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  (In a way, it's very becoming. Very Gothic. Suits you, really.)

  Jeans. Val made herself look at them. See them. She folded them up lengthwise to drape over the hangers. T-shirts. Button-downs. Sweaters. Khakis. Boots that wouldn't be damaged by snow. High tops.

  She could feel Mary's eyes on her, though she never seemed to be looking in her direction whenever Val turned around to check.

  I have problems.

  Val worked her way to the bureau and began filling the drawers. Underwear. Exercise clothes. Flannel. Parka. Scarf. Socks.

  Really big problems.

  Mary, she knew, was still watching her guardedly.

  As if I'm a wild animal, frightened and cornered, and she doesn't know whether I'll bite or run.

  Rabid.

  Don't go there.

  Her mug went into the bathroom. So did her toothbrush, toothpaste, and her travel-sized shampoo, razors, and soap. They would just have to last until she managed to go shopping.

  Which could be tonight, she reminded herself.

  The idea of going out with Mary and meeting her sisters—who, Val suspected, would be just as loquacious as Mary herself—was not particularly appealing, but at least it was better than going alone. Herd mentality. Safety in numbers. Self-preservation.

  Listen to yourself—you even sound like him.

  Mary had her laptop out on her bed when Val wandered back into their shared bedroom. She was struggling with a long blue cable. “Is that an ethernet cord?” Val asked after a moment.

  Mary looked up. “Uh-huh.”

  How medieval. So much for high-speed internet. Things were going to suck come midterms. “Where did you get that?”

  “They were giving them out for free.”

  “Where?”

  “In the computer lab. Don't worry—I got one for you, too. It looked like they were gonna run out. Yours is in the closet. Other side,” she added, when Val turned towards the space she'd just filled. “Oh. Well, thank you very much.”

  “It's no problem.” Mary scowled. “Now you see my jack anywhere? It looks like a telephone plug.”

  They looked for it. Val eventually located it beneath Mary's bed. Mary cursed and crawled under the oak frame to plug in the cable. Val took that moment to remove the pill bottles from her backpack and stash them behind her pillow where they wouldn't be seen.

  “What a fool place to put the outlet.”

  Mary had a dust bunny stuck in the tight, corkscrewed curls of her hair. Val giggled, surprising them both and she swallowed it guiltily.

  “Well, I'll be. You can smile,” Mary said cheerfully as she brushed the lint free. “Good to know!”

  Val's smile disappeared. She used to be able to do so much more. She had known how to be happy, free, and unconcerned. But he had taken that all away, wounding her, marking her, so he would be able to trap and catch her all the more quickly.

  “I think I'm going to take a nap.”

  “You do that,” Mary said equably. She was loading up her Facebook page, looking quite pleased with herself. “I'll wake you for dinner.”

  (You'd think I was going to eat you from the way you look at me.)

  Val swallowed hard and said, “Okay.” Chapter Two

  Love-Lies-Bleeding

  Paralysis was her first clue she was dreaming: it was the manifestation of her inherent helplessness.

  The second was the lack of focus. Everything was a little blurred around the edges. The final details of the scene were lost. Even so, what she could see remained vivid enough to frighten, to convince.

  To terrify.

  Dust coated the floorboards, the moldings, and the sills. The curling fleur-de-lis wallpaper, with its sour, musty smell, and the crisp black linens beneath her. So familiar.

  No , she thought. Wake up. Wake up!

  “Hello, Valerian.”

  Everything stopped.

  He slipped out of the shadows, clad all in black.

  “Back so soon?”

  She couldn't speak. It wouldn't have mattered, even if she could. His lips covered hers in a smothering kiss that stole her breath away.

  He cupped her through the bodice of her nightdress. This wasn't him. Not really. She understood that, on some level, she was being suppressed by her subconscious fears and desires.

  This was her doing.

  Her, undoing each tiny mother-of-pearl button.

  Her, sliding free the silk ribbon to reveal her illprotected heart.

