“Not until the gun was in my hand,” he’d said. “I thought it would be hard, but in that moment, nothing was easier.”

He was right.

But there was, it turned out, a crucial difference between destroying things and destroying people.

People screamed.

Or at least they tried. Bethany certainly would have, if Marcella hadn’t already grabbed her by the throat, hadn’t eroded through her vocal cords before anything more than a short, futile gasp could escape.

And even then, the men in the other room might have heard, if they hadn’t been laughing so loudly.

It didn’t take long.

One second Bethany’s mouth was open in a perfect O of surprise and the next her plump skin had shriveled, her face twisting into a rictus grin that quickly pulled away to reveal the skull beneath, and then even that turned to ash, as all that was left of Bethany crumbled to the kitchen floor.

It was over so fast—there was hardly any time for Marcella to savor what she’d done, and no time to think about all the things she should be feeling, given the circumstances, or even to wonder at their peculiar absence.

It was just so easy.

As if everything had wanted to come apart.

There was probably some law about that.

Order giving way to chaos.

Marcella took up a dishcloth and wiped the dust from her fingers as another raucous laugh cut through the house. Then a familiar voice called out.

“Doll, where’s that drink?”

Marcella followed the voice down the short hall that ran between the kitchen and the den where the men were playing.

“Where the fuck is my drink?” bellowed Marcus, chair scraping back. He was on his feet when she walked in.

“Hello, boys.”

Marcus didn’t have to feign surprise, since he’d expected her to be dead. His face drained of all color—what was the phrase, oh yes: as if he’d just seen a ghost. The other four men squinted through the haze of liquor and cigar smoke.

“Marce?” said her husband, voice laced with shock.

Oh, how she longed to kill him, but she wanted to use her bare hands, and there was a table between them, and Marcus was holding his ground, looking at her with a mixture of suspicion and worry, and Marcella knew what she had to do. She began to cry. It was easy—all she had to do was think of her life, the one she’d worked so hard for, going up in flames.

“I’ve been so worried,” she said, breath hitching. “I woke up in a hospital, and you weren’t there. The cops said there’d been a fire and I thought—I was afraid—they wouldn’t tell me if you’d been hurt in it.

They wouldn’t tell me anything.”