“Go clean it up,” Penn directed Sawyer. “Take care of the mess before anybody finds it.”

“His name is Jason,” Gemma told him, as if that would help him find the body somehow.

“Nobody cares what his name is,” Penn said. “Just take care of it.”

“Okay.” Sawyer nodded and hurried out the front door to follow Penn’s wishes.

“I’m sorry,” Gemma said as silent tears slid down her cheeks. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where to go.”

“You did the right thing coming back,” Penn said. “But next time, take the body with you. You can’t just go leaving your scraps around. It makes the humans suspicious, and that’s a headache you don’t want to deal with.”

“The convertible is covered in blood!” Sawyer called from the front yard.

“Then take one of the other cars in the garage!” Penn shouted at him, and rolled her eyes. “He’s so lucky that he’s handsome and rich, because he is a friggin’ moron.”

“He is cute, though.” Lexi squeezed Gemma’s shoulder, trying to reassure her. “We should get you cleaned up, huh?”

“Yeah,” Gemma agreed.

Lexi leaned over, then licked her cheek. Gemma recoiled and pushed Lexi back hard, causing her to fall back into the front closet.

“Did you just lick blood off my cheek?” Gemma cried. She tried to wipe Lexi’s saliva from her face, but she probably only ended up smearing blood on her cheek. “You’re a psycho!”

“You’re the one covered in blood!” Lexi countered, clearly offended by Gemma’s reaction. “I just tasted it! At least I didn’t rip out his heart!”

“Lexi, that really was inappropriate.” Penn looked at her in disgust. “Thea, go help Gemma get cleaned up. When Sawyer gets back, we’ll talk about how we’re going to deal with all of this.”

“Come on.” Thea took Gemma’s hand and started pulling her away. “You’ll feel better once you get cleaned up, and you’ll think better once the food settles.”

“That wasn’t food,” Gemma muttered.

“It’s what you eat now, so it’s food,” Thea countered.

In the upstairs bathroom, Thea filled the bathtub with warm water. Gemma stripped down to her bikini, then climbed inside. The water quickly turned pink as the blood mixed with it, but Gemma barely even noticed.

She pulled her knees up to her chest, resting her chin on them, and Thea sat next to her, rinsing the blood out from the tangles of her hair.

“I’m a monster,” Gemma said quietly.

“We all are, sweetie,” Thea said as gently as she could. She used a cup to pour the warm water over Gemma’s hair and ran her fingers through it. The blood had really matted into it on the drive home in the convertible.