  “You let me control you, even in your dreams.” His words were a string of frost and rime, stinging her bare skin like a brand.

  I hate him, she thought. I hate him. I hate him.

  His hands, under her tacit direction, began to slide beneath the hem of her nightdress, rucking the frothy fabric up around her thighs.

  “Do you know why that is?”

  Were her tears real? Did it matter?

  No.

  “I think you do.”

  She felt his mouth, then. An oasis of softness surrounded by a forest of chafing bristles. The perfect balance, coaxing cruelty. When he kissed her with that mouth, she lost all reason. When he used it elsewhere, she lost her mind.

  “Because I want to be controlled,” she gasped. The sensations, while not exact, were just close enough to reality that her body remembered— “Because you need to be controlled.”

  There was a light emphasis on the word need, and she strained, grasping, for consciousness that was just out of reach….

  He pushed; her world fragmented into dozens of sharp, cutting shards, shedding the salty blood and saltier tears that ringed the bitter cocktail of her despair. She was caterpillar and butterfly both, caught in a cocoon of raw nerves and open sores; she was insanity, wrapped up in the thin, transient layers of a temporary lucidity; and she was afraid, because an innate desire lay in the bottom reaches of her psyche for the very poison that was killing her.

  And then the dream exploded into a mental fog, and Mary was shaking her, as pale as her dark complexion allowed for, and Val was awake, and her heart was like a cannon in her chest.

  “Val—Val! Wake up! You're having a bad dream.” Val heaved and wondered if she would puke.

  Mary, clearly wondering the same, said, warily, “Are you gonna be all right?”

  “Yeah.” Val closed her eyes. “I'll be fine.” She rubbed the ring on her hand her parents had given her as a parting gift. Supero omnia. “Time to go?”

  Still looking at her strangely, Mary said, “Yeah, time to go. Come on.”

  ▪▫▪▫▪▫▪

  Mary turned out to have three sisters—Florence, Angelica, and Cherish. Each of them were as brightlyattired and effusive in greeting as their youngest sister, and Val felt a bit as if she were being mobbed by a flock of friendly tropical birds. They insisted she call them Flo, Angel, and Cherry, respectively.

  “Our mother reads too many romance novels,” one of them—it might have been Angel, Val wasn't sure—said, causing the other three to nod in solidarity. “That's how come our names are so—”

  “—dramatic—”

  “—cheesy—”

  “—soap-opera-ish—”

  “All of the above,” Angel said.

  “Memaw likes her bodice-rippers.”

  “Not just romances, but bodicerippers. There's a difference, you know.”

  “Oh,” said Val, who didn't know.

  “She says they just don't write the love-scenes like they used to,” Cherry said, rolling her eyes.

  “'Cause they're not politically correct.”

  “So we hear you're coming out to dinner with us tonight,” said Flo. “Hope you like sushi.”

  “I love sushi,” said Angel.

  “Well, I wasn't asking you know, was I? I was asking Val, here.”

  “Sushi's…okay.”

  “This sushi is better than okay. Have you ever been to Tabemono before? You have to go to Japan for better sushi. Or Seattle.”

  “Val's not
from around here,” Mary said. “This is her first day—okay?”

  “You're awfully pale for such dark hair,” Angel said, “and those freckles! Girl, you are whiter than chalk. Hey Flo, doesn't she look like one of them china dolls?”

  Flo squinted at her. “You ever consider dyeing it? I've seen lots of girls try it, but you could totally rock the redhead look, no problem.”

  “Leave her alone,” Mary said, seeing Val's face blanch. “She's going to think I'm crazy or something.” “She should think you're crazy—you are.”

  A friendly tussle ensued on the walk through the parking lot. Mary cried out, “You're going to mess up my hair!” but laughingly as braids were tugged and arms were slapped.

  Val, bringing up the rear, shoved her hands into the pockets of her dress. She felt fourteen again, awkward and unsure: an island of loneliness.

