Mateo had assumed “close no matter what” was an emotional thing, not a physical one. This was more like … well, like she’d handcuffed him. “Um, Nadia?”

He didn’t get a chance to object, though, because now they were no longer alone.

“What have we here?” Jeremy Prasad had wandered off from the party, too, apparently; he had a bottle in one hand and his usual arrogant sneer on his face. “Wow, Mateo, I knew you didn’t have much luck with girls, but here’s a tip: They like it if you actually take them inside first.”

Mateo wanted to tell Jeremy to get lost, but more than that, he wanted his hands free, and whatever spell Nadia had cast was really strong. Too strong.

Nadia gave Jeremy an appraising look and said simply, “You’ll do.”

Then she held one hand out, and it was—impossible to describe, something blacker than night, insubstantial and swirling like octopus ink in water, lacing through the air almost faster than he could see and piercing Jeremy’s body like so many knives.

Jeremy’s face froze in an expression of pain and shock—and then he went limp. He fell face-first into the sand, hard. The bottle landed beside him, and beer glugged out, forming a puddle around one of Jeremy’s hands.

Mateo knew, just by looking at him, that Jeremy was dead.

He turned to look at Nadia, realizing even as he did so that this wasn’t Nadia. As he watched, horrified, her face and form seemed to melt, like spun sugar dissolving in water. The mask split, peeled off, and washed away, leaving Elizabeth standing there.

She was no longer half-animal, no longer coated in writhing gold. She was only herself, and yet somehow more terrible than ever before.

“I would have kept the illusion for a while,” she said, almost apologetic. “You would have enjoyed being with the girl you wanted for a night. I suppose I owed you that much. But I needed to do this. No illusion would have held after you’d seen me take a life.”

Mateo wanted to vomit. He wanted to spit the taste of her kisses from his mouth. But even what had been done to him paled in comparison to the fact that Jeremy Prasad’s dead body lay only a few feet away. The guy was—he had been a total ass, no question, but he didn’t deserve that. He didn’t deserve to get murdered, to fall where he’d been standing. Now he lay on the beach like so much trash washed up by the tide.

He knew there was no point in trying to run. Even before she’d bound him to her—Why had he consented to it? Why hadn’t he known then that this wasn’t Nadia’s style, that Nadia would have insisted on making plans first thing?—Elizabeth would have been able to prevent him from getting away. So he said the only thing that mattered. “You have me. So you don’t have to go after Nadia. Leave her alone.”