Wait­ing ai

Wait­ing ai

Upon awak­en­ing, the pro­tag­o­nist observes the removal of faerie blood from the pre­vi­ous night’s inci­dent, indi­cat­ing a desire to mend rela­tions with Tam­lin and adjust to life in the faerie realm. She seeks Tam­lin out, who pro­pos­es a ride instead of dwelling on recent events. They, along with Lucien, trav­el to a breath­tak­ing glen, immers­ing her in its serene beau­ty — a sharp con­trast to the vio­lence and tur­moil she has recent­ly expe­ri­enced. The nar­ra­tive delves into Lucien’s trau­mat­ic past, reveal­ing the deep scars left by famil­ial betray­al and loss, which helps the pro­tag­o­nist gain insight into his com­plex char­ac­ter.

Tam­lin shares a per­son­al child­hood sanc­tu­ary with her, a mag­i­cal pool filled with starlight, sym­bol­iz­ing a moment of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and con­nec­tion between them. The day pro­gress­es with ease, as Tam­lin and the pro­tag­o­nist share per­son­al sto­ries, offer­ing glimpses into their pasts and the events that have shaped them. The pro­tag­o­nist’s nar­ra­tive about her fam­i­ly’s down­fall and her sub­se­quent respon­si­bil­i­ty show­cas­es her resilience and deter­mi­na­tion. The chap­ter cul­mi­nates in the pro­tag­o­nist’s dar­ing deci­sion to embrace the moment, sym­bol­ized by her will­ing­ness to swim in the enchant­ed pool, sug­gest­ing a piv­otal moment of release and accep­tance in her jour­ney.

This chap­ter art­ful­ly con­trasts themes of beau­ty and bru­tal­i­ty, cap­tur­ing the protagonist’s inter­nal strug­gle to find her place in a world that is both won­drous and hos­tile. Through moments of light-heart­ed­ness and deep per­son­al rev­e­la­tion, it explores themes of iden­ti­ty, accep­tance, and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of redemp­tion and con­nec­tion in the after­math of con­flict.

Chap­ter 18 begins with the nar­ra­tor and his fam­i­ly plan­ning a vis­it to the Philadel­phia Muse­um of Art to see a Pis­sar­ro show. Upon the nar­ra­tor’s arrival by train, the focus swift­ly shifts to the dynam­ic between Maeve, the nar­ra­tor’s sis­ter, and their moth­er, high­light­ing their close bond and the recent health chal­lenges their moth­er has faced, includ­ing cataract surgery. The nar­ra­tive cap­tures the fam­i­ly’s jour­ney through Philadel­phia, rem­i­nisc­ing about the past, and dis­cussing plans to vis­it Paris.

The heart of the chap­ter lies in the com­plex fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships and the mem­o­ries asso­ci­at­ed with their old home, the Dutch House. Through the nar­ra­tor’s reflec­tions, we under­stand the sig­nif­i­cance of Maeve in his life, the impact of their moth­er’s depar­ture and sub­se­quent return, and the lin­ger­ing resent­ment towards Andrea, their step­moth­er. The vis­it to the Dutch House brings painful mem­o­ries to the sur­face, yet it’s also a trans­for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence, espe­cial­ly when they encounter Andrea who has sig­nif­i­cant­ly declined men­tal­ly. This unex­pect­ed meet­ing forces the fam­i­ly mem­bers to con­front their past and their feel­ings towards Andrea, lead­ing to a moment of empa­thy and sad­ness.

Maeve’s strug­gle with her moth­er’s deci­sion to help care for Andrea, jux­ta­posed with her own need for her moth­er’s love and sup­port, encap­su­lates the over­ar­ch­ing themes of for­give­ness, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, and the endur­ing com­plex­i­ty of famil­ial bonds. The chap­ter con­cludes with the nar­ra­tor and Maeve debat­ing their moth­er’s inten­tions and the poten­tial ram­i­fi­ca­tions of her involve­ment with Andrea’s fam­i­ly.

The chap­ter remark­ably cap­tures the del­i­cate bal­ance between mov­ing on from the past and being pulled back by its unre­solved issues. Through vivid char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and emo­tive nar­ra­tive, it explores themes of love, loss, and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of for­give­ness, reveal­ing the pro­found impact of fam­i­ly dynam­ics on per­son­al iden­ti­ty and growth.

squeak­ing rhyth­mi­cal­ly.

The stark real­iza­tion hit Alice like an icy blast. Life in the cab­in, indeed in their lit­tle world, was evolv­ing in ways she had scarce­ly con­tem­plat­ed. Margery, the dar­ing, inde­pen­dent soul who nev­er sought per­mis­sion nor approval, was now vis­i­bly teth­ered to a new chap­ter that whis­pered of domes­tic­i­ty and unchar­tered ter­ri­to­ries of the heart. The preg­nan­cy, so bold­ly owned by Margery despite soci­etal frowns, sym­bol­ized a defi­ance but also a pro­found shift; not just in her life but also in the fab­ric of their close-knit cir­cle.

As Alice retreat­ed dis­creet­ly, the lay­ers of her thoughts peeled away to reveal a stark ache for some­thing more, some­thing per­haps akin to what Margery and Sven shared. This real­iza­tion dawned upon her amidst the throes of a small town reel­ing under the after­math of a dis­as­ter, one that bore the indeli­ble mark of Van Cleve’s neg­li­gence. Margery, with her usu­al fer­vor, con­front­ed Van Cleve, accus­ing him of caus­ing the flood through his incom­pe­tent man­age­ment of the slur­ry dam, risk­ing lives for prof­it. Her pub­lic out­burst, a blend of right­eous fury and des­per­ate con­cern, laid bare the chasm between the pow­er­ful and the pow­er­less, between those whose voic­es could ral­ly a com­mu­ni­ty and those whose whis­pers were lost amid ruins.

Margery’s con­fronta­tion wasn’t just a bat­tle for envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice or a fight against cor­po­rate malfea­sance; it was a raw scream against the ero­sion of decen­cy, com­mu­ni­ty, and the very land they all called home. In the face of Van Cleve’s obfus­ca­tion and threats, Margery stood unwa­ver­ing, sup­port­ed silent­ly by Sven, whose sim­ple act of solidarity—a pro­tec­tive hand on her belly—spoke vol­umes of their bond and shared strug­gle.

This chap­ter, while fram­ing a deeply per­son­al account of Margery’s preg­nan­cy and her and Sven’s defi­ance against social norms and cor­po­rate greed, also sketched a vivid pic­ture of a com­mu­ni­ty at a cross­roads. The floods, caused by human avarice, act­ed as a grim reminder of the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties that bound them all, rich and poor alike, though not equal­ly. It under­scored the resilience of those like Margery, who, in the face of loom­ing threats and per­son­al attacks, chose to stand tall for what she believed in, show­ing that strength often lies not in acqui­es­cence but in the audac­i­ty to chal­lenge the sta­tus quo.

Alice’s qui­et with­draw­al from the scene of Margery’s inti­mate moment with Sven, jux­ta­posed with her role as a wit­ness to Margery’s con­fronta­tion with Van Cleve, encap­su­lates her own inner tumult and growth. It hints at a long­ing for inti­ma­cy and a stake in the larg­er bat­tles of their time, reflect­ing the uni­ver­sal quest for con­nec­tion, jus­tice, and a place to call home amidst the tur­bu­lent waves of change.

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

EIGHTEEN
That night, I wake up to the sound of shout­ing.
The attic is incred­i­bly well insu­lat­ed, so I can’t hear any­thing being
said. But there are loud voic­es com­ing from below my room. A male voice
and a female voice. Andrew and Nina.
Then I hear a crash.
Instinc­tive­ly, I roll out of bed. Maybe it’s none of my busi­ness, but
some­thing is going on down there. I have to at least make sure every­thing is
okay.
I put my hand on the door­knob to my room, and it doesn’t turn. Most of
the time, I’m used to the fact that the door sticks. But every once in a while,
I get a jab of pan­ic. But then the knob shifts under my hand. And I’m out.
I descend the creaky steps to the sec­ond floor. Now that I’m out of the
attic, the shout­ing is much loud­er. It’s com­ing from the mas­ter bed­room.
Nina’s voice, yelling at Andrew. She sounds almost hys­ter­i­cal.
“It’s not fair!” she cries. “I did every­thing I could and—”
“Nina,” he says. “It’s not your fault.”
“It is my fault! If you were with a younger woman, you could have a
baby like you want! It’s my fault!”
“Nina…”
“You’d be bet­ter off with­out me!”
“Come on, don’t say that…”
“It’s true!” But she doesn’t sound sad. She sounds angry. “You wish I
were gone!”
“Nina, stop it!”
There’s anoth­er loud crash from inside the room. Fol­lowed by a third
crash. I take a step back, torn between knock­ing on the door to make sure
every­thing is okay and want­i­ng to scur­ry back to my room and hide. I stand
there sev­er­al sec­onds, par­a­lyzed by my inde­ci­sion. Then the door is yanked
open.
Nina is stand­ing there in the same lily-white night­gown she was
wear­ing the night she caught me and Andrew in the liv­ing room. But now I
notice a streak of crim­son on the pale mate­r­i­al, start­ing at the side of her hip
and run­ning down the length of the skirt.
“Mil­lie.” Her eyes bore into me. “What are you doing here?”
I look down at her hands and see the same crim­son is all over her right
palm. “I…”
“Are you spy­ing on us?” She arch­es an eye­brow. “Are you lis­ten­ing to
our con­ver­sa­tion?”
“No!” I take a step back. “I just heard a crash and I was wor­ried that… I
want­ed to make sure every­thing is okay.”
She notices my gaze direct­ed at what I’m almost sure is a blood stain on
her gown. She looks almost amused by it. “I just cut my hand a bit. Noth­ing
to wor­ry about. I don’t need your help.”
But what was going on in there? Is that real­ly why there’s blood all over
her night­gown? And where is Andrew?
What if she killed him? What if he’s lying dead in the mid­dle of the
bed­room? Or worse, what if he’s bleed­ing to death right now, and I have a
chance to save him? I can’t just walk away. I may have done some bad
things in my life, but I’m not going to let Nina get away with mur­der.
“Where’s Andrew?” I say.
Pink cir­cles form on her cheeks. “Excuse me?”
“I just…” I shift between my bare feet. “I heard a crash. Is he okay?”
Nina stares at me. “How dare you! What are you accus­ing me of?”
It occurs to me that Andrew is a big, strong man. If Nina made short
work of him, what chance would I stand against her? But I can’t move. I
have to make sure he’s okay.
“Go back to your room,” she orders me.
I swal­low a lump in my throat. “No.”
“Go back to your room or else you’re fired.”
She means it. I can see it in her eyes. But I can’t move. I start to protest
again, but then I hear some­thing. Some­thing that makes my shoul­ders sag