  The food at Tabemono was delicious, but the flavors seemed to reach her tongue through several layers of rubber. She ate mechanically with her chopsticks, nodding in all the right places and answering all the questions directed at her. She didn't need to do this often; it was a self-sustaining conversation, and Angel, Cherry, Flo, and Mary made only perfunctory efforts to include her in their banter.

  Cherry had ordered for everyone since nobody could agree on any one dish. Val had miso soup as a starter, with floating seaweed and squares of tofu, and unagi rolls fried in tempura and drizzled with spicy cream sauce and bright orange masago. Her stomach squirmed a little when she found out unagi meant “eel,” but since all she could taste were the sauces it had been cooked in, she was able to convince herself that she was eating really rubbery chicken.

  Then the party platter came and Mary and her sisters took turns daring each other to try the scarier looking rolls, including one called the “spider roll,” with tempura-fried shrimp tails sticking out of the center like breaded tentacles.

  Val was given one of each, which she managed to choke down. This time, she abstained from asking what was in them, and was all the more blissful in ignorance. All five of them had green-tea mochi ice cream for dessert.

  It was hard to feel anything but full after such a hearty meal. Val found her mood had lifted. She even managed to make a few jokes, and when Cherry reached over to muss her hair she felt as if she had won an award.

  “Thank you for inviting me out.”

  “No problem.” Cherry undid the button of her jeans and sighed. “We're just glad our little sis isn't rooming with a psycho.”

  “ Cherry.”

  “What? She's not. I'm just saying.”

  Was I ever like that? Did I ever have that attitude? That sass?

  No. She had always restrained herself. Val felt a pang of loss for what had never been—and now, thanks to him, never would be.

  Only half-listening to the conversation, Val pulled her wallet out of her dress pocket.

  “Don't you dare.”

  She looked up, startled to see Angel glaring at her as if she were in violation of some gross faux pas. “What—”

  “Put the wallet down, and nobody gets hurt.” “Same goes for you, too, Mare-Bear,” Flo said to Mary, who was in the process of reaching into her bag.

  “I can't—” Val tried to calculate the monetary value of what she had eaten. Surely it had amounted to thirty dollars a head, if not more.

  “I have money,” Mary protested at the same time. “Uh-uh. Mom told us to make sure you save all your money for college stuff.”

  Mary's eyes glistened. “Memaw said that?” “She said college girls need skin on their bones, so they don't have food on the brain.”

  “Shopping's on her, too, so get whatever you need.”

  Val averted her eyes as they embraced. That feeling of intruding had intensified. She felt like she had just walked in on a private, intimate moment.

  She couldn't remember the last time she had been able to bestow affection—at least, the physical kind— so freely. Even now, after years of therapy and counseling, she could barely stand to be touched. Not even by her parents. She hated the hurt in their eyes when she flinched away from them, even though she knew they both understood.

  I wish Mom and Dad were here.

  They had her phone number, and she had theirs, but Val had made up her mind that she wasn't going to call them unless it was an emergency. Just in case.

  Just in case he's out there, looking.

  Chronic loneliness didn't count as an emergency, she didn't think, and what didn't kill you was supposed to make you stronger, or so they said.

  But it hasn't. It's made me weaker, so much weaker.

  He had made her weaker—and for what? To better suit her to his fantasies for power and absolute control?

  Goddamn you, you bastard, for ruining my life . “Val looks left out.”

  “You guys ready to go shopping?”

  The bill had been paid, receipts slipped discreetly

  into pleather purses. The tip was lying smugly in the black lacquered dish.

  Val shook herself and answered, “Yes.”

  ▪▫▪▫▪▫▪

  She had been ordinary, once.

  Just another high school girl. Innocent. Maybe too innocent. Maybe that had been the problem. Maybe if she had been more streetwise, none of this would ever have happened.

  Or maybe it was unavoidable. Determinism. Fate. (Can you feel the ties that bind us? Can you feel them tightening?)

