murder, that is. And if you’re willing to work with the rest of the ingredients required. Some people get a little squirrelly when you ask them to play with rendered baby fat. I know there’s been research dedicated to updating the recipe, but they haven’t found anything yet. Sadly, some things are just inescapable.”
Smita finally gives in to instinct and takes a step backward. Erin stops, cocks her head, and smiles. There’s sorrow in her expression, like she doesn’t want to be here, saying these things, doing whatever it is she’s come to do. Smita finds she doesn’t care. Dimly, with horror, she realizes her surprise and anger have transmuted into fear.
Smita is terrified. Erin is supposed to be her friend, they ate Thanksgiving dinner together, and she’s terrified.
“Why are you here?” she asks. Her voice is a thread, thin and tight and easily snapped.
The look of sorrow on Erin’s face deepens. “Because you opened a book that wasn’t meant for you, and you read what was written inside,” she says. “Please believe me, I’d avoid this if I could—and I think I have, at least once. There are scars in the air around this moment. But they need to know what they are to one another if I’m ever going to be able to bring them back together, and that means your part is already written. It’s funny. They think they understand finally, and they don’t understand anything at all.”
No one has ever accused Smita Mehta of being slow. She’s been at the top of every class she’s ever deigned to join, all the way back to her elementary school years, when the other students made fun of her for everything they could find. The way her parents talked; the way her lunches smelled; even the way she braided her hair. They mocked her from kindergarten all the way to her senior year of high school, and she’s never wavered, not once, from the prize of academic excellence. She was going to show them. She was going to show them all.
But now she’s alone in her lab, and Erin is looking at her with such deep and abiding pity in her eyes, and Smita is afraid.
“Please leave,” she whispers. “I haven’t done anything to you.”
“I know.” Erin takes a step toward her. “I kind of wish you had. Like, if you’d pushed me in the hall or insulted my shoes, I might feel better about this. I wish there were another way. There’s not. That book you opened, it belongs to people who really don’t like sharing their secrets. Baker already gave too much away. So right now, I need you to tell me: where are the DNA test results for Dodger Cheswich and Roger Middleton? How many copies have you made? Who has seen your research?”
Smita stares at her. Erin calmly returns her gaze: she’s holding nothing back. She’s making no effort to conceal her intent, or hide her face. And Smita knows she’s going to die.
It’s a simple realization, quiet and resigned and oddly anticlimactic. She’s always expected the awareness of her onrushing death to be a violent thing, ripping and tearing, leaving panic in its wake. Instead, it walks to the center of her mind and stops, expanding to fill all the available space. She, Smita Mehta, is going to die; when the morning comes, she will no longer exist. Depending on the actual endurance of the human soul, she may leave nothing behind but her work. She hasn’t been alive long enough. She hasn’t created a wide enough record.
“Why should I tell you?” she asks. Her voice doesn’t shake. She’s proud of that.
“Because I’m not the one who decided this had to happen, but I’m the one who gets to decide how it happens,” says Erin. “I’m very good at what I do. I can make this as easy or as hard as you want it to be. I can chase you through this building all night long, I can give you your own personal horror movie, and I can cut you down with your hand on the doorknob and freedom only inches away. I can take you apart one centimeter at a time. Or I can pierce your heart so fast and so clean that you barely feel it when you stop. It’s your choice. If you tell me what I need to know, then you’re choosing wisely.”
Smita’s phone is only a few feet away, on top of the binder that holds most of