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

CHAPTER
18
Amren was stand­ing at the foot of my bed.
I jolt­ed back, slam­ming into the head­board, blind­ed by the morn­ing light
blaz­ing in, fum­bling for a weapon, any­thing to use—
“No won­der you’re so thin if you vom­it up your guts every night.” She
sniffed, her lip curl­ing. “You reek of it.”
The bed­room door was shut. Rhys had said no one entered with­out his
per­mis­sion, but—
She chucked some­thing onto the bed. A lit­tle gold amulet of pearl and
cloudy blue stone. “This got me out of the Prison. Wear it in, and they can
nev­er keep you.”
I didn’t touch the amulet.
“Allow me to make one thing clear,” Amren said, brac­ing both hands on
the carved wood­en foot­board. “I do not give that amulet light­ly. But you
may bor­row it, while you do what needs to be done, and return it to me
when you are fin­ished. If you keep it, I will find you, and the results won’t
be pleas­ant. But it is yours to use in the Prison.”
By the time my fin­gers brushed the cool met­al and stone, she’d walked
out the door.
Rhys hadn’t been wrong about the fire­drake com­par­i­son.
Rhys kept frown­ing at the amulet as we hiked the slope of the Prison, so
steep that at times we had to crawl on our hands and knees. High­er and
high­er we climbed, and I drank from the count­less lit­tle streams that
gur­gled through the bumps and hol­lows in the moss-and-grass slopes. All
around the mist drift­ed by, whipped by the wind, whose hol­low moan­ing
drowned out our crunch­ing foot­steps.
When I caught Rhys look­ing at the neck­lace for the tenth time, I said,
“What?”
“She gave you that.”
Not a ques­tion.
“It must be seri­ous, then,” I said. “The risk with—”
“Don’t say any­thing you don’t want oth­ers hear­ing.” He point­ed to the
stone beneath us. “The inmates have noth­ing bet­ter to do than to lis­ten
through the earth and rock for gos­sip. They’ll sell any bit of infor­ma­tion for
food, sex, maybe a breath of air.”
I could do this; I could mas­ter this fear.
Amren had got­ten out. And stayed out. And the amulet—it’d keep me
free, too.
“I’m sor­ry,” I said. “About yes­ter­day.” I’d stayed in bed for hours, unable
to move or think.
Rhys held out a hand to help me climb a par­tic­u­lar­ly steep rock, eas­i­ly
haul­ing me up to where he perched at its top. It had been so long—too long
—since I’d been out­doors, using my body, rely­ing on it. My breath­ing was
ragged, even with my new immor­tal­i­ty. “You’ve got noth­ing to be sor­ry
for,” he said. “You’re here now.” But enough of a cow­ard that I nev­er would
have gone with­out that amulet. He added with a wink, “I won’t dock your
pay.”
I was too wind­ed to even scowl. We climbed until the upper face of the
moun­tain became a wall before us, noth­ing but grassy slopes sweep­ing
behind, far below, to where they flowed to the rest­less gray sea. Rhys drew
the sword from his back in a swift move­ment.
“Don’t look so sur­prised,” he said.
“I’ve—never seen you with a weapon.” Aside from the dag­ger he’d
grabbed to slit Amarantha’s throat at the end—to spare me from agony.
“Cass­ian would laugh him­self hoarse hear­ing that. And then make me go
into the spar­ring ring with him.”
“Can he beat you?”
“Hand-to-hand com­bat? Yes. He’d have to earn it for a change, but he’d
win.” No arro­gance, no pride. “Cass­ian is the best war­rior I’ve encoun­tered
in any court, any land. He leads my armies because of it.”
I didn’t doubt his claim. And the oth­er Illyr­i­an … “Azriel—his hands.
The scars, I mean,” I said. “Where did they come from?”
Rhys was qui­et a moment. Then he said too soft­ly, “His father had two
legit­i­mate sons, both old­er than Azriel. Both cru­el and spoiled. They
learned it from their moth­er, the lord’s wife. For the eleven years that Azriel
lived in his father’s keep, she saw to it he was kept in a cell with no
win­dow, no light. They let him out for an hour every day—let him see his
moth­er for an hour once a week. He wasn’t per­mit­ted to train, or fly, or any
of the things his Illyr­i­an instincts roared at him to do. When he was eight,
his broth­ers decid­ed it’d be fun to see what hap­pened when you mixed an
Illyrian’s quick heal­ing gifts with oil—and fire. The war­riors heard Azriel’s
scream­ing. But not quick enough to save his hands.”
Nau­sea swamped me. But that still left him with three more years liv­ing
with them. What oth­er hor­rors had he endured before he was sent to that
moun­tain-camp? “Were—were his broth­ers pun­ished?”
Rhys’s face was as unfeel­ing as the rock and wind and sea around us as
he said with lethal qui­et, “Even­tu­al­ly.”
There was enough raw­ness in the words that I instead asked, “And Mor
—what does she do for you?”
“Mor is who I’ll call in when the armies fail and Cass­ian and Azriel are
both dead.”
My blood chilled. “So she’s sup­posed to wait until then?”
“No. As my Third, Mor is my … court over­seer. She looks after the
dynam­ics between the Court of Night­mares and the Court of Dreams, and
runs both Velaris and the Hewn City. I sup­pose in the mor­tal realm, she
might be con­sid­ered a queen.”
“And Amren?”
“Her duties as my Sec­ond make her my polit­i­cal advis­er, walk­ing library,
and doer of my dirty work. I appoint­ed her upon gain­ing my throne. But she
was my ally, maybe my friend, long before that.”
“I mean—in that war where your armies fail and Cass­ian and Azriel are
dead, and even Mor is gone.” Each word was like ice on my tongue.
Rhys paused his reach for the bald rock face before us. “If that day
comes, I’ll find a way to break the spell on Amren and unleash her on the
world. And ask her to end me first.”
By the Moth­er. “What is she?” After our chat this morn­ing, per­haps it
was stu­pid to ask.
“Some­thing else. Some­thing worse than us. And if she ever finds a way
to shed her prison of flesh and bone … Caul­dron save us all.”
I shiv­ered again and stared up at the sheer stone wall. “I can’t climb bare
rock like that.”
“You don’t need to,” Rhys said, lay­ing a hand flat on the stone. Like a
mirage, it van­ished in a rip­ple of light.
Pale, carved gates stood in its place, so high their tops were lost to the
mist.
Gates of bone.
The bone-gates swung open silent­ly, reveal­ing a cav­ern of black so inky I
had nev­er seen its like, even Under the Moun­tain.
I gripped the amulet at my throat, the met­al warm under my palm. Amren
got out. I would walk out, too.
Rhys put a warm hand on my back and guid­ed me inside, three balls of
moon­light bob­bing before us.
No—no, no, no, no—
“Breathe,” he said in my ear. “One breath.”
“Where are the guards?” I man­aged to get out past the tight­ness in my
lungs.
“They dwell with­in the rock of the moun­tain,” he mur­mured, his hand
find­ing mine and wrap­ping around it as he tugged me into the immor­tal
gloom. “They only emerge at feed­ing time, or to deal with rest­less
pris­on­ers. They are noth­ing but shad­ows of thought and an ancient spell.”
With the small lights float­ing ahead, I tried not to look too long at the
gray walls. Espe­cial­ly when they were so rough-hewn that the jagged bits
could have been a nose, or a crag­gy brow, or a set of sneer­ing lips.
The dry ground was clear of any­thing but peb­bles. And there was silence.
Utter silence as we round­ed a bend, and the last of the light from the misty
world fad­ed into inky black.
I focused on my breath­ing. I couldn’t be trapped here; I couldn’t be
locked in this hor­ri­ble, dead place.
The path plunged deep into the bel­ly of the moun­tain, and I clutched
Rhys’s fin­gers to keep from los­ing my foot­ing. He still had his sword
gripped in his oth­er hand.
“Do all the High Lords have access?” My words were so soft they were
devoured by the dark. Even that thrum­ming pow­er in my veins had
van­ished, bur­row­ing some­where in my bones.
“No. The Prison is law unto itself; the island may be even an eighth
court. But it falls under my juris­dic­tion, and my blood is keyed to the
gates.”
“Could you free the inmates?”
“No. Once the sen­tence is giv­en and a pris­on­er pass­es those gates …
They belong to the Prison. It will nev­er let them out. I take sen­tenc­ing
peo­ple here very, very seri­ous­ly.”
“Have you ever—”
“Yes. And now is not the time to speak of it.” He squeezed my hand in
empha­sis.
We wound down through the gloom.
There were no doors. No lights.
No sounds. Not even a trick­le of water.
But I could feel them.
I could feel them sleep­ing, pac­ing, run­ning hands and claws over the
oth­er side of the walls.
They were ancient, and cru­el in a way I had nev­er known, not even with
Ama­ran­tha. They were infi­nite, and patient, and had learned the lan­guage of
dark­ness, of stone.
“How long,” I breathed. “How long was she in here?” I didn’t dare say
her name.
“Azriel looked once. Into archives in our old­est tem­ples and libraries. All
he found was a vague men­tion that she went in before Pry­thi­an was split
into the courts—and emerged once they had been estab­lished. Her
impris­on­ment pre­dates our writ­ten word. I don’t know how long she was in
here—a few mil­len­nia seems like a fair guess.”
Hor­ror roiled in my gut. “You nev­er asked?”
“Why both­er? She’ll tell me when it’s nec­es­sary.”
“Where did she come from?” The brooch he’d giv­en her—such a small
gift, for a mon­ster who had once dwelled here.
“I don’t know. Though there are leg­ends that claim when the world was
born, there were … rips in the fab­ric of the realms. That in the chaos of
Form­ing, crea­tures from oth­er worlds could walk through one of those rips
and enter anoth­er world. But the rips closed at will, and the crea­tures could
become trapped, with no way home.”
It was more hor­ri­fy­ing than I could fathom—both that mon­sters had
walked between worlds, and the ter­ror of being trapped in anoth­er realm.
“You think she was one of them?”
“I think that she is the only one of her kind, and there is no record of
oth­ers ever hav­ing exist­ed. Even the Suriel have num­bers, how­ev­er small.
But she—and some of those in the Prison … I think they came from
some­where else. And they have been look­ing for a way home for a long,
long time.”
I was shiv­er­ing beneath the fur-lined leather, my breath cloud­ing in front
of me.
Down and down we went, and time lost its grip. It could have been hours
or days, and we paused only when my use­less, wast­ed body demand­ed
water. Even while I drank, he didn’t let go of my hand. As if the rock would
swal­low me up for­ev­er. I made sure those breaks were swift and rare.
And still we went onward, deep­er. Only the lights and his hand kept me
from feel­ing as if I were about to free-fall into dark­ness. For a heart­beat, the
reek of my own dun­geon cell cloyed in my nose, and the crunch of moldy
hay tick­led my cheek—
Rhys’s hand tight­ened on my own. “Just a bit far­ther.”
“We must be near the bot­tom by now.”
“Past it. The Bone Carv­er is caged beneath the roots of the moun­tain.”
“Who is he? What is he?” I’d only been briefed in what I was to say—
noth­ing of what to expect. No doubt to keep me from pan­ick­ing too
thor­ough­ly.
“No one knows. He’ll appear as he wants to appear.”
“Shape-shifter?”
“Yes and no. He’ll appear to you as one thing, and I might be stand­ing
right beside you and see anoth­er.”
I tried not to start bleat­ing like cat­tle. “And the bone carv­ing?”
“You’ll see.” Rhys stopped before a smooth slab of stone. The hall
con­tin­ued down—down into the age­less dark. The air here was tight,
com­pact. Even my puffs of breath on the chill air seemed short-lived.
Rhysand at last released my hand, only to lay his once more on the bare
stone. It rip­pled beneath his palm, forming—a door.
Like the gates above, it was of ivory—bone. And in its sur­face were
etched count­less images: flo­ra and fau­na, seas and clouds, stars and moons,
infants and skele­tons, crea­tures fair and foul—
It swung away. The cell was pitch-black, hard­ly dis­tin­guish­able from the
hall—
“I have carved the doors for every pris­on­er in this place,” said a small
voice with­in, “but my own remains my favorite.”
“I’d have to agree,” Rhysand said. He stepped inside, the light bob­bing
ahead to illu­mi­nate a dark-haired boy sit­ting against the far wall, eyes of
crush­ing blue tak­ing in Rhysand, then slid­ing to where I lurked in the
door­way.
Rhys reached into a bag I hadn’t real­ized he’d been carrying—no, one
