Elise ended the call and shook her head. People had no idea what it took to train roses, to have them climb up a wall and spread out along a trellis. They thought it just happened, like magic, that it wasn’t the result of careful, thoughtful, deliberate attention, and hard work. Years of work. And now, to be told that she couldn’t give her plants what they needed!

Outrageous, she thought, the wrinkles around her lips deepening as she frowned. But that was summer people for you; clueless and rich, toddling around like giant babies in the fog their money generated, not caring who they hurt. They just had no idea.

Sarah woke up the next morning from another terrible dream, the now familiar guilt pressing down on her chest like a millstone, the same question repeating itself more and more loudly.

What have I done?

“Nothing,” Sarah said out loud. Her voice was startling in the silence. Her whole body ached. Even the tiniest turn of her neck sent sickening waves of pain rolling through her. She breathed in, slowly, through her nose, willing herself not to be sick, wondering what had happened. She was thinking about pregnancy again. About Rapunzel, and how Rapunzel’s mother had been so desperately craving the taste of a certain green during her pregnancy that she’d sent her husband into the witch’s garden to steal it. Maybe Sarah’s story was hungry, and maybe, instead of greens, it wanted meat.

Sarah felt a shudder roll through her body. Her stomach lurched. You’re being silly, she told herself, and pushed back the sheets, swinging her legs out of bed. When she looked down at her bare feet, her heart froze in her chest, and she forgot to breathe.

Her feet were dirty. Not the kind of dirty that could be explained by walking barefoot indoors, either. They were caked with mud, and her shins were scraped and scabbed. One of her toenails had been torn off completely, another was ripped at the quick. When she reached down to brush some of the mud away, she saw something under her fingernails. She clenched her hands into fists and whipped them behind her back, squeezing her eyes shut for good measure.

What the fuck?

What the actual, living fuck?

She voiced a terrible, quavering moan and pressed her shaking hand against her forehead. He did something to me, she thought. Will. He did something.

With her eyes closed, Sarah made herself think, forced herself to remember their night together. She recalled, first, the food, the slippery, salty bits of fish. Raw oysters that he’d ordered (“Do you like them?” he’d asked, and she’d said, “Oh, of course!”), and she’d told him they were delicious, even though the feel of that almost-living flesh sliding down her throat had revolted her. I think what you need is a writer’s retreat, he’d said. But she hadn’t even told him about the proposal she’d sent to her previous agent. They’d never discussed what she wanted to write next. So how had he known she’d had a story ready?