“He lost a lot of blood,” I say, and I wonder how much. A pint? Two pints? More than that? How much of him have I taken for my own?

The nurse hurries us through the labyrinthine hallways and into a narrow room toward the back. We have to squeeze together to fit inside, Michael slumped on the exam table, a veil of sweat on his brow, the rest of us gathered around him. He’s still breathing, though, he’s still alive. I tell myself that’s all that matters.

A wad of gauze on his throat, red seeping through, blotching the nurse’s fresh smock.

“I’ll get the doctor,” she says before vanishing out the door, leaving us alone with what I’ve done.

The room stinks of bleach and bandages and a fresh coat of paint. There’s a mural on one wall, slathered in Day-Glo blue and hot pink and blaze orange, so garish it makes your eyes ache.

But it’s not the bright colors, not the fluffy clouds or the too-golden suns that gets me. It’s the painted faces. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds, staring out at us from the plaster. Some in profile, some turned away, a few gawking at us dead-on, all of them impassive and cold, their eyes little black splotches that never blink, that never tire. I guess the mural is supposed to make us feel welcome, but all it does is make my skin crawl.

Daisy stands back in the corner, blocking one of the faces with her body.

“This place has only been open a couple weeks,” she says as though we’re lucky, as though I couldn’t have timed my attack better. And she’s not wrong—we are lucky. I doubt any other emergency room in this town would admit us, and they certainly wouldn’t take us in without demanding answers I can’t possibly give them.

Michael murmurs on the table, and he’s coming around again, his eyes still glazed but half-open now. Bee and Jane hover over him, purse-lipped like concerned mothers, and Daisy drifts forward, gingerly pressing the gauze into the wound.

“The bleeding’s stopped,” she says, hope blooming in her voice. “See?”

But I won’t look. I won’t get near him, not even when he reaches out, grasping uselessly for my hand.

“Lucy,” he whispers, devoted to the last. Devoted because I made him that way.

I back against the wall. “This never happened before,” I whisper, like that’s an excuse. Like that somehow makes it all right.

Bee watches me, and for the first time, she asks me a question she knows I don’t want to answer. “But haven’t you ever been that hungry before?”

“Yes,” I say, already knowing what will come next.

Bee hesitates before asking, “What did you do then?”