he’d sum­moned from what­ev­er pock­et between realms he used for stor­age.
He chucked an object toward the boy, who looked no more than eight.
White gleamed as it clacked on the rough stone floor. Anoth­er bone, long
and sturdy—and jagged on one end.
“The calf-bone that made the final kill when Feyre slew the Mid­den­gard
Wyrm,” Rhys said.
My very blood stilled. There had been many bones that I’d laid in my
trap—I hadn’t noticed which had end­ed the Wyrm. Or thought any­one
would.
“Come inside,” was all the Bone Carv­er said, and there was no
inno­cence, no kind­ness in that child’s voice.
I took one step in and no more.
“It has been an age,” the boy said, gob­bling down the sight of me, “since
some­thing new came into this world.”
“Hel­lo,” I breathed.
The boy’s smile was a mock­ery of inno­cence. “Are you fright­ened?”
“Yes,” I said. Nev­er lie—that had been Rhys’s first com­mand.
The boy stood, but kept to the oth­er side of the cell. “Feyre,” he
mur­mured, cock­ing his head. The orb of fae­light glazed the inky hair in
sil­ver. “Fay-ruh,” he said again, draw­ing out the syl­la­bles as if he could
taste them. At last, he straight­ened his head. “Where did you go when you
died?”
“A ques­tion for a ques­tion,” I replied, as I’d been instruct­ed over
break­fast.
The Bone Carv­er inclined his head to Rhysand. “You were always
smarter than your fore­fa­thers.” But those eyes alight­ed on me. “Tell me
where you went, what you saw—and I will answer your ques­tion.”
Rhys gave me a sub­tle nod, but his eyes were wary. Because what the
boy had asked …
I had to calm my breath­ing to think—to remem­ber.
But there was blood and death and pain and screaming—and she was
break­ing me, killing me so slow­ly, and Rhys was there, roar­ing in fury as I
died, Tam­lin beg­ging for my life on his knees before her throne … But
there was so much agony, and I want­ed it to be over, want­ed it all to stop—
Rhys had gone rigid while he mon­i­tored the Bone Carv­er, as if those
mem­o­ries were freely flow­ing past the men­tal shields I’d made sure were
intact this morn­ing. And I won­dered if he thought I’d give up then and
there.
I bunched my hands into fists.
I had lived; I had got­ten out. I would get out today.
“I heard the crack,” I said. Rhys’s head whipped toward me. “I heard the
crack when she broke my neck. It was in my ears, but also inside my skull. I
was gone before I felt any­thing more than the first lash of pain.”
The Bone Carver’s vio­let eyes seemed to glow brighter.
“And then it was dark. A dif­fer­ent sort of dark than this place. But there
was a … thread,” I said. “A teth­er. And I yanked on it—and sud­den­ly I
could see. Not through my eyes, but—but his,” I said, inclin­ing my head
toward Rhys. I uncurled the fin­gers of my tat­tooed hand. “And I knew I was
dead, and this tiny scrap of spir­it was all that was left of me, cling­ing to the
thread of our bar­gain.”
“But was there any­one there—were you see­ing any­thing beyond?”
“There was only that bond in the dark­ness.”
Rhysand’s face had gone pale, his mouth a tight line. “And when I was
Made anew,” I said, “I fol­lowed that bond back—to me. I knew that home
was on the oth­er end of it. There was light then. Like swim­ming up through
sparkling wine—”
“Were you afraid?”
“All I want­ed was to return to—to the peo­ple around me. I want­ed it
bad­ly enough I didn’t have room for fear. The worst had hap­pened, and the
dark­ness was calm and qui­et. It did not seem like a bad thing to fade into.
But I want­ed to go home. So I fol­lowed the bond home.”
“There was no oth­er world,” the Bone Carv­er pushed.
“If there was or is, I did not see it.”
“No light, no por­tal?”
Where is it that you want to go? The ques­tion almost leaped off my
tongue. “It was only peace and dark­ness.”
“Did you have a body?”
“No.”
“Did—”
“That’s enough from you,” Rhysand purred—the sound like vel­vet over
sharpest steel. “You said a ques­tion for a ques­tion. Now you’ve asked … ”
He did a tal­ly on his fin­gers. “Six.”
The Bone Carv­er leaned back against the wall and slid to a sit­ting
posi­tion. “It is a rare day when I meet some­one who comes back from true
death. For­give me for want­i­ng to peer behind the cur­tain.” He waved a
del­i­cate hand in my direc­tion. “Ask it, girl.”
“If there was no body—nothing but per­haps a bit of bone,” I said as
solid­ly as I could, “would there be a way to res­ur­rect that per­son? To grow
them a new body, put their soul into it.”
Those eyes flashed. “Was the soul some­how pre­served? Con­tained?”
I tried not to think about the eye ring Ama­ran­tha had worn, the soul she’d
trapped inside to wit­ness her every hor­ror and deprav­i­ty. “Yes.”
“There is no way.”
I almost sighed in relief.
“Unless … ” The boy bounced each fin­ger off his thumb, his hand like
some pale, twitchy insect. “Long ago, before the High Fae, before man,
there was a Caul­dron … They say all the mag­ic was con­tained inside it, that
the world was born in it. But it fell into the wrong hands. And great and
hor­ri­ble things were done with it. Things were forged with it. Such wicked
things that the Caul­dron was even­tu­al­ly stolen back at great cost. It could
not be destroyed, for it had Made all things, and if it were bro­ken, then life
would cease to be. So it was hid­den. And for­got­ten. Only with that
Caul­dron could some­thing that is dead be reforged like that.”
Rhysand’s face was again a mask of calm. “Where did they hide it?”
“Tell me a secret no one knows, Lord of Night, and I’ll tell you mine.”
I braced myself for what­ev­er hor­ri­ble truth was about to come my way.
But Rhysand said, “My right knee gets a twinge of pain when it rains. I
wrecked it dur­ing the War, and it’s hurt ever since.”
The Bone Carv­er bit out a harsh laugh, even as I gaped at Rhys. “You
always were my favorite,” he said, giv­ing a smile I would nev­er for a
moment think was child­like. “Very well. The Caul­dron was hid­den at the
bot­tom of a frozen lake in Lap­plund—” Rhys began to turn for me, as if
he’d head there right now, but the Bone Carv­er added, “And van­ished a
long, long time ago.” Rhys halt­ed. “I don’t know where it went to—or
where it is now. Mil­len­nia before you were born, the three feet on which it
stands were suc­cess­ful­ly cleaved from its base in an attempt to frac­ture
some of its pow­er. It worked—barely. Remov­ing the feet was like cut­ting
off the first knuck­le of a fin­ger. Irk­some, but you could still use the rest
with some dif­fi­cul­ty. The feet were hid­den at three dif­fer­ent tem­ples—
Cesere, San­gravah, and Iti­ca. If they have gone miss­ing, it is like­ly the
Caul­dron is active once more—and that the wield­er wants it at full pow­er
and not a wisp of it miss­ing.”
That was why the tem­ples had been ran­sacked. To get the feet on which
the Caul­dron stood and restore it to its full pow­er. Rhys mere­ly said, “I
don’t sup­pose you know who now has the Caul­dron.”
The Bone Carv­er point­ed a small fin­ger at me. “Promise that you’ll give
me her bones when she dies and I’ll think about it.” I stiff­ened, but the boy
laughed. “No—I don’t think even you would promise that, Rhysand.”
I might have called the look on Rhys’s face a warn­ing. “Thank you for
your help,” he said, plac­ing a hand on my back to guide me out.
But if he knew … I turned again to the boy-crea­ture. “There was a choice
—in Death,” I said.
Those eyes gut­tered with cobalt fire.
Rhys’s hand con­tract­ed on my back, but remained. Warm, steady. And I
won­dered if the touch was more to reas­sure him that I was there, still
breath­ing.
“I knew,” I went on, “that I could drift away into the dark. And I chose to
fight—to hold on for a bit longer. Yet I knew if I want­ed, I could have
fad­ed. And maybe it would be a new world, a realm of rest and peace. But I
wasn’t ready for it—not to go there alone. I knew there was some­thing else
wait­ing beyond that dark. Some­thing good.”
For a moment, those blue eyes flared brighter. Then the boy said, “You
know who has the Caul­dron, Rhysand. Who has been pil­lag­ing the tem­ples.
You only came here to con­firm what you have long guessed.”
“The King of Hybern.”
Dread sluiced through my veins and pooled in my stom­ach. I shouldn’t
have been sur­prised, should have known, but …
The carv­er said noth­ing more. Wait­ing for anoth­er truth.
So I offered up anoth­er shat­tered piece of me. “When Ama­ran­tha made
me kill those two faeries, if the third hadn’t been Tam­lin, I would have put
the dag­ger in my own heart at the end.”
Rhys went still.
“I knew there was no com­ing back from what I’d done,” I said,
won­der­ing if the blue flame in the carver’s eyes might burn my ruined soul
to ash. “And once I broke their curse, once I knew I’d saved them, I just
want­ed enough time to turn that dag­ger on myself. I only decid­ed I want­ed
to live when she killed me, and I knew I had not fin­ished what­ev­er …
what­ev­er it was I’d been born to do.”
I dared a glance at Rhys, and there was some­thing like dev­as­ta­tion on his
beau­ti­ful face. It was gone in a blink.
Even the Bone Carv­er said gen­tly, “With the Caul­dron, you could do
oth­er things than raise the dead. You could shat­ter the wall.”
The only thing keep­ing human lands—my family—safe from not just
Hybern, but any oth­er faeries.
“It is like­ly that Hybern has been qui­et for so many years because he was
hunt­ing the Caul­dron, learn­ing its secrets. Res­ur­rec­tion of a spe­cif­ic
indi­vid­ual might very well have been his first test once the feet were
reunited—and now he finds that the Caul­dron is pure ener­gy, pure pow­er.
And like any mag­ic, it can be deplet­ed. So he will let it rest, let it gath­er
strength—learn its secrets to feed it more ener­gy, more pow­er.”
“Is there a way to stop it,” I breathed.
Silence. Expec­tant, wait­ing silence.
Rhys’s voice was hoarse as he said, “Don’t offer him one more—”
“When the Caul­dron was made,” the carv­er inter­rupt­ed, “its dark mak­er
used the last of the molten ore to forge a book. The Book of Breath­ings. In
it, writ­ten between the carved words, are the spells to negate the Cauldron’s
power—or con­trol it whol­ly. But after the War, it was split into two pieces.
One went to the Fae, one to the six human queens. It was part of the Treaty,
pure­ly sym­bol­ic, as the Caul­dron had been lost for mil­len­nia and con­sid­ered
mere myth. The Book was believed harm­less, because like calls to like—
and only that which was Made can speak those spells and sum­mon its
pow­er. No crea­ture born of the earth may wield it, so the High Lords and
humans dis­missed it as lit­tle more than a his­tor­i­cal heir­loom, but if the
Book were in the hands of some­thing reforged … You would have to test
such a the­o­ry, of course—but … it might be pos­si­ble.” His eyes nar­rowed to
amused slits as I real­ized … real­ized …
“So now the High Lord of Sum­mer pos­sess­es our piece, and the reign­ing
mor­tal queens have the oth­er entombed in their shin­ing palace by the sea.
Prythian’s half is guard­ed, pro­tect­ed with blood-spells keyed to Sum­mer
him­self. The one belong­ing to the mor­tal queens … They were crafty, when
they received their gift. They used our own kind to spell the Book, to bind it
—so that if it were ever stolen, if, let’s say, a High Lord were to win­now
into their cas­tle to steal it … the Book would melt into ore and be lost. It
must be freely giv­en by a mor­tal queen, with no trick­ery, no mag­ic
involved.” A lit­tle laugh. “Such clever, love­ly crea­tures, humans.”
The carv­er seemed lost in ancient memory—then shook his head.
“Reunite both halves of the Book of Breath­ings and you will be able to
nul­li­fy the pow­ers of the Caul­dron. Hope­ful­ly before it returns to full
strength and shat­ters that wall.”
I didn’t both­er say­ing thank you. Not with the infor­ma­tion he’d told us.
Not when I’d been forced to say those things—and could still feel Rhys’s
lin­ger­ing atten­tion. As if he’d sus­pect­ed, but nev­er believed just how bad­ly
I’d bro­ken in that moment with Ama­ran­tha.
We turned away, his hand slid­ing from my back to grip my hand.
The touch was light—gentle. And I sud­den­ly had no strength to even grip
it back.
The carv­er picked up the bone Rhysand had brought him and weighed it
in those child’s hands. “I shall carve your death in here, Feyre.”

