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“I won’t tell. I won’t tell anyone. Niley’d kill me if he knew I gave him up. He’d fucking kill me.”

“Good,” I said. I cradled Zane against me. He began to lick down my neck. He passed over my shoulder, licking a small line down my collarbone. He went lower, and I pushed him away, rough enough that he fell on his wounded shoulder. The world was narrowing down. I was losing the fight with Raina.

“Get him out of here—now!” I felt like I was going blind. I could see, but it was all different. I was fighting her and she didn’t like it. She’d asked for violence, and I’d refused. She’d asked for sex, and I’d refused. Even dead, she was a hard lady to say no to.

I covered my eyes with my hands. I heard someone moving towards me. “Don’t touch me.”

“It’s Marianne, child. Tell me what’s happening.”

I lowered my hands until I could see Marianne. She was still in the white dress with her long, pale hair. “You never met Raina, did you?”

“No, child.”

I reached for her hand, and it was just a hand. There was no memory attached to it. No horror that the munin could share. “Help me.”

She gripped my hand with both of hers. “It’s too late to force the munin out. It must be made to want to leave.”

I shook my head. “She won’t leave.”

“She’s left you before.”

I shook my head harder until my hair slapped my face. “You don’t know what she wants. You don’t understand what she wants. I can’t. I won’t.”

Richard was there. He started to touch my shoulder, and I fell back into the leaves. One hand raised as if to ward off a blow. I did not want to know what Raina had done with him or to him. That was one image I did not need.

“What’s wrong?”

“The munin will not leave until Anita does something it wants.”

“You knew Raina,” I said. “Tell her the kind of thing Raina enjoyed.” It was rising inside me. I couldn’t stop it. It rose higher and higher until the power spilled out of my mouth in a shriek.

He started to touch me and I crawled away from him. “No, no, no, no.”

Marianne caught me, held me against her. She smelled like Ivory soap and lilacs. I knew I could have broken her hold, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to be held. I wanted help. I needed help.

She smoothed my hair, rocking me like I was a child. “Anita, you must give in to the munin in part. You’ve done it before. Richard has discussed past events with me. When the munin leaves you this time, we will work together to make sure this does not happen again.”

I raised up enough to see her face. “Can you really stop this?”

“I can teach you how to stop it.”

I stared into her pale eyes for a space of heartbeats. I could hear the strange click of her artificial heart valve. The munin was hinting that food would do as well as sex. Not as well, but it would do.

I pushed gently away from Marianne. “You’re just food to her.” I crawled back from her, slowly.

Marianne just watched me, kneeling in the leaves in her white dress. She was the only one in the clearing that was more than a shadow. All that whiteness caught the moonlight and glimmered. She looked like a target.

I stood, my breath coming in ragged gasps. I could taste my heart in my throat like a ball that I could have touched and played with. I looked around the clearing, desperate for a way out. Something that Raina would be content with and I could live with.

Zane was staring at me. Raina wanted him. But what she wanted had very little to do with sex. I went to him. He knelt in the leaves, staring up at me with large eyes gone silver with moonlight.

I fell to my knees in front of him and ripped the sling off his shoulder. He made a small grunt of pain, and Raina liked it. The problem with doing something to get the munin out was that the munin had to be in control enough for me to be willing to do what it wanted. Giving her more control seemed like a bad idea. But what she wanted was to plant our mouth over the wound in his shoulder, and I couldn’t do it sober. There wasn’t enough Raina in me yet to put my tongue in an open wound.

I crawled away from Zane and found Jason. I stared at him. He was almost