  She couldn't remember when she had first laid laid eyes on him, but she remembered that encounter in the pet store where he worked as if it were yesterday. When he had let her hold one of the costly toyger kittens and the little creature had scratched her. When he had licked her blood from his fingers.

  But at the time, in her naivete, she had managed to convince herself that it had been an illusion, a trick of the light—anything but the truth.

  And if I had known, could I have stayed away?

  Sometimes, she thought yes, yes she could. But now, standing in the middle of the aisle for school supplies, lost to the sea of her own thoughts, Val suspected this was wishful thinking on her part.

  One look in those eyes, and all was lost. “Are you finding everything okay?”

  “Uh-huh.” Val nodded and turned away from the salesclerk, hugging her shopping basket to her side.

  Even after she had known about the blood that stained his hands, the blood that hadn't even had time to cool—even after she knew what he was and what he was capable of and why he wanted her—she had still wanted those hands on her. Inside of her. And he, he had been only too happy oblige.

  Until the end.

  Something had changed at the very end.

  When he saw that spark of defiance that he hadn't quite been able to snuff, that last shred of moral decency, he had decided to discard her in favor of her flaws, ever the temperamental artist.

  What could not be painted out must be destroyed.

  And when he had tried to kill her, when she had felt the water rush past the floodgates of her lungs and the ache turned to numbness and her thoughts turned to darkness, hadn't she felt as if she had been justly accorded her due?

  Hadn't she thought, “I deserve this”?

  “Val?”

  A hand touched her shoulder. She jumped, scattering packs of pens and pencils.

  “Whoa, sorry. You about ready to go?”

  Val looked down at her basket. School supplies and foodstuffs were inside. She couldn't remember placing them there. The only thing they had in common was that they were all cheap.

  “I think so.”

  “Cool. We're all waiting up at the registers. My sisters already finished.”

  I am horrid.

  Chapter Three

  Peony

  In California, summer storms were all but unheard of, and people talked about them for days afterward. Here in North Point, so close to the Olympic Peninsula, they were a common occurrence.

  And a consistent annoyance.

  Val hugged herself as
she walked from her dorm to the computer lab, shivering as the water melded with the cold August morning.

  Freshmen had to make their new school accounts in the computer lab, before their accounts could be linked to their home—or dorm—computers. Val hoped to sign up for her classes, as well, assuming she could figure out the user interface.

  The IT on duty was a boy who reminded Val of Blake, with his fawn-colored hair and hazel eyes and large, wire-rimmed glasses. Thankfully their voices were nothing alike, or she wouldn't have been able to stand it.

  “Now enter this number,” he was saying. A name tag on his striped shirt identified him as Pete. “That's your assigned password. Change it to whatever you want, just as long as it's easy to remember and difficult to guess. Let me know when you're done.”

  He pointedly averted his head as she began to type in her new password. She found herself growing annoyed by such unnecessary diligence.

  “I'm done.”

  Her account opened.

  Klein, M. Valerie.

  “Good,” said the boy. “Now you should be able to register for classes. Let me know if you need any more help.” He got up to assist a girl who had been waving her arm this entire time.

  Wonder it didn't just fly off. Impatient, much?

  She stared at her student account. All the icons were labeled. That was something. She rubbed at her eyes and pulled up the tab for course schedules, which was shaped like a day planner.

  Select major , it prompted her.

  Oh hell, she didn't have one.

  Undeclared?

  No, I'll just have to change it later.

  What was something easy? Women's Studies? No, people were always making fun of the people who took that. Ditto Philosophy. Psychology? She knew a thing or two about that.

  Her eyes caught on Animal Behavioral Science. She hesitated. That was more her forte; she possessed a greater affinity for animals than people. She loved them, in fact.

  So does he.

  Val stared at the screen for a long moment. Then she selected Psychology from the drop-down list of majors. Maybe it would help her understand why she was so screwed-up inside.

  After she chose her major, another tab lit up at the top. This icon was shaped like an apple. It contained a list of all the courses she would need to take in order to graduate. Available courses were highlighted in blue, with the day and time listed beside them.