She giggled when I returned her hand to her lap.

“What”—I cleared my throat—“is your next question?”

I could humor her. I could play this game. If it meant breaking through to her, if it meant unraveling what had . . . changed in her, I would sit here all night. I would help her. I would. Because if this truly was grief, she needed to talk about it. We needed to talk about it. Another stab of guilt shot through me when I glanced down at her hands. She’d clasped them together tightly.

I should’ve been holding those hands. I couldn’t force myself to do it.

“Oooh, questions, questions.” She brought her interlaced knuckles to her lips, musing. “If you could be anyone else, who would you be?” Another grin. “Whose skin would you wear?”

“I—” I glanced at Beau without thinking. She didn’t miss the movement. “I wouldn’t want to be anyone else.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Defensive, I asked, “Who would you be?”

She lowered her hands to her chest. With her fingers still laced together, she could’ve been praying. Except for the calculated gleam in her eyes, her fiendish smile. “I can be whoever I want to be.”

I cleared my throat, fought to ignore the hair lifting on my neck. Lost. “How do you know about cauchemars? I’ve studied the occult my entire life, and I’ve never heard of such a creature.”

“You’ve extinguished the occult. I’ve lived with it.” She cocked her head. The movement sent a fresh shiver down my spine. “I am it. We learn more in the shadows than we ever do in the sun.” When I didn’t answer, she asked abruptly, simply, “How would you choose to die?”

Ah. I eyed her knowingly. Here we go. “If I could choose . . . I suppose I’d want to die of old age. Fat and happy. Surrounded by loved ones.”

“You wouldn’t choose to die in battle?”

A startled breath. A sickening thud. A scarlet halo. I pushed my last memory of Ansel aside, looking her squarely in the eye. “I wouldn’t choose that death for anyone. Not even myself. Not anymore.”

“He chose it.”

Though my heart twisted—though even his name brought uncomfortable pressure to my eyes—I inclined my head. “He did. And I’ll honor him for it every day of my life—that he chose to help you, to fight with you. That he chose to face Morgane with you. He was the best of us.” Her smile finally slipped, and I reached out to grip her hand. Despite its icy temperature, I didn’t let go. “But you shouldn’t feel guilty. Ansel made the decision for himself—not for you or for me, but for him. Now,” I said firmly before she could interrupt, “it’s your turn. Answer the question.”

Her face remained inscrutable. Blank. “I don’t want to die.”

I rubbed her frigid hand between my own, trying to warm it. “I know. But if you had to choose—”

“I would choose not to die,” she said.

“Everyone dies, Lou,” I said gently.

She leaned closer at my expression, running her hand up my chest. In my ear, she whispered, “Says who, Reid?” She cupped my cheek, and for just a second, I lost myself in her voice. If I closed my eyes, I could pretend a different Lou held me this way. I could pretend this icy touch belonged to another—to a foul-mouthed thief, a heathen, a witch. I could pretend her breath smelled of cinnamon, and her hair flowed long and brown down her shoulders. Could pretend this was all part of an elaborate joke. An inappropriate joke. She would’ve laughed and flicked my nose at this point. Told me I needed to loosen up. Instead, her lips hovered over mine. “Who says we have to die?”

Swallowing hard, I opened my eyes, and the spell broke.

My Name Is Legion

Lou

There are very few advantages to losing possession of one’s body—or rather, losing awareness of one’s body. With no eyes to see and no ears to hear, no legs to walk and no teeth to eat, I pass my time floating in darkness. Except . . . can one even float without a body? Or am I merely existing? And this darkness isn’t quite darkness, is it? Which means—

Oh god. I’m now existing inside Nicholina le Clair.

No. She is existing inside me, the body-snatching bitch.

Hopefully I’m on my monthly bleed. She’d deserve it.

Though I wait for her response, impatient, no ghostly chuckle answers my provocation, so I try again. Louder this time. Shouting my thoughts—can one have thoughts without a brain?—into the abyss. I know you can hear me. I hope my uterus is rioting against you.

The darkness seems to shift in reply, but still she says nothing.

Forcing myself to concentrate, I push against her oppressive presence. It doesn’t budge. I try again, harder this time. Nothing. I don’t know how long I push. I don’t know how much time has passed since I regained consciousness. Time has no meaning here. At this rate, I’ll reclaim my body in approximately three hundred years, waking in a grave as more dust than skeleton. At least my mother can’t kill a skeleton. At least they don’t have uteruses.

I think I’m going mad.

With one last vicious shove, I resist a fit of rage. Emotions seem . . . different in this place. They run wild and unchecked without a body to cage them, and sometimes, in moments like these, I feel myself—whatever form I’ve now taken—slip into them, unadulterated. As if I become the emotion.

Reid would hate it here.

The thought of him lances through my consciousness, and a new emotion threatens to consume me. Melancholy.

Has he noticed I’m not myself? Has anyone? Do they realize what’s happened to me?

I refocus on Nicholina, on the darkness, before the melancholy swallows me whole. It does little good to dwell on such things, yet debilitating cold creeps through the mist, my subconscious, at another unwelcome thought: how could they have noticed? Even before La Voisin and Nicholina betrayed us, I wasn’t myself. I still feel those splintered edges, those fissures in my spirit I broke willingly.

One bites deeper than the rest. An open wound.

I shy away from it instinctively, though it pulses with whiskey-colored eyes and curling lashes and soft, lyrical laughter. It aches with a lanky arm around my shoulders, a warm hand in my own. It throbs with empathy, with a feigned accent and a stolen bottle of wine, with shy blushes and not-quite birthdays. It burns with the sort of loyalty that no longer exists in this world.