Dani shot back.

“Any more questions?” Lara asked.

“Why in the hell do you smell like formaldehyde?”

Lara laughed. “Film processing. It’s part of the final wash. Call me a purist but I just don’t think you can call yourself a real photographer unless you print from your own film. The problem is that no matter how many times you wash your hands, you can still smell it for days.”

“Well, that explains it. I’ve only used a digital camera.”

Lara glowered at her, as if this was a grievous offense, worth killing Dani over as a matter of principal.

“I owe that creepy little girl at the morgue a big apology,” Dani said. “Did you use digitalis on Bardie Boone? To make her sick the night you tried to strangle me at the library?”

“No, dragons don’t respond to digitalis, so I had to use some good old-fashioned arsenic. She metabolized it quickly and with only a little bit of stomach trouble, but it was enough to take her out of commission for the night,” she said. “And before you ask, yes, I tried to kill you. Because you were annoying me and I have occasional snaps of temper just like everybody else.”

“Most people have snaps of temper than don’t involve attempted murder, you psycho.”

“Well, fortunately for you, I’m over it,” Lara said. “But unfortunately, you stumbled into my plans like a chubbier version of Scooby Doo—

“Fuck you, I’m awesome.”

Lara ignored her. “And now you know everything and there’s no way you’ll keep your fat mouth shut.”

“I’m thinking you’re projecting some pretty serious body-image issues, Lara. Along with being a murderous psycho.”

“So I’m going to have to kill you. I’ll drain you dry, and dump you here, and make it look like you just crumpled under the pressure from the rift,” Lara said casually, as if she was discussing grocery shopping. “You’d been struggling lately, keeping up with the demands of the rift and I doubt your skills have ever really been what you claimed they were.”

“Again, fuck you, because I’m awesome.”

Dani could feel that they’d reached the rift, even before Lara dumped her out of the wheelbarrow like garbage. She flopped to the ground, dead weight, unable to so much as raise her arms to break her fall.