“Do you know, I’ve never been to this carnival before?”

Mateo remembered being with her at the Halloween carnival when they were little kids. Remembered them riding the same carousel horse. Giving her his cotton candy. Each memory was just one more of her lies.

He and Elizabeth walked through the carnival, hand in hand. The mere touch of her skin repulsed him, but over the course of the last day, he’d learned how futile it was to try to pull back.

(“You consented to the binding spell,” she’d told him sweetly as he’d struggled against her on the beach, his clothes soaked and freezing. “The spells you consent to are always stronger for it.”)

They’d dried off by now. To anyone else, they probably looked like a happy couple. He had on his letter jacket and jeans; Elizabeth wore her usual white dress, carefree of the cold. Twinkling lights had been strung from tent to tent, laced around the tree trunks and branches so that they stood out in the darkening twilight. All the little kids and about half of the adults were in costumes—vampires, Transformers, Disney princesses, a couple of ghosts here and there. People were munching on popcorn balls, drinking sodas out of “collector’s cups.” It was the exact same cheesy carnival it had always been, except this time Elizabeth was here, and she meant to kill them all.

“You think I’m ruthless, don’t you?”

“I know you are.” He could use his voice when he wasn’t trying to defy her; Mateo had learned that today, too.

“If anything less could kill me, I’d do that instead. But it won’t. The One Beneath has released me, but the spell’s magic isn’t that easily undone.”

“Wait. You’re telling me this whole disaster is just so you can die? This is a murder/suicide?”

“Partly.”

“Then what’s the other part?”

Elizabeth gave him a sidelong glance, more openly flirtatious than he’d ever seen her before. “And ruin the surprise?”

“Oh, hey, Mateo. Hey, Elizabeth.” Kendall gave them a wave; she was wearing something very form-fitting, very short, and very green. “So, Mateo, I want you to know that I thought really hard about what you said about racism and stuff, and, like, perspective is incredibly valuable, and so I didn’t go for the sexy geisha thing, and instead I went for sexy Robin Hood.”

“You look wonderful,” Elizabeth gushed. Why had he never heard the mockery behind her “sweet” voice before?

Kendall preened, striking faux-sexy poses that she probably memorized from the package. “Well, it’s sexy girl Robin Hood, obviously. Not that there’s a whole lot of difference, because really Robin Hood was wearing girl clothes back in the day, and I know they all dressed differently then, but get real, the guy had on leggings.”

Mateo wanted to tell her to run. If he could save only one person from this mess, even if that person were Kendall Bender, it would be something. But Elizabeth’s spell held his tongue.