Gray skin. Angry veins. A dead girl’s face. The side of it is peeled away and rotting. The corners of her mouth are red, her lips black and crusty, her eyes sunken and white. She opens her mouth and runs at me, her arms out, she pushes me, throws herself at me and I use the crowbar to keep her back. She digs her nails into my shoulders, while I keep the metal pressed against her throat.

She doesn’t feel it, doesn’t choke against it.

She’s cold.

I force her off me. She gropes to her feet and lunges at me again and I meet her this time, this time I’m on top of her, using the crowbar to keep her pinned against the floor by the neck. I hear something inside of her crunch against the pressure.

“Lily,” I say. “Lily—it’s me. Lily—”

She thrashes under me and then suddenly she stills, seems to focus. She sees me. Her eyes get wide and there’s something in them—I think there’s something in them but I don’t know what and I try so hard to understand it; I’m sorry, I can’t do this anymore. Tears spill over my cheek and drip onto hers. The look in her eyes fades. She digs her hands into the sleeves of my shirt and grinds her teeth together. Her gaze flickers around the room as she tries to figure out a way she can be free from me, always. Even though she knows I’ll die without her.

But maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be.

I drive the crowbar into her face.

I disappear into a dark, empty place.

There is nothing to see, nothing to feel. It’s a relief to be in something so endless and undemanding because everything has been too much and I’ve been so tired. I hear my heartbeat in this place, steady at first, but eventually it slows and then it stops.

I wait.

Sloane.

I open my eyes. My arms are wrapped around my dead sister’s body and my head is resting against her chest and the voice that has pulled me from the darkness, without my permission, belongs to Rhys. He’s above me and she is beneath me and she’s not moving anymore. I uncurl my fingers from her and he helps me to my feet and I stare down at my sister’s dead body and its stillness wraps itself around my heart and it fills my lungs until I want to bury myself inside her. I want to bury myself inside her.

“Sloane, we should—”

The gritty sound of air cutting through dead lungs sounds from the other side of the room and pulls my gaze from Lily. My chest tightens. More dead. Close.

I don’t know how there could be more.