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

I DON’T WANT TO DO this,” Celia said.
She was wear­ing a tai­lored black dress with a deep‑V neck­line. It
was the kind of dress I could nev­er wear out of the house or I’d be
picked up on a pros­ti­tu­tion charge. She had on a dia­mond neck­lace
that Don had per­suad­ed Sun­set to loan to her.
Sun­set wasn’t in the busi­ness of help­ing free­lance actress­es, but
Celia want­ed the dia­monds, and I want­ed Celia to have any­thing she
want­ed. And Don want­ed me to have any­thing I want­ed, at least most
of the time.
Don had just starred in his sec­ond West­ern, The Right­eous, after he
had lob­bied Ari Sul­li­van hard for one more crack at bat. This time,
how­ev­er, the reviews were telling a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. Don had “manned
up.” He was con­vinc­ing every­one, on his sopho­more try, that he was a
for­mi­da­ble action star.
Which trans­lat­ed into Don hav­ing the num­ber one movie in the
coun­try and Ari Sul­li­van giv­ing Don any­thing he asked for.
That’s how those dia­monds made their way onto Celia’s neck, the
large cen­ter ruby rest­ing at the top of her breasts.
I was in emer­ald green again. It was a look that was start­ing to
become my sig­na­ture. This time, it was off the shoul­der and made of
peau de soie, with a cinched waist, full skirt, and bead­ing on the
neck­line. My hair was down in a brushed-under bob.
I looked over at Celia, who was look­ing in the mir­ror at my van­i­ty,
fid­dling with her bouf­fant.
“You have to do this,” I said.
“I don’t want to. Doesn’t that count for any­thing?”
I picked up my clutch, made to match my dress. “Not real­ly,” I said.
“You’re not the boss of me, you know,” she said.
“Why are we friends?” I asked her.
“Hon­est­ly? I don’t even remem­ber,” she said.
“Because our whole is greater than the sum of our parts.”
“And so what?”
“And so when it comes to what act­ing roles to take and how to play
them, who’s in charge?”
“I am.”
“And now, when it’s the open­ing of our movie? Who’s in charge
then?”
“I sup­pose you are.”
“You sup­pose right.”
“I real­ly hate him, Eve­lyn,” Celia said. She was mess­ing with her
make­up.
“Put the rouge down,” I said. “Gwen made you look gor­geous. Don’t
mess with per­fect.”
“Did you lis­ten to me? I said I hate him.”
“Of course you hate him. He’s a weasel.”
“There’s no one else?”
“Not at this hour.”
“And I can’t go alone?”
“To your own pre­miere?”
“Why can’t you and I just go togeth­er?”
“I’m going with Don. You’re going with Robert.”
Celia frowned and turned back to the mir­ror. I saw her eyes nar­row
and her lips purse, as if she was think­ing of how mad she was.
I grabbed her bag and hand­ed it to her. It was time to go.
“Celia, would you cut it out? If you’re not will­ing to do what it takes
to get your name in the paper, then why the hell are you here?”
She stood up, ripped the bag out my hand, and walked out the door.
I watched her go down my stairs, into my liv­ing room with a grand
smile, and then run into Robert’s arms as if she thought he was the
sav­ior of all mankind.
I walked up to Don. He always cleaned up nice­ly in his tux. There
was no deny­ing that he was going to be the most hand­some man
there. But I was tir­ing of him. What’s that say­ing? Behind every
gor­geous woman, there’s a man sick of screw­ing her? Well, it works
both ways. No one men­tions that part.
“Shall we go?” Celia said, as if she couldn’t pos­si­bly wait to show up
to the movie on Robert’s arm. She was a great actress. No one has
ever denied that.
“I don’t want to waste a minute more,” I said, loop­ing my arm into
Don’s and hold­ing on for dear life. He looked down at my arm and
then at me, as if pleas­ant­ly sur­prised by my warmth.
“Let’s see our lit­tle women in Lit­tle Women, shall we?” Don said. I
near­ly smacked him across the face. He was owed a smack or two. Or
fif­teen.
Our cars picked us up and drove us to Grauman’s Chi­nese The­atre.
Parts of Hol­ly­wood Boule­vard had been blocked off for our arrival.
The dri­ver pulled up just behind Celia and Robert out­side the the­ater.
We were the last in a line of four cars.
When you are one of an ensem­ble of female stars in a movie and the
stu­dio wants to make a big show, they make sure you all show up at
the same time, in four sep­a­rate cars, with four eli­gi­ble bach­e­lors for
dates—except, in my case, the eli­gi­ble bach­e­lor was my hus­band.
Our dates stepped out first, each stand­ing by and offer­ing a hand. I
wait­ed as I watched Ruby step out, then Joy, then Celia. I wait­ed just a
beat longer than the rest of them. And then I stepped out, leg first,
onto the red car­pet.
“You’re the most beau­ti­ful woman here,” Don said into my ear as I
stood next to him. But I already knew he thought I was the most
gor­geous woman there. I knew, very acute­ly, that if he did not believe
that, he would not have been with me.
Men were almost nev­er with me for my per­son­al­i­ty.
I’m not sug­gest­ing that charm­ing girls should take pity on the
pret­ty ones. I’m just say­ing it’s not so great being loved for some­thing
you didn’t do.
The pho­tog­ra­phers start­ed call­ing our names as we all walked in.
My head was a jum­ble of words being thrown in my direc­tion. “Ruby!
Joy! Celia! Eve­lyn!” “Mr. and Mrs. Adler! Over here!”
I could bare­ly hear myself think over the din of cam­eras snap­ping
and the crowd buzzing. But, as I had long ago trained myself to do, I
pre­tend­ed as if I felt per­fect­ly calm inside, as if being treat­ed like a
tiger at the zoo was my most com­fort­able sit­u­a­tion.
Don and I held hands and smiled for every flash­ing bulb. At the end
of the red car­pet stood a few men with micro­phones. Ruby was
speak­ing to one. Joy and Celia were speak­ing to anoth­er. The third put
his mic in my face.
He was a short guy with small eyes and a bul­bous, gin-blos­somed
nose. A face made for radio, as they say.
“Miss Hugo, are you excit­ed for this pic­ture to come out?”
I laughed as kind­ly as I could to dis­guise what a stu­pid ques­tion he
was ask­ing. “I’ve wait­ed my whole life to play Jo March. I’m incred­i­bly
excit­ed for tonight.”
“And you seem to have made a good friend dur­ing film­ing,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“You and Celia St. James. You seem like you’re great friends.”
“She’s won­der­ful. And won­der­ful in the film. Absolute­ly.”
“She and Robert Logan seem to be get­ting hot and heavy.”
“Oh, you’d have to ask them about that. I don’t know.”
“But didn’t you set them up?”
Don stepped in. “I think that’s all for ques­tions,” he said.
“Don, when are you and the Mrs. going to start a fam­i­ly?”
“I said it was enough, friend. And it’s enough. Thank you.”
Don pushed me for­ward.
We got to the doors, and I watched as Ruby and her date, fol­lowed
by Joy and hers, walked through.
Don opened the door in front of us, wait­ing for me. Robert held the
one on the oth­er side for Celia.
And I got an idea.
I took Celia’s hand and turned us around.
“Wave to the crowd,” I said, smil­ing. “Like we’re the god­damn
queens of Eng­land.”
Celia smiled bright­ly and did exact­ly as I did. We stood there, in
black and green, red­head and blonde, one of us all ass and the oth­er
all tits, wav­ing to the crowd as if we ruled them.
Ruby and Joy were nowhere to be seen. And the crowd roared for
us.
We turned around and head­ed into the the­ater. We made our way to
our seats.
“Big moment,” Don said.
“I know.”
“In just a few months, you’ll win for this, and I’ll win for The
Right­eous. And then the sky’s the lim­it.”
“Celia is going to be nom­i­nat­ed, too,” I whis­pered into his ear.
“Peo­ple are going to leave this movie talk­ing about you,” he said. “I
have no doubt.”
I looked over to see Robert whis­per­ing into Celia’s ear. She was
laugh­ing as if he actu­al­ly had any­thing fun­ny to say. But it was me who
got her those dia­monds, me who got her that gor­geous pic­ture of the
two of us that would make head­lines the next day. Mean­while, she was
act­ing as if he was about to charm her dress off. All I could think was
that he didn’t know about that line of freck­les on her hip. I knew about
them, and he didn’t.
“She’s real­ly tal­ent­ed, Don.”
“Oh, get over her,” Don said. “I’m sick of hear­ing her name all the
damn time. They shouldn’t be ask­ing you about her. They should be
ask­ing you about us.”
“Don, I—”
He waved me off, deter­min­ing, before I’d even said any­thing, that
what­ev­er I had to say was use­less to him.
The lights dimmed. The crowd qui­et­ed. The cred­its start­ed to roll.
And my face appeared on the screen.
The entire audi­ence stared at me on-screen as I said, “Christ­mas
won’t be Christ­mas with­out any presents!”
But by the time Celia said, “We’ve got Father and Moth­er, and each
oth­er,” I knew it was all over for me.
Every­one was going to walk out of this the­ater talk­ing about Celia
St. James.
It should have made me afraid or jeal­ous or inse­cure. I should have
been plot­ting to one-up her in some way by plant­i­ng a sto­ry that she
was a prude or sleep­ing around. That is the fastest way to ruin a
woman’s rep­u­ta­tion, after all—to imply that she has not ade­quate­ly
thread­ed the nee­dle that is being sex­u­al­ly sat­is­fy­ing with­out ever
appear­ing to desire sex­u­al sat­is­fac­tion.
But instead of spend­ing the next hour and forty-five min­utes
nurs­ing my wounds, I spent the time hold­ing back a smile.
Celia was going to win an Oscar. It was as plain as the nose on her
face. And it didn’t make me jeal­ous. It made me hap­py.
When Beth died, I cried. And then I reached over Robert’s and
Don’s laps and squeezed her hand.
Don rolled his eyes at me.
And I thought, He’s going to find an excuse to hit me lat­er. But it will
be for this.
  *  *  *  
I WAS STANDING in the mid­dle of Ari Sullivan’s man­sion at the top of
Bene­dict Canyon. Don and I had made it up the wind­ing streets
with­out say­ing much of any­thing to each oth­er.
I sus­pect­ed he knew the same thing I did once he saw Celia in that
movie. That no one cared about any­thing else.
After our dri­ver dropped us off and we made our way inside, Don
said, “I need to find the john,” and dis­ap­peared.
I looked for Celia but couldn’t find her.
Instead, I was sur­round­ed by brown-nos­ing losers, hop­ing to rub
elbows with me while they drank their sug­ary cock­tails and talked
about Eisen­how­er.
“Would you excuse me?” I said to a woman in a hideous bub­ble cut.
She was wax­ing on about the Hope Dia­mond.
Women who col­lect­ed rare jew­els seemed exact­ly the same as men
who were des­per­ate to have just one night with me. The world was
about objects to them; all they want­ed to do was pos­sess.
“Oh, there you are, Ev,” Ruby said when she found me in the
hall­way. She had two green cock­tails in her hand. Her voice was
luke­warm, a bit hard to read.
“Hav­ing a good night?” I asked.
She looked over her shoul­der, put the stems of both glass­es in one
hand, and then pulled me by the elbow, spilling as she did.
“Ow, Ruby,” I said, notice­ably per­turbed.
She nod­ded covert­ly to the laun­dry room to the right of us.
“What on earth . . .” I said.
“Would you just open the god­damn door, Eve­lyn?”
I turned the han­dle, and Ruby stepped in and dragged me with her.
She shut the door behind us.
“Here,” she said, hand­ing me one of the cock­tails in the dark. “I was
get­ting it for Joy, but you have it. It match­es your dress, any­way.”
As my eyes adjust­ed, I took the drink from her. “You’re lucky it
match­es my dress. You near­ly poured half the drink on it.”
With one of her hands now free, Ruby tugged on the pull chain of
the light above us. The tiny room lit up and stung my eyes.
“You have absolute­ly no deco­rum tonight, Ruby.”
“You think I’m wor­ried about what you think of me, Eve­lyn Hugo?
Now, lis­ten, what’re we going to do?”
“What are we going to do about what?”
“About what? About Celia St. James, that’s what.”
“What about her?”
Ruby hung her head in frus­tra­tion. “Eve­lyn, I swear.”
“She gave a great per­for­mance. What can we do?” I said.
“This is exact­ly what I told Har­ry would hap­pen. And he said it
wouldn’t.”
“Well, what do you want me to do about it?”
“You’re los­ing out, too. Or do you not see that?”
“Of course I see it!” I cared, obvi­ous­ly. But I also knew I could still
win Best Actress. Celia and Ruby would be com­pet­ing for Best
Sup­port­ing. “I don’t know what to tell you, Ruby. We were all right
about Celia. She’s tal­ent­ed and gor­geous and charm­ing, and when
you’ve been best­ed, some­times it’s good to rec­og­nize it and move on.”
Ruby looked at me as if I had slapped her.
I had noth­ing else to say, and she was block­ing my way out of the
room. So I put the drink to my mouth and downed it in two gulps.
“This is not the Eve­lyn I know and respect,” Ruby said.
“Oh, Ruby, put a lid on it.”
She fin­ished her drink. “Peo­ple have been say­ing all sorts of things
about the two of you, and I didn’t believe it. But now . . . I don’t know.”

