I HAD NO energy to do anything but lie on the bed. My lips were cracked and bleeding. My legs and arms buzzed but felt weak—too weak to help me escape. So this was what she was going to do? Starve me to death?

She came in the door, and I didn’t even turn my head to look at her.

“Margot,” she said. “I’ve brought you something.”

Food? Maybe it was food. I tracked her movements with my eyes. She came closer and set down a covered plate. Next to the plate was a bottle of water.

“I want you to take this,” she said. “It will help you feel better.”

Maybe if I behaved, she would bring me food. When she held a pill out to me, I took it and put it in my mouth while she uncapped the water. I took a swig and swallowed.

Laura looked on with an expression of joyless gratification. There was no real emotion inside her, I realized. Just performing motherhood, performing happiness, performing sadness. Maybe the anger was real, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she was the kind of evil that feels nothing, not even the pleasure of tormenting.

“Do you see?” she asked. “I’m a good mother. A good mother.”

I couldn’t have begun to comment.

“Page ninety-six,” she said, handing over the blue book. “Third sentence. Fifty copies, please.”

Then she left.

I looked at the plate and died a little bit inside.

On it sat a single dry slice of toast.

Still, I tore it to pieces and shoved it in my mouth.

Then I flipped the book open and grabbed my pen.

Page 96, third sentence:

There is no luckier fate for a child than to be trained up by parents who have the strength of will to remain firm in the face of childish weakness.

Lucky, I thought. Yeah, okay.

I was asleep by the seventh repetition of the sentence.

Instead of a simple bad dream, I woke up to see a tall, thin demon staring down at me. She had long fingers with pointed talons, and her skin was blue-gray and covered in scars—jagged hash marks. Remembrances of the lives she’d taken.

She was Death. And she was here for me. I wanted to move, but I couldn’t force a single muscle to obey me. So I lay in stark terror, unable even to scream, while she dug her talons into my back and neck and limbs.

Finally, I woke up. On the bed next to me was another pill—this one yellow, round, medium-sized; and half a bottle of water.

Laura had been in here while I was asleep.

Shaking with hunger, I took the pill and drank the water.