Camilla was no longer sitting at the desk. She was standing in front of it, the blood still gushing from her nose. She and Alice were exactly the same height, stood eye to eye. Alice had never before been this close to something so beautiful. Looking at Camilla, Alice could understand how she ruined males, left them half-crazy with grief, a hole gouged out of their lives so big no girlfriend or daughter could ever fill it: she did it to her father, to Jude, even to Tommy. Suddenly Camilla stepped forward, then paused. She was so near to touching Alice that Alice could feel the sweep of her lashes when she blinked, could smell the blood on her skin, thick and wet and sickly sweet, warmed by the heat inside her body. Her lips, Richard’s lips, only much fuller so that their down-turned corners made them look sexy-moody rather than bad-tempered, parted, and she leaned in even closer, so close that for a second Alice thought she was going to kiss her. Then she reached out, cat quick, grabbed Alice’s wrist. Her grip was like iron.

“I’m doing everything I can on my end,” she said, “but I can only do so much. The rest is up to you.”

The water was still rising, and fast. Alice felt it hit her chin. A panic unleashed inside her. “The rest of what?” she said. And when Camilla turned, gave her her profile, “Camilla, the rest of what? What’s going to happen to Charlie? What’s the danger I have to warn her about?”

“You need to leave now. The situation is getting dire.”

“Then let me go.”

Camilla looked down at Alice’s wrist, up at Alice’s eyes, as if surprised she was the one holding Alice back. Then a smile crept across her face, the blood from her nose running into her mouth, staining her white teeth red. Slowly she shook her head back and forth.

“Camilla, let go of me—” and on the word please, water gushed inside Alice’s mouth, shot up her nostrils. She couldn’t breathe. She thrashed in Camilla’s grip until her lungs were about to burst, and her head felt huge, her eyeballs like they were going to pop out of her sockets, every molecule of her being screaming out for oxygen. Camilla’s eyes never let hers go and her smile never wavered, not once.

Just as she was on the point of passing out, Alice woke up, gasping.

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter

• FIFTEEN •