The woman shrieks again. Then, while the horseman is distracted, she bolts through her front door, lost to the night.

The Reaper doesn’t even notice.

“You foolish woman!” he bellows at me.

He drops to his knees, reaching for me. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I swear his hands tremble a little when they touch my skin.

I cry out as he probes at the wound. I can’t see his face, but I swear he recoils a little.

“Take off your dress,” he demands.

“Oh, now you try to get in my pants,” I gasp out.

“Ana.”

“I’m kidding,” I breathe. “Geez.”

“Your dress,” the Reaper says, his voice angry.

I can only make out the dramatic cut of Famine’s high cheekbones and those cruel, full lips of his, and I’m thankful for that. I don’t really want to see whatever emotion lingers in those frightening eyes of his.

“I’m not moving my arm,” I say.

A moment later Famine’s warm hands grab the collar of my dress.

Riiiiiiiip.

He tears the fabric apart.

Famine avoids looking at my now exposed breasts as he removes the last of my dress from my shoulder.

He reaches for the wound again. I’m assuming he’s trying to help, but I’m also pretty fucking sure he has zero experience helping injured humans.

“Wait,” I say, taking shallow breaths through the pain.

Famine pauses.

“Alcohol.”

I feel his eyes on me. “You want to drink right now?”

I definitely wouldn’t mind.

“To disinfect the wound,” I say slowly.

Famine stares at me for a long, long moment. Finally, coming to some sort of decision, he gets up and heads to the kitchen. I can hear him rummaging around for an eternity.

When he returns, he’s holding a corked jug.

I make a face. It’s clearly something home-brewed and probably suspect.

Famine seems to agree. “This will sooner kill you than heal you,” he says.

“Just give it to me.” I go to swipe it from him, but the horseman moves the bottle out of my way.

“Hold still,” he says, uncorking the lid.

I give him a skeptical look. All I’ve seen of Famine is his ability to hurt and kill. I have little faith he knows how to tend to an injured person.

He grabs my wounded shoulder, careful not to touch the injury itself. Gently he tips the bottle of the mystery liquor, pouring a liberal amount onto the wound.

The moment the alcohol hits, the pain becomes blinding, and a gasped cry slips out.

“This was a stupid idea,” he says.

“Shut up,” I grit out.

Getting up from my side, Famine wanders through the house once more, returning a while later with a couple pieces of clothing. The first one he rips into strips then wraps around my shoulder. I bite back another cry as he jostles the wound.

Once he’s done, he shakes out the second garment, which looks like a shift dress.

“You don’t like looking at my tits, do you?” I guess.

I am, after all, still exposed to him.

“It’s cold.”

“Be honest,” I say, “you’re uncomfortable.”

“Fine, don’t wear the dress,” he says, backing away. “I don’t care.”

I do end up putting the thing on—or at least I try to. The problem is, my injured shoulder is bound up, making movement difficult.

In the darkness, I hear the Reaper exhale, then the sound of his ominous footfalls as he comes over once more. He kneels in front of me.

“What are you doing?” I ask, and now I catch a glimpse of those luminous eyes in the darkness.

Ignoring me, he grabs the material and helps thread my arms through the sleeves.

I give him a curious look as he helps me, ignoring the pain as he inevitably bumps my wound again.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask again.

He stares intently at the fabric, and I think maybe I’m imagining his troubled look.

“I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” he says gruffly.

You were trying to hurt someone, I want to say.

But I can tell that, oddly enough, he is troubled by the fact that he hurt me.

“I know,” I say instead. As violent and cruel as the Reaper has been, he’s made a point of not inflicting pain on me. Which is confusing as hell, considering that I nearly lost my life when I last met him.

With my good hand, I run my fingers over the dress I wear. Just the feel of the cloth is enough for me to know that this shirt—big and old-lady-ish as it may be—is a thing from the world before.

For an instant, I’m hopelessly sad, though I’m not even sure why. I never knew that world. My sense of loss is completely made up. But from the stories, it always sounded like paradise—or, at least, a step up from the shithole world we have now.

“Thank you,” I say, still rubbing my fingers over the material.

Famine grunts in response.

After a moment, he says, “You shouldn’t have jumped in front of her.”

I sigh. “Can’t you just take a compliment without ruining it?”

“I don’t need or want compliments.”

Fuck it all. “Then I take it back,” I say. “I’m not grateful you helped me.”

The silence is heavy, and the horseman’s frowns are becoming legendary enough that I can sense them in the darkness.

Maybe he cares, maybe he doesn’t. He’s annoyed all the same.

That’s good enough for me.

“Why did you do it?” he asks.

Jump in front of the woman, he means.

“She wouldn’t have done the same for you,” he adds.

“You don’t know that,” I say.

But … in my heart of hearts, do I really believe some stranger would’ve sacrificed herself for me?

No. Definitely not. People are selfish assholes.

I don’t, however, admit that to Famine.

“I helped you once too—even though you wouldn’t have done the same for me,” I say instead.

A long, painful silence follows that. I feel the Reaper’s searing look in the darkness.

My injury throbs, dragging my attention away from the conversation.

I try to get to my feet. After a moment, the Reaper takes my good arm and stands