Mo regarded Becca with a stoicism that belied the seriousness of the situation. “C’mon, you can do it. You tell yourself you’re better than I am, but you’ve got that part deep inside you, the part of yourself that you never acknowledge. You don’t understand it yet, how good it feels, watching someone die, that feeling, the jolt of pleasure that courses through you when the light fades from someone’s eyes, knowing that they can never hurt you or betray you. I felt that with Ash. That moment she cried out was like poetry in motion.”

She was baiting Becca now. On the deepest primal level, Becca understood that. The more Mo talked, the angrier Becca got. She closed her eyes, trying to shut out Mo’s words.

“Don’t be a fucking pussy. Do it,” Nate screamed.

Mo was still talking, her words running together. “We’re one and the same, you and me. We’re all animals just waiting for our taste of blood. You can’t resist.”

Something shifted, Mo’s words and Nate’s blending together, like some kind of twisted chant. It was as though Becca were standing outside of her body, watching everything from a distance. She clutched the knife tighter, placing the blade at the edge of Mo’s collarbone.

For the first time, Becca understood Mo and the things she’d done. She liked watching Mo’s eyes flicker with fear, liked the way her breath quickened, her entire body tensing as the blade pierced her flesh. A tiny trickle of blood dripped down onto Mo’s shirt. Mo wasn’t sorry for the things she’d done. She wasn’t going to beg for forgiveness or ask for mercy. She was incapable of feeling any kind of empathy.

Becca could do this. She could kill Mo and get away with it. That would be a fitting end. All she had to do was keep digging the blade in. A rush of pleasure coursed through her body. In that rapid-fire way the mind works, another murder invaded Becca’s thoughts, Robbie’s apartment stained red with blood, her father’s ravaged expression as they waited for the police, the devastated wail Rafi made when he learned that his son was dead. She imagined Christian on her parents’ doorstep, delivering the news. “Becca snapped.”