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

18
We hit the road once again. More bus­es. More cos­tume racks. More long
rehearsals. More step-and-repeats.
That was already one of the dark­est times of my life, and the vibe of the tour
was dark, too—a lot of sweaty num­bers, dark themes, and moody light­ing. The
tour also marked a change in my rela­tion­ship with my broth­er, Bryan.
Work­ing now as part of my team, Bryan was very well paid—and so was I—
for the Onyx Hotel Tour. He also did a huge deal for me with Eliz­a­beth Arden.
And yet, I had trou­ble not resent­ing him a bit once I went out on what was to be
an unbe­liev­ably gru­el­ing tour while he stayed in Los Ange­les and New York and
enjoyed his life.
I lost track of my broth­er in those years. And so, in many ways, it felt as
though I lost Justin and Bryan around the same time.
The tour felt so depress­ing. In Moline, Illi­nois, I hurt my knee real­ly bad­ly
toward the end of the show. I’d had a pre­vi­ous knee injury while rehears­ing for
the music video for “Some­times” o� my �rst album. That was more extreme: I’d
cried hys­ter­i­cal­ly. With this injury, I only had to resched­ule two dates, but in my
mind, I’d already start­ed to check out. I was crav­ing some light­ness and joy in my
life.
Then Kevin Fed­er­line was hold­ing me. That’s the thing I remem­ber best. We
met at a club called Joseph’s Café in Hol­ly­wood, where I used to sit at a table in
the back. Right away, from the moment I saw him, there was a con­nec­tion
between us—something that made me feel like I could escape every­thing that
was hard in my life. That very �rst night we met, he held me—and I mean held
me—in a pool for hours.
That was how he was to me: steady, strong, a com­fort. I remem­ber we would
go swim­ming, and he’d just wrap his arms around me in the water and not let
me go until I want­ed him to, no mat­ter how long that took. It was beyond a
sex­u­al thing. It wasn’t about lust. It was inti­mate. He would hold me as long as I
want­ed to be held. Had any­one in my life ever done that before? If so, I couldn’t
remem­ber when. And was there any­thing bet­ter?
After what I’d gone through with J, I hadn’t been with some­one in a real way
in so long. Mean­while, the press kept sug­gest­ing famous men who I should date
—roy­al­ty, CEOs, mod­els. How could I explain that I just want­ed to be held for
an hour by a man in a swim­ming pool?
I feel like a lot of women—and this is de�nitely true of me—can be as strong
as they want to be, can play this pow­er­ful role, but at the end of the day, after
we’ve done our work and made our mon­ey and tak­en care of every­one else, we
want some­one to hold us tight and tell us everything’s going to be okay. I’m
sor­ry. I know it sounds regres­sive. But I think it’s a human impulse. We want to
feel safe and alive and sexy all at the same time. And that’s what Kevin did for
me. So I held on to him like there was no tomor­row.
In the begin­ning, my rela­tion­ship with Kevin was play­ful.
Kevin liked me the way I was. As a woman who’d spent so much time try­ing
to live up to society’s expec­ta­tions, being with a man who gave me per­mis­sion to
be exact­ly who I was felt like such a gift.
Kevin had a “bad boy” image. Still, I had no idea when we met that he had a
tod­dler, nor that his ex-girl­friend was eight months preg­nant with his sec­ond
baby. I was clue­less. I was liv­ing in a bub­ble, and I didn’t have a lot of good, close
friends to con�de in and get advice from. I had no idea until after we’d been
togeth­er for a while and some­one told me, “You know he has a new baby, right?”
I didn’t believe it, but when I asked, he told me it was true. He told me he saw
them once a month.
“You have kids?” I said. “You have chil­dren? Not only one child but two
chil­dren?”
So, a num­ber was done on me, obvi­ous­ly. I had no idea.
That spring of 2004 I had to go back to work to make good on my con­tract­ed
dates, even though I was in no mood to do it. I �gured it would be tol­er­a­ble if
Kevin could go with me, and he agreed to come. We had so much fun togeth­er
on that tour; he helped keep me dis­tract­ed from the work, which felt as
chal­leng­ing as it ever had. After the shows, I didn’t have to go back to my hotel
room alone. Fly­ing home, we were chat­ting away, and I asked him to mar­ry me.
He said no and then he pro­posed.
We �lmed tour diaries togeth­er. The orig­i­nal con­cept was a doc­u­men­tary like
Madonna’s Truth or Dare, but it became more like a col­lec­tion of our home
movies, espe­cial­ly after I got hurt again, and it was lat­er released as a real­i­ty show
called Brit­ney and Kevin: Chaot­ic.
The Onyx Hotel Tour was just rough. It was too sex­u­al, for a start. Justin had
embar­rassed me pub­licly, so my rebut­tal onstage was to kind of go there a lit­tle
bit, too. But it was absolute­ly hor­ri­ble. I hat­ed it in the moment. In fact, I hat­ed
that entire stu­pid tour—so much that I prayed every night. I said, “God, just
make my arm break. Make my leg break. Can you make some­thing break?” And
then, on June 8, 2004, with still two months of shows to go, I fell again on the
set of my video for “Out­ra­geous,” got anoth­er knee injury, and had to have
surgery. The rest of the tour dates were scrapped. I thought back on how much
I’d su�ered as a teenag­er doing phys­i­cal ther­a­py for my knee. The expe­ri­ence had
been excru­ci­at­ing. I had to move my legs up and down even as they were caus­ing
me unspeak­able agony. So when the doc­tors o�ered me Vicodin, I took it. I
didn’t want to expe­ri­ence that lev­el of pain again.
I just went to my apart­ment in Man­hat­tan, got into my princess bed, and if
anyone—friends, fam­i­ly, peo­ple in the business—wanted to talk to me dur­ing
this time, I said, “Leave me alone. No, I don’t want to do any­thing or see
any­one.” And I de�nitely didn’t want to go back out on tour for a while if I
could help it.
Part of it was that I believed I had earned the right to make my own deci­sions
in my per­son­al life after such a gru­el­ing sched­ule. I felt like I’d been manip­u­lat­ed
into going straight back to work after the breakup with Justin, because it was all
I knew. The Onyx tour was a mis­take. But in my mind I thought I should just do
what I was sup­posed to do, which was work.
I real­ize now that I should’ve sat back and tak­en my time get­ting over the
breakup with Justin before I resumed tour­ing. The music indus­try is just too
hard-core and unfor­giv­ing. You often vis­it a di�erent city every day. There’s no
con­sis­ten­cy. It’s not pos­si­ble to �nd still­ness when you’re on the road. When I
made the Brit­ney Spears: Live and More! video spe­cial in Hawaii in 2000, I
began to real­ize that TV is real­ly easy. TV is the lux­u­ry part of the busi­ness;
tour­ing is not.
My sis­ter had also just land­ed a huge Nick­elodeon deal. I was hap­py for her.
See­ing her learn­ing her lines and doing wardrobe �ttings remind­ed me that I
would have loved to have a job that was more like the cozy world of children’s
tele­vi­sion. I liked think­ing about the Mick­ey Mouse Club and remem­ber­ing how
easy every­thing had seemed back then.
I thought Kevin would give me the sta­bil­i­ty I was craving—and the free­dom,
too.
Not a lot of peo­ple were hap­py for Kevin and me. Whether or not I liked it, I
was one of the biggest stars in the world at that time. He was liv­ing a more
pri­vate life. I had to defend our rela­tion­ship to every­one.
Kevin and I got mar­ried that fall. We held a “sur­prise” cer­e­mo­ny in
Sep­tem­ber, but the lawyers need­ed more time with the prenup, so the legal event
didn’t take place for a cou­ple weeks.
Peo­ple shot the cer­e­mo­ny. I wore a strap­less dress and the brides­maids wore
bur­gundy. After the cer­e­mo­ny, I changed into a pink sweat­suit that read MRS.
FEDERLINE and every­one else put on Juicy track­suits, too, because we went to a
club after to dance all night. Now that I was mar­ried and think­ing about start­ing
a fam­i­ly, I decid­ed to start say­ing no to things that didn’t feel right—like the
Onyx tour. I part­ed ways with my man­agers. I post­ed a let­ter to fans on my
web­site in which I told them I was going to take some time o� to enjoy my life.

