in the doorway. Star was standing next to the oven, mitt on her hand, taking cookie sheets off the racks.
"Just a sec," she said, and deposited the last gray pan on top of the bulky avocado-green stove. "Ah. There. Now."
She stripped off the oven mitt, turned off the oven. No more fake scars, not this time. She was showing me her true face. Untouched. Beautiful. False.
"You're wondering how this happened." She touched the smooth bronze skin of her cheek. "I was rotting to death in that hospital, and they couldn't- no, they wouldn't-help me."
"Star-"
"Let me finish. All they had to do was give me a fucking Djinn, but no, they wouldn't do that. I hadn't earned it. They said I didn't have the temperament to handle the responsibility." She glared at me. How had I missed all that hatred in her eyes before? All that bitterness? Had she covered that up, too? "They left me with a face like a melted hockey mask. You remember?"
Of course I remembered. I couldn't move, couldn't speak. She reached for the oven mitt again, grabbed a tray of cookies, and began to savagely shovel the peanut butter rounds off into a white china bowl.
"Well, I didn't have to take that." She finished scraping cookies off and dumped the pan in the sink. "I could feel it out there. Waiting for me. All I had to do was accept it."
She reached into the refrigerator and took out a jug of milk. She lifted it in my direction. When I didn't reach for it, she shrugged and put it on the counter, got out a glass, and poured.
"It felt like I was dying," she said, and took a sip. "Like my soul was burning out. But then it stopped hurting, and it became something else. Something real. Something with a purpose."
"It's not purpose, Star. It's just suicide with a longer fuse."
She picked up a cookie and bit into it.
"Also a really big bang," she agreed. "You think that bothers me? I've been dying a long damn time."
"Looks like you're feeling pretty good to me."
"This?" She stroked her unmarked face. "Yeah. It healed me. But it doesn't stay, not unless I find a way to get the Mark back inside me. I can already feel myself getting slower. Older. Twisting inside."
"So why get rid of it?"
She slammed down the china bowl. "I didn't! All I tried to do was feed the Mark. I needed a Djinn."
Rahel had told me the truth, for once. "The book. Free-range Djinn, yours for the taking. You claim them, feed them to the Demon."
"Yeah." She gave me a bleak smile. "Should have been easy, you know? Only it wasn't. Because the minute I grabbed one, there was Lewis, showing up to smack my ass, and girl, he is one strong Warden. I thought he was gonna kill me."
I'd moved a step closer to her without even realizing it. I came to a stop, haunted by the fact that I'd always let my fondness for her blind me to just how selfish she really was.
"How'd he get the Mark?"
She glared. "He took it. I didn't give it to him. The stupid bastard said he was trying to help me. I didn't want his help!"
Her belligerent tone didn't go with the too-bright shine in her eyes. Pain in there. Deep, anguished self-loathing. She went back to scraping cookies off sheet pans, dumping them into a bowl with quick, nervous motions.
"Then let him go," I said. "You can't get the Mark back from him, you said so yourself. It goes from weaker to stronger. Nobody's stronger than Lewis. It's finished."
"No!" She almost screamed it at me, a raw physical outburst that sounded as if it scraped her throat bloody. "I'll get it back. I have to!"
"How?" I sounded so logical all of a sudden. So calm. Maybe it was just shock, but all I really felt for her in that moment was sheer, sad pity. She'd been so glorious, once. So selfless. Seeing the ruin of that . . . ached in ways that I'd never expected.
Her dark eyes looked blind behind the glitter of fury, but this time her voice came out soft, nearly controlled. "You gave me a way," she said. "I can't take the Mark from him, but your hot boyfriend Djinn can. And then I