Evie reaches up and dabs a finger at the almost imperceptible hole in the top of the barrel. She runs her hand around its hammer-forged iron rim for a moment and then grips an edge. She brings her right foot back several feet and kicks clean through two boards at the base of the barrel. She quickly retracts her foot to avoid the tidal rush of wine.

Evie watches the barrel bleed its fermented blood across the cellar floor, draining to almost the final drop. She feels a brief stab of sympathy for the rats that will no doubt venture out from the walls and be found dead on the cellar floor in the morning.

She only hopes a few rodent corpses aren’t enough to raise suspicion.

Evie slips out of the wine cellar with the same stealth she used to survey its interior. In less than a minute she’s rejoined the Revel without turning a single head her way.

She finds her seat across from Spud-Bar awaiting her, along with a bowl of rice and a small plate with several cabbage cups on it.

“Thank you,” Evie says.

Spud-Bar, halfway through a bowl of sweet-smelling broth, nods.

“Saw you chattin’ with the Professor before. I’d counsel you against that.”

“Why’s that? Too much truth there?”

Spud-Bar looks up from their bowl, genuinely baffled.

“Truth?”

“I just mean—”

“You do as you like. But of all the types here, that’s the one I’d tell you to ride clear of.”

Evie doesn’t know what to say to that, and so she doesn’t.

They eat.

A high, agonized scream cuts through the idle chatter and off-key music a moment later.

It belongs to a voice on the other side of the pleasure curtain, and there’s no mistaking the bloodcurdling pain in it.

Evie springs from her seat, largely on instinct, and she’s one of the first to reach the curtain, tearing it back and stepping inside, bodies quickly crowding around hers as they flock to do the same.

There’s a small common area on the other side composed of a plush rug, mounds of pillows, and a few wine-stained tables. The rest of the space is smaller, private curtained-off stalls.

They’re standing in the middle of the common area. The Professor, his back half turned to them, is embracing the young man who flirted with him and Evie earlier in the evening. She thinks they’re dancing drunkenly at first, and then the Professor turns their bodies toward her and she sees the blade of the carving knife he’s half buried in the boy’s throat.

The shock is enough to momentarily paralyze even Evie. She simply can’t process what she’s seeing, not after the moment she shared with this same man not an hour ago.

“Lecherous whore!” the Professor growls through a clenched jaw, and opens the boy’s throat half a foot across.