I am a deficient human being in every way that matters.

Claire wished that she could blame it on the fact that she’d been hit by a van, but in reality, she deeply suspected that she had always been deficient. Never said the right thing. Never made friends. Couldn’t even get someone to hand her a towel.

Really, given the sum total of her life as evidence, it shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise that she sucked at being kidnapped, too.

He’s looking at me. He’s going to kill me. I’m going to die.

Claire couldn’t move. She couldn’t run. She couldn’t think of anything but the boy stalking toward her. Claire didn’t want to think about him. Didn’t want to anticipate the killer’s touch, her own last breath, but there was a tiny part of her—the Romeo and Juliet part, the Heathcliff and Catherine—that thought for the briefest second that maybe this moment was what she’d always been meant for.

Maybe she’d been born to die by this boy’s hands.

Situation: What would it be like to have an out-of-body experience? To watch someone kill you? When she was dead, would he put flowers on her grave? Would she haunt him, now and always?

“The game ends now.”

The words brought Claire back to the present. To the terror. To the chilling understanding that death was never romantic; there was a difference between being stalked and being wooed.

Do something.

He was closer now, close enough that she could feel the heat of his body on the other side of the blanket. Her heart beat faster. Her side ached like someone was splitting the bones with an ice pick.

You need a weapon. A way out. Something. Anything.

Slowly, her killer peeled the blanket away from her face. His features—each severe in its own right—came together to form an expression that was somehow gentle, full of longing. It made him look like someone who wanted something, wanted it as badly as Claire had wanted just one person to scrawl a private joke on the pages of her yearbook.

Me. He wants me.

Claire had read about this kind of knowledge—the kind you felt in your bones, from the tips of your toes to the top of your skull.

She’d read about it, and she’d believed in it, and she’d imagined it. But she hadn’t spent even a second wanting it herself, because she’d been too busy trying not to long for simpler things—smiles from strangers, someone to eat lunch with, parents who took her picture on the first day of school.

He’s going to hurt me. I’m going to die.

Claire couldn’t hear herself think over the sound of her body’s terror—the certainty that be it kiss or kill, there would be no escaping the predator stalking her now.

I can’t stop it. Nothing I do will stop it. Can’t think. Can’t speak. Can’t move.

Claire could feel hysteria bubbling up in her stomach and traveling like an air bubble through her throat. When it burst out of her mouth, she thought for a moment that she might have thrown up, but then she realized that she was giggling.

Like a lunatic.

And God must have had an awfully twisted sense of humor, because a second later, so was the boy.

Nix could not remember laughing. Ever. He’d tried once. Practiced. But with no one to listen, it was a horrible sound, and it hadn’t brought him half the feeling of a single cut—long and thin—in one palm.

But now he was doing it. He was laughing. At Claire, clutching that blanket, giggling like a fiend. For a second, he thought that it would be enough, that this one moment would be enough to keep him and hold him and warm him for an eternity. He could kill her now.

Cut himself off, before this addiction went too far.

He dropped silently to his knees beside the sofa, bringing himself to her level. He cleared his mind, pushing away all thoughts of her—her expressions, the sound of her laughter, the feel of her skin—and concentrating on a single word.

Null.

She deserved this. For the life he’d been forced to live, for making him wonder and long for things best left unwondered and unlonged for, she deserved it.

He rose from his knees into a crouch. He closed his eyes and breathed in her soft, sweet scent—sunscreen and cinnamon—and then he reached down and placed his hands on either side of her neck.

Make it quick.

7

Claire had, not surprisingly, imagined what death would be like. In fact, close to one-sixth of her Situations had ended with her own untimely demise. She’d run into flaming buildings and jumped in front of bullets meant for those she loved, and she’d died of leukemia and gotten hit by cars—loads of them, as ironic as that was.

But she’d just never imagined going out like this. More whimper than bang. Desperate. Hypnotized. Her assailant’s fingers brushing lightly against her throat.

I don’t want to die. He’s going to kill me, and I don’t want to die.

His hands encircled her neck. She froze, paralyzed. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. And then, suddenly, it was over. He dropped his hands instead of tightening his grip.

She wasn’t dead.

It’s not death I want. The thought came unbidden, a side effect of her relief. I want him. I want the boy.

Okay, that was it. That was absolutely it! This sick, twisted psycho was playing with her. He’d attacked her, he’d kidnapped her, he’d sworn he was going to kill her, and now he was playing with her. Cat and mouse. And pathetically—pathetically—she was falling for it.

And that, Claire found, somewhat startled at the revelation, pissed her off. She was pissed. It was bad enough that people stared straight through her. Ignored her questions. Refused to give her towels and made her pour her best attempt at eggs down the sink. It was bad enough that this boy was trying to kill her, but damn it, he didn’t have to touch her. He didn’t have to make her feel like the world’s biggest nothing because the alien sensation of contact with another human being was enough to keep her from fighting back.

He didn’t have to look at her like she was something more.

Maybe I am. To him. Maybe I matter.

“Shut up,” Claire told herself. Things like that, thoughts like that—those were the kinds of maybes that hurt you. That got your hopes up. That talked you into doing nothing while a killer tracked your every move. Not happening. Not this time! Not with this Claire. She’d read the books. She’d seen the movies. She knew what Stockholm syndrome was, and she wasn’t having any of that “forming emotional attachments to your kidnapper” nonsense.

Not anymore.

Logically, Claire knew that attacking her assailant wasn’t much smarter than playing peekaboo beneath a blanket, but she wasn’t about to sit around and wait for him to kill her and think pathetic thoughts about having his fingers wrapped around her throat.

“Don’t touch me!” The words exploded out of Claire. She couldn’t stay in her own head a second longer. She couldn’t risk feeling sad or intrigued or any of the thirteen synonyms she knew for the word incomplete. She had to stay mad.

“You don’t get to touch me. You don’t get to … to … do that! You don’t get to make me feel like—never mind. Never freaking mind, because it doesn’t matter. You don’t matter.”

Lies, lies, lies.

He mattered. He mattered the way oxygen mattered. The way carbon monoxide did if you breathed in too much of it. But she didn’t have to let him know that. She didn’t have to make him feel powerful.

She didn’t have to play his game.

Taken off guard by her vehemence—yeah, buddy, that’s right, I said it—her would-be killer’s laughter cut off, like someone had slashed his vocal cords. Claire scanned her surroundings for an escape.

Escape to what? She pushed down the question, because there wasn’t an answer—not a good one.

Life is worth fighting for, she told herself. I am worth fighting for.

Even if she always said the wrong thing and sucked at making other people care, she could get better. Things could get better. Luckily, when given proper motivation, Claire could summon up beliefs on cue. It was a gift, a byproduct of living so much of her life in imaginary worlds.

I’m worth saving, just a little.

She flew to her feet and stepped sideways. The killer stepped sideways as well, his face unreadable, his hands spread out on either side of his body. It felt like being circled by a panther, walking on its hind legs.