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

CHAPTER 18
Patri­cia woke up feel­ing like she’d fall­en down the stairs. Her joints
popped when she got out of bed, and her shoul­ders groaned like they
were stuffed with bro­ken glass when she reached for the cof­fee
fil­ters. When she undressed for her show­er she noticed bruis­es on
both hips from slid­ing back and forth across the back seat of the
police car.
Carter had to go in to the hos­pi­tal even though it was Sat­ur­day,
and Patri­cia let Blue do what­ev­er he want­ed because it was light out.
“But be back before it starts to get dark,” she said. “We’re hav­ing
ear­ly sup­per.”
It wasn’t safe to have Blue out of her sight after dark. She didn’t
know what James Har­ris was, she didn’t care, she couldn’t think
straight, but she knew he wouldn’t go out in the sun. She want­ed to
call Grace, to tell her what she’d seen, but when Grace didn’t
under­stand some­thing she refused to believe it exist­ed. She forced
her­self to calm down.
She couldn’t bring her­self to vac­u­um her cur­tains, so she did
laun­dry. She ironed shirts and slacks. She ironed socks. She kept
see­ing James Har­ris with that thing on his face, his beard of blood,
that lit­tle girl on the floor of his van, kept try­ing to fig­ure out how to
explain this to some­one. She cleaned the bath­rooms. She watched
the sun slide across the sky. She felt grate­ful that Korey was still
away at soc­cer camp.
The phone rang while she was throw­ing out expired condi­ments.
“Camp­bell res­i­dence,” Patri­cia said.
“They took her daugh­ter,” Mrs. Greene told her.
“What? Who did?” Patri­cia asked, try­ing to catch up.
“This morn­ing when Wan­da Tay­lor took her to the doc­tor,” Mrs.
Greene said, “he found a mark on her leg, like you said, and he made
Wan­da wait out­side while he talked to Des­tiny.”
“What did she say?” Patri­cia asked.
“Wan­da doesn’t know, but then the DSS showed up and a
police­man stood at the door,” Mrs. Greene said. “They told her
Des­tiny was on drugs and had marks where some­one inject­ed her.
They asked her who the man was that Des­tiny referred to as ‘Boo
Dad­dy.’ Wan­da told them she wasn’t see­ing any man, but they didn’t
believe her.”
“I’ll call those offi­cers from last night,” Patri­cia said, fran­tic. “I’ll
call them and they can talk to DSS. And Carter can call her doc­tor.
What was his name?”
“You promised this wouldn’t hap­pen,” Mrs. Greene said. “Both of
you promised.”
“Carter will call,” Patri­cia said. “He’ll straight­en this out. Should I
come out to talk to Wan­da?”
“I think it’s best if you don’t see Wan­da Tay­lor right now,” Mrs.
Greene said. “She’s not in a recep­tive frame of mind.”
Patri­cia dis­con­nect­ed the call but held onto the receiv­er as the
kitchen spun around her. She had seen Des­tiny. She’d been in her
bed­room. She’d sat with her moth­er. She’d seen her tiny, limp body
under­neath James Har­ris, while he stood over her, his face cov­ered
in her blood.
“I’m bored,” Blue said, com­ing into the den.
“Only bor­ing peo­ple get bored,” Patri­cia said, auto­mat­i­cal­ly.
“Everyone’s at camp,” Blue said. “There’s no one to play with.”
How had this hap­pened? What had she done?
“Go read a book,” she said.
She picked up the phone and dialed Carter’s office.
“I’ve read all my books,” he said.
“We’ll go to the library lat­er,” she said.
The phone rang, Carter picked up, and she told him what had
hap­pened.
“I’m in the mid­dle of a mil­lion things right now,” he said.
“We promised her, Carter. We made a promise. That woman is
cov­ered in stitch­es from try­ing to help your moth­er.”
“Okay, okay, Pat­ty, I’ll make some calls.”
—
“Every­one thinks Hitler was bad,” Blue said to the din­ner table. “But
Himm­ler was worse.”
“Okay,” Carter said, try­ing to wind him down. “Can you pass the
salt, Pat­ty?”
Patri­cia picked up the salt­shak­er but didn’t hand it to Blue just yet.
“Did you call that doc­tor about Des­tiny Tay­lor today?” she asked.
Carter had been deflect­ing her ever since he got home.
“Can I get the salt before I’m inter­ro­gat­ed?” he asked.
She made her­self smile and passed it to Blue.
“He was the head of the SS,” Blue said. “Which stands for
Schutzstaffel. They were the secret police in Ger­many.”
“That sounds pret­ty bad, bud­dy,” Carter said, tak­ing the salt from
him.
“I’m not sure that’s appro­pri­ate con­ver­sa­tion for the din­ner table,”
Patri­cia said.
“The Holo­caust was all his idea,” Blue con­tin­ued.
Patri­cia wait­ed until Carter had salt­ed every­thing on his plate for
what Patri­cia thought was a very long time.
“Carter?” she asked the sec­ond the salt­shak­er touched the table.
“Did you call?” He put down his fork and gath­ered his thoughts
before look­ing up at her, and Patri­cia knew this was a bad sign. “We
promised, Carter.”
“The sec­ond they form a search com­mit­tee, any chance I have of
becom­ing depart­ment head is over,” Carter said. “And they are so
close to a deci­sion that every­thing I do is scru­ti­nized under a
micro­scope. How do you think it would look if the can­di­date for chief
of psych, who’s a state employ­ee, start­ed call­ing up oth­er state
employ­ees and telling them how to do their jobs? Do you know how
bad that would look for me? The Med­ical Uni­ver­si­ty is a state
insti­tu­tion. Things have to get done a cer­tain way. I can’t just run
around ask­ing ques­tions and cast­ing asper­sions.”
“We made a promise,” Patri­cia said, and real­ized her hand was
shak­ing. She put her fork down.
“They did med­ical exper­i­ments in the camps,” Blue said. “They
would tor­ture one twin and see if the oth­er one felt any­thing.”
“If her doc­tor made a deci­sion to remove her from her home, he
had a good rea­son and I’m not going to sec­ond-guess him,” Carter
said, pick­ing up his fork. “And frankly, after see­ing that trail­er, he
prob­a­bly made the right deci­sion.”
Which was when the door­bell rang, and Patri­cia jumped in her
seat. Her heart start­ed beat­ing triple time. She had a sink­ing feel­ing
she knew who it was. She want­ed to say some­thing to Carter, to show
him how unfair he was being, but the door­bell rang again. Carter
looked up over his fork­ful of chick­en.
“Are you going to get that?” he asked.
“I’ll get it,” Blue said, slid­ing out of his chair.
Patri­cia stood up and blocked him.
“Fin­ish your chick­en,” she said.
She walked toward the front door like a pris­on­er approach­ing the
elec­tric chair. She swung it wide and through the screen door she saw
James Har­ris. He smiled. This first encounter would be the hard­est,
but with her fam­i­ly at her back and her house around her, stand­ing
on her pri­vate prop­er­ty, Patri­cia gave him her very best fake host­ess
smile. She’d had lots of prac­tice.
“What a pleas­ant sur­prise,” she said through the screen door.
“Did I catch you dur­ing a meal again?” he said. “I’m so sor­ry.”
“It’s no both­er.”
“You know,” he said, “I got inter­rupt­ed dur­ing a meal recent­ly. It
was very upset­ting.”
For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. No, she told her­self, it was an
inno­cent com­ment. He wasn’t test­ing her.
“I’m sor­ry to hear that,” she said.
“It made me think about you,” he said. “It made me real­ize how
often I inter­rupt your family’s meals.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “We enjoy hav­ing you.”
She exam­ined his face care­ful­ly through the screen. He exam­ined
her face right back.
“That’s good to hear,” he said. “Ever since you invit­ed me into your
home I just can’t stay away. I almost feel like it’s my house, too.”
“How nice,” she said.
“So when I found myself deal­ing with an unpleas­ant sit­u­a­tion
today I thought of you,” he said. “You were so help­ful last time.”
“Oh?” Patri­cia said.
“The woman who cleaned for my great-aunt dis­ap­peared,” he said.
“And I heard that some­one was spread­ing the sto­ry that the last place
she was seen was my house. The insin­u­a­tion is that I had some­thing
to do with it.”
And Patri­cia knew. The police had been to see him. They hadn’t
said her name. He hadn’t seen her last night. But he was sus­pi­cious
and had come here to test her, to see if he could jolt her into
reveal­ing some­thing. Clear­ly he had nev­er been to a cock­tail par­ty in
the Old Vil­lage before.
“Who would say some­thing like that, I won­der?” Patri­cia asked.
“I thought you might have heard some­thing.”
“I don’t lis­ten to gos­sip.”
“Well,” he said. “The way I heard it, she took off with some fel­la.”
“Then that set­tles that,” she said.
“It hurts me to think that you or your kids might hear that I did
some­thing to her,” he said. “The last thing I want is for any­one to be
afraid of me.”
“Don’t you wor­ry about that for a sec­ond,” Patri­cia said, and she
made her­self meet his eyes. “No one in this house is afraid of you.”
They held each oth­er for a sec­ond, and it felt like a chal­lenge. She
looked away first.
“It’s just the way you’re talk­ing to me,” he said. “You won’t open
the door. You seem dis­tant. Usu­al­ly you invite me in when I drop by.
I feel like something’s changed.”
“Not a thing,” she said, and real­ized what she had to do. “We were
about to have dessert. Won’t you join us?”
She kept her breath­ing under con­trol, kept a pleas­ant smile on her
face.
“That would be nice,” he said. “Thank you.”
She real­ized she had to let him in now, and she forced her arm to
reach out toward the door, and she felt the bones in her shoul­der
grat­ing as she took the latch in one hand and twist­ed it clock­wise.
The screen door groaned on its spring.
“Come in,” she said. “You’re always wel­come.”
She stood to the side as he stepped past her, and she saw his chin
