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.

He didn’t make it to seventeen.

Ansel sacrificed everything, cracked me wide open, and I allowed Nicholina to slither into that crack. That’s how I repaid him—by losing myself entirely. Self-loathing churns, black and noxious, in the pit of my consciousness. He deserved better. He deserved more.

I would give it to him. As God or the Goddess or just the dark of my fucking soul as witness, I would give it to him. I would ensure he didn’t die in vain. In response, an unfamiliar voice startles me by murmuring, Oh, bravo.

The inky mist contracts with my fright, but I push against it viciously, searching for the new presence. This isn’t Nicholina. This certainly isn’t me. And that means . . . someone else is here.

Who are you? I ask with feigned bravado. Mother’s tit, how many people—or spirits, or entities, or whatever—can possibly fit within a single body? What do you want?

You needn’t be frightened. Another voice this time. As unfamiliar as the last. We cannot hurt you.

We are you.

Or rather, a third adds, we are her.

That’s not an answer, I snap. Tell me who you are.

A brief pause.

Then a fourth voice finally says, We don’t remember.

A fifth now. Soon you won’t either.

If I had bones, their words would’ve chilled them to the marrow. How . . . how many of you are there? I ask quietly. Can none of you remember your name?

Our name is Legion, the voices reply in unison, not missing a beat. For we are many.

Holy hell. Definitely more than five voices. More like fifty. Shit, shit, shit. Vaguely, I remember the verse they recited from a passage in the Archbishop’s Bible, the one he loaned me in the basement of Chasseur Tower. The man who spoke it had been possessed by demons. But these—these aren’t demons, are they? Is Nicholina possessed by demons?

Alas, we do not know, the first says amicably. We have lived here for unknown years. We could be demons, or we could be mice. We see only what our mistress sees, hear only what our mistress hears.

Mice.

She talks to us sometimes, another adds, and somehow I sense its mischievous intent. I just know, as if its stream of consciousness has merged with mine. We jest, by the way. We aren’t called Legion. Stupid name, if you ask us.