cov­ered with blood and that thing retract­ing into his mouth, and it
was only a shad­ow, and she closed the door behind him.
“Thank you,” he said.
He had got­ten into her house the same as if he’d held a gun to her
head. She had to stay calm. She wasn’t help­less. How many times
had she stood at a par­ty or in the super­mar­ket, talk­ing about
someone’s child being slow, or their baby being ugly, and that per­son
appeared out of nowhere and she smiled in their face and said, I was
just think­ing about you and that cute baby of yours, and they nev­er
had a clue.
She could do this.
“…would drain the per­son of all their blood and then give them
some­one else’s blood that was the wrong type,” Blue was say­ing as
she led James Har­ris back into the din­ing room.
“Mm-hmm,” Carter said, ignor­ing Blue.
“Are you talk­ing about Himm­ler and the camps?” James Har­ris
asked.
Blue and Carter stopped and looked up. Patri­cia saw every detail in
the room all at once. Every­thing felt freight­ed with impor­tance.
“Look who stopped by.” She smiled. “Just in time for dessert.”
She picked up her nap­kin and sat down, ges­tur­ing to her left for
James Har­ris to be seat­ed.
“Thank you for invit­ing an old bach­e­lor in for dessert,” he said.
“Blue,” Patri­cia said. “Why don’t you clear the table and bring in
the cook­ies. Would you like cof­fee, James?”
“It’ll keep me up,” he said. “I have enough trou­ble sleep­ing as it is.”
“Which cook­ies?” Blue asked.
“All of them,” Patri­cia said, and Blue scam­pered from the room,
prac­ti­cal­ly skip­ping.
“How’re you enjoy­ing sum­mer?” Carter asked. “Where’d you live
before here?”
“Neva­da,” James Har­ris said.
Neva­da? Patri­cia thought.
“That’s a dry heat,” Carter said. “We got up to eighty-five per­cent
humid­i­ty today.”
“It’s cer­tain­ly not what I’m used to,” James said. “It real­ly ruins my
appetite.”
Was that what he’d been doing to Des­tiny Tay­lor, Patri­cia
won­dered? Did he think he was eat­ing blood? She thought about
Richard Chase, the Vam­pire of Sacra­men­to, who killed and par­tial­ly
ate six peo­ple in the sev­en­ties and lit­er­al­ly believed he was an actu­al
vam­pire. Then she saw that hard, thorny thing retreat­ing into James
Harris’s mouth like a cockroach’s leg, and she didn’t know how to
explain that. Her pulse sped up as she real­ized that it lay in his
throat, behind a thin lay­er of skin, so close to her she could reach
over and touch it. So close to Blue. She took a breath and forced
her­self to calm down.
“I have a recipe for gaz­pa­cho,” she said. “Have you ever had
gaz­pa­cho, James?”
“Can’t say I have,” he said.
“It’s a cold soup,” Patri­cia said. “From Italy.”
“Gross,” Blue said, com­ing in with four bags of Pep­peridge Farm
cook­ies clutched to his chest.
“It’s per­fect for warm weath­er,” Patri­cia smiled. “I’ll copy the
recipe down for you before you go.”
“Look,” Carter said, in his busi­ness voice, and Patri­cia looked at
him, try­ing to con­vey in the secret lan­guage of mar­ried cou­ples that
they need­ed to stay absolute­ly nor­mal because they were in more
dan­ger than he knew right this minute.
Carter made eye con­tact and Patri­cia flicked her eyes from her
hus­band to James Har­ris and put every­thing inside her heart,
every­thing they shared in their mar­riage, she put it all into her eyes
in a way only he could see, and he got it. Play it safe, her eyes said.
Play dumb.
Carter broke eye con­tact and turned to James Har­ris.
“We need to clear the air,” he said. “You have to real­ize that Pat­ty
feels ter­ri­ble about what she said to the police.”
Patri­cia felt like Carter had cracked open her chest and dumped ice
cubes inside. Any­thing she could say froze in her throat.
“What did Mom do?” Blue asked.
“I think it’s bet­ter if you hear it from your moth­er,” James Har­ris
said.
Patri­cia saw James Har­ris and Carter both watch­ing her. James
Har­ris wore a sin­cere mask but Patri­cia knew that behind it he was
laugh­ing at her. Carter wore his Seri­ous Man face.
“I thought Mr. Har­ris had done some­thing wrong,” Patri­cia told
Blue, push­ing the words through her con­strict­ed throat. “But I was
con­fused.”
“It wasn’t much fun hav­ing the police stop by my house today,”
James Har­ris said.
“You called the police on him?” Blue asked, astound­ed.
“I feel awful about all this,” Carter said. “Pat­ty?”
“I’m sor­ry,” Patri­cia said, faint­ly.
“We cleared it all up,” James Har­ris said. “Most­ly it was just
embar­rass­ing to have a police car parked in front of my house since
I’m new here. You know how these small neigh­bor­hoods are.”
“What did you do?” Blue asked James Har­ris.
“Well, it’s a lit­tle adult,” James Har­ris said. “Your moth­er should
real­ly be the one to tell you.”
Patri­cia felt trapped by Carter and James Har­ris, and the
unfair­ness of it all made her feel wild. This was her house, this was
her fam­i­ly, she hadn’t done any­thing wrong. She could ask every­one
to leave, right this minute. But she had done some­thing wrong,
hadn’t she? Because Des­tiny Tay­lor was cry­ing her­self to sleep
with­out her moth­er right this minute.
“I…,” she began, and it died in the din­ing room air.
“Your moth­er thought he had done some­thing inap­pro­pri­ate with
a child,” Carter said. “But she was absolute­ly, one hun­dred per­cent
wrong. I want you to know, son, we would nev­er invite some­one into
this house who might harm you or your sis­ter in any way. Your
moth­er meant well but she wasn’t think­ing clear­ly.”
James Har­ris kept star­ing at Patri­cia.
“Yes,” she said. “I was mixed up.”
The silence stretched on and Patri­cia real­ized what they were
wait­ing for. She looked hard at her plate.
“I’m sor­ry,” she said in a voice so faint she bare­ly heard it.
James Har­ris bit nois­i­ly into a Pep­peridge Farm Mint Milano and
chewed. In the silence, she could hear his teeth grind­ing it to pulp,
and then he swal­lowed and she heard the wad of chewed-up cook­ie
slide down his throat, past that thing.
“Well,” James Har­ris said, “I have to run but don’t worry—I can’t
be too mad at your mom. After all, we’re neigh­bors. And you’ve been
so kind to me since I moved in.”
“I’ll show you out,” Patri­cia said, because she didn’t know what
else to say.
She walked through the dark front hall in front of James Har­ris
and felt him lean­ing for­ward to say some­thing. She couldn’t take it.
She couldn’t han­dle one more word. He was so smug.
“Patri­cia…,” he began, voice low.
She snapped on the hall light. He flinched, squint­ing and blink­ing.
A teardrop leaked from one eye. It was child­ish, but it made her feel
bet­ter.
—
As they got ready for bed, Carter tried to talk to her.
“Pat­ty,” he said. “Don’t get upset. It was bet­ter to get that out in
the open.”
“I’m not upset,” she said.
“What­ev­er you think you saw, he seems like an okay guy.”
“Carter, I saw it,” she said. “He was doing some­thing to that lit­tle
girl. They took her from her moth­er today because they found a mark
on her inner thigh.”
“I’m not going to get into that again,” he said. “At some point you
have to assume the pro­fes­sion­als know what they’re doing.”
“I saw him,” she said.
“Even if you did look in his van that no one could find,” Carter
said, “eye­wit­ness accounts are noto­ri­ous­ly unre­li­able. It was dark,
the light source was a flash­light, it hap­pened fast.”
“I know what I saw,” Patri­cia said.
“I can show you stud­ies,” Carter said.
But Patri­cia knew what she had seen and she knew it was
unnat­ur­al. From the way Ann Sav­age attacked her, to Miss Mary
being attacked by rats, to the man on the roof that night, to James
Har­ris and all his hints about eat­ing and being inter­rupt­ed, the way
the Old Vil­lage no longer felt safe—something was wrong. She’d
already removed their spare key from its hid­ing place out­side in the
fake rock, and she’d start­ed dead­bolt­ing the doors when­ev­er she left
the house, even just to run errands. Things were chang­ing too fast,
and James Har­ris was at the cen­ter of it.
And some­thing he’d said ate at her. She got up and went
down­stairs.
“Pat­ty,” Carter called behind her. “Don’t storm off.”
“I’m not storm­ing,” she called over her shoul­der, but real­ly didn’t
care if he heard her or not.
She found her copy of Drac­u­la in the book­case in the den. They’d
read it for book club in Octo­ber two years ago.
She flipped through the pages until the phrase she was look­ing for
jumped out at her:
“He may not enter any­where at the first,” says Van Hels­ing in his
Dutch-taint­ed Eng­lish, “unless there be some of the house­hold who
bid him to come; though after­wards he can come as he please.”
She had invit­ed him inside her house months ago. She thought
about Richard Chase, the Vam­pire of Sacra­men­to, again, and then
she thought about that thing in his mouth, and the next day after
church she drove to The Com­mons shop­ping cen­ter and went into
the Book Bag. She checked to make sure no one she knew was there
before she walked over to the reg­is­ter.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Could you tell me where your hor­ror books
are?”
“Behind Sci-fi and Fan­ta­sy,” the kid grunt­ed with­out look­ing up.
“Thank you,” Patri­cia said.
She picked books by their cov­ers, one after the oth­er, and began
pil­ing them up by the cash reg­is­ter.
When she was ready to pay, the clerk rang them up, one cov­er of a
hunky, smooth-shaven young man with spiked hair after anoth­er:
Vam­pire Beat, Some of Your Blood, The Del­i­cate Depen­den­cy,
’Salem’s Lot, Vam­pire Junc­tion, Live Girls, Night­blood, No Blood
Spilled, The Vampire’s Appren­tice, Inter­view with the Vam­pire, The
Vam­pire Lestat, Vam­pire Tapes­try, The Hotel Tran­syl­va­nia. If it

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

18
Eddie takes the detec­tive out to the back­yard. There’s no ride to the police sta­tion, no Eddie in the
back of a car, and I tell myself that this isn’t seri­ous. This is noth­ing, real­ly.
If it were some­thing, he wouldn’t be offer­ing the detec­tive bot­tled water with a smile.
I stand in the kitchen, absent­mind­ed­ly clean­ing the coun­ters, putting glass­es in the dish­wash­er,
any­thing to keep my hands busy and make me look just as relaxed as Eddie does right now.
But I’m not Eddie, and when Detec­tive Lau­rent comes back inside, I have to fight the urge to go
hide in the bed­room and lock the door.
It sounds stu­pid, but I’d thought this kind of mon­ey and lifestyle insu­lat­ed you from things like this,
the police show­ing up at your door with ques­tions and hard eyes.
The detec­tive is friend­ly enough, though, hold­ing up her emp­ty bot­tle. “Recy­cling?” she asks, and
I take it from her, smil­ing like I’m total­ly unboth­ered.
She leans on the counter, casu­al, and asks, “How long have the two of you been see­ing each
oth­er?”
I have no idea if this is an actu­al ques­tion she’s ask­ing as a police offi­cer, or if she’s just mak­ing
small talk, and my palms sweat as I reach up to tuck my hair behind my ear.
“A few months?” I say. “Eddie and I met back in Feb­ru­ary, start­ed dat­ing in March?”
Great, I’m doing the ques­tion­ing thing that makes me sound like an unsure lit­tle girl, not the kind of
woman who belongs in a house like this.
But the detec­tive just smiles at me, her dark eyes warm, the skin around them crin­kling.
“Your fiancé says you used to be his dog-walk­er.” Wrin­kling her nose, she ges­tures around us. “I
said, ‘What the hell do peo­ple in this neigh­bor­hood need a dog-walk­er for?’ but that’s the bougie set
for you, isn’t it?”
I laugh along with her, nod­ding even as my heart keeps pound­ing and my hands keep shak­ing. “I
said the same thing. But it was a good job, and I like dogs.”
I could not sound more insipid if I tried, but that’s the point, right? Make her think I’m no one
worth even talk­ing to. And what­ev­er this is, it has noth­ing to do with me. Plain Jane, blend­ing into the
back­ground again.
Drum­ming her nails on the counter—sensible, short, square, only one thin gold band on her left
hand—Detective Lau­rent nods. “We all have to do what we can to get by,” she says, not unkind­ly, and
then gives me a nod before check­ing the phone she has clipped to her belt.
“I bet­ter get going. Sor­ry again for inter­rupt­ing y’all’s evening.”
“It was no prob­lem at all,” I tell her, dying to ask why she’s here, what she said to Eddie, but also
want­i­ng her to go, to pre­tend that this night nev­er even hap­pened.
“Let me walk you out,” I offer, but she waves me off.
“No need.” Then, reach­ing into her jack­et, she pulls out a busi­ness card and hands it to me. Unlike
the card Eddie hand­ed to John that day, this one is thin, the paper cheap. It’s stamped with the
Moun­tain Brook PD’s crest, and has her name—Detective Tori Laurent—and num­ber. “I told Mr.
Rochester to call if he has any ques­tions. You do the same, okay?”
And then she’s off, her sen­si­ble shoes squeak­ing on the floor, the front door open­ing and clos­ing.
As though he’d been wait­ing for her to leave, Eddie comes in through the back slid­ing glass door
and lets out a long breath, shov­ing his hands through his hair.
“Are you okay?” he asks, and I make myself smile up at him as I wrap my arms around his waist.
“Yeah, fine,” I say, even though I def­i­nite­ly am not. “What did she want?”
He leans in close, rest­ing his chin on the top of my head. “To talk about Blanche. And Bea.”
“Did they find her?” My voice is qui­et. It’s such a grue­some ques­tion, a grue­some image, them
find­ing Bea after she’s been in the water this long …
“Not Bea,” Eddie replies, his voice rough. “Blanche, though. They found Blanche.”
“Jesus,” I mut­ter, try­ing hard not to think about what exact­ly they found as I pull out of his
embrace.
His skin has gone a sort of gray­ish-green, and a mus­cle keeps tick­ing in his jaw. He looks more
like the Eddie I first met than he has in ages, and my stom­ach lurch­es.
“Is there more?”
“She was … there was a frac­ture on her skull. Like she’d been hit by some­thing. Or some­one.”
He turns away from me, then, rub­bing the back of his neck, and I stand there, absorb­ing the news,
peel­ing through the shock and fear to see what this means.
Now I’m not just nau­seous, I’m cold. Numb, almost as I reach up and press my fin­gers to my lips.
“She was mur­dered?” I ask, my voice bare­ly above a whis­per.
Eddie still has his back to me, his shoul­ders tense, and I can’t help but add, “And Bea?”
“Con­sid­ered a homi­cide, now, too,” he says. “That’s what they want­ed to talk to me about. To tell
me they’re now inves­ti­gat­ing her dis­ap­pear­ance as a mur­der.”
I feel like my vision is gray­ing out, and my knees are sud­den­ly weak, watery. “Oh, god. Eddie.”
I don’t know what else to say.
We were final­ly start­ing to make peace with Bea’s ghost. We’re engaged, for fuck’s sake. Talk­ing
about a wed­ding. And it’s one thing to have lost your wife in a trag­ic acci­dent. But to find out
some­one did it on pur­pose? That’s a night­mare.
And then anoth­er thought occurs to me. “They don’t…” I don’t even want to fin­ish the sen­tence.
Don’t want it hang­ing there in the air between us.
“Think I did it?” he asks, turn­ing around. He’s still pale, but his expres­sion isn’t quite so intense
now. “No, they just want­ed to let me know that things had changed. They’ll have ques­tions, of course,
but I got the impres­sion they were look­ing at me as the griev­ing wid­ow­er, not a sus­pect.”
The more he talks, the more that the nor­mal Eddie, the Eddie I’m used to, starts bleed­ing back into
his face and voice. I can prac­ti­cal­ly see his oth­er per­sona slid­ing on like a shell. Or a mask.
He looks at me then, frown­ing. “Christ, Jane, I’m so sor­ry.”
“Sor­ry?” I step toward him, tak­ing his hands. “Why would you say that?”
Sigh­ing, he pulls me into his arms. “Because this is such a fuck­ing mess, and I don’t want you to
have to deal with this. I don’t want you … I don’t know, sit­ting in some lit­tle room, answer­ing
ques­tions about some­thing that hap­pened before you even fuck­ing knew me.”
I thought I’d felt as scared as I could, but now a new hor­ror rush­es over me, mak­ing my mouth dry
as I look up at him. “You think they’ll want to ques­tion me?”
“They men­tioned it,” he says, dis­tract­ed. “Just that you should come along when I go in.”
I’ve spent the past five years avoid­ing atten­tion, avoid­ing ques­tions, def­i­nite­ly avoid­ing cops.
Fuck, if they look into Eddie over this, they’ll look into me. His fiancée. The girl he got engaged to
less than a year after his wife dis­ap­peared.
John, the call from Phoenix, now this. I can prac­ti­cal­ly feel the teeth of a trap start­ing to snap
closed, and I close my eyes, press­ing my fore­head against Eddie’s chest and tak­ing deep breaths.
Eddie’s hand goes to the back of my neck, rub­bing. “Don’t let it wor­ry you, though.”
“It doesn’t,” I auto­mat­i­cal­ly reply, but he gives a rue­ful smile, reach­ing out to cup my cheek.
“Janie, you’re pale as a ghost.”
I cap­ture his hand before he can pull it back, press­ing it clos­er to my face. His skin feels so warm.
Mine is still freez­ing. “This is a lot, I know,” he says. “I’m still try­ing to wrap my mind around it. But
I want you to know you have noth­ing to wor­ry about, okay? I’m not going any­where, and we’re going
to get through this.”
He’s speak­ing in this calm, mea­sured tone, but it doesn’t help. In fact, I think it might actu­al­ly
make it worse, and I step back from him, run­ning a hand through my hair.
“Eddie, your wife was mur­dered,” I say. “It’s not going to be okay. It can’t be.”
Things like this weren’t sup­posed to hap­pen here. I was sup­posed to be safe here, this place was
sup­posed to be safe.
And even though Blanche and Bea had dis­ap­peared before I even arrived in Thorn­field Estates,
there was a part of me that felt like maybe this was my fault. Had I brought this here? This sor­did­ness,
this vio­lence? Did it cling to me like some kind of virus, infect­ing any­one who got close to me?
It was a sil­ly, self-absorbed thought that didn’t make any sense. But what made even less sense
was the thought that Bea and Blanche could’ve stum­bled into some­thing that got them killed. Who
would’ve want­ed to hurt either of them? And why?
And why was Eddie so calm?
“I know, it’s fuck­ing awful,” he says on a sigh. “Believe me, I know.” Clos­ing his eyes, he pinch­es
the bridge of his nose. “But there’s noth­ing we can do about it now. Wor­ry­ing about it isn’t going to
change it.”
Wor­ry­ing about it isn’t going to change it. I want to tell him that it’s pret­ty fuck­ing nor­mal to
wor­ry about who might have want­ed your wife and her best friend dead, but some­thing stops me.
Eddie takes my hands. “Focus on the wed­ding,” he says. “On the rest of our lives. Not this.”
“It’s just that … I don’t real­ly like the police,” I say, and he frowns in con­fu­sion.
“Why not?”
Spo­ken like a rich white guy, I think to myself.
Instead, I con­sid­er my response very care­ful­ly. This is anoth­er moment where I feel like a bit of
truth in the lie might be use­ful.
“There was a fos­ter fam­i­ly I lived with,” I say. “In Ari­zona. They weren’t exact­ly in it to do good
work for kids, you know?”
When I glance back over at him, he’s got his arms fold­ed across his chest, watch­ing me with his

In Chap­ter 18 of “The Beasts of Tarzan,” titled “Paul­vitch Plots Revenge,” the nar­ra­tive focus­es on Alexan­der Paul­vitch’s schem­ing for ret­ri­bu­tion against Tarzan and Jane. Har­bour­ing a deep-seat­ed vendet­ta, the Russ­ian plots var­i­ous means to thwart the cou­ple’s escape but strug­gles with prac­ti­cal exe­cu­tion. Paul­vitch’s plans are dri­ven by a blend of imprac­ti­cal ideas and a thirst for vengeance that his dis­tort­ed rea­son­ing fuels, fail­ing to rec­og­nize his role in the con­flict with Tarzan. Even­tu­al­ly, he decides the only fea­si­ble approach is to tra­verse the dan­ger­ous jour­ney to retrieve a canoe and return to con­front his adver­saries.

Deter­mined, Paul­vitch nav­i­gates through the jun­gle towards a vil­lage, aim­ing to secure a canoe but is met with hos­til­i­ty due to his past actions asso­ci­at­ed with greed and cru­el­ty. After being chased away, he stealth­ily watch­es for an oppor­tu­ni­ty to steal a canoe, which presents itself when a local youth unsus­pect­ing­ly cross­es paths with him. Paul­vitch cold­ly mur­ders the boy, steals his canoe, and sets off towards the Kin­caid.

Upon reach­ing the Kin­caid under the cloak of night, Paul­vitch plans to recruit the ship’s dis­grun­tled crew to seize con­trol from Tarzan. He sneaks aboard and attempts to allure one of the crew mem­bers with his scheme but is met with resis­tance and dis­dain for past griev­ances. Faced with the threat of being hand­ed over to Tarzan or nav­i­gat­ing the per­ilous jun­gle alone, Paul­vitch opts for the lat­ter, after unsuc­cess­ful­ly try­ing to bribe his way out with his pos­ses­sions.

Mak­ing his way to his cab­in to col­lect his things, Paul­vitch retrieves an infer­nal machine—a bomb designed dur­ing his time with the Nihilists—and sets it with the inten­tion of anni­hi­lat­ing Tarzan and his allies on the Kin­caid. He con­ceals the device, leaves with the coerced “pay­ment” for his free­dom, and departs the ship, leav­ing the crew and the pro­tag­o­nists unaware of the immi­nent dan­ger that lurks aboard.

The chap­ter vivid­ly por­trays Paul­vitch’s descent into fur­ther vil­lainy, illus­trat­ing his cun­ning and des­per­a­tion, set­ting a tense stage for an impend­ing con­fronta­tion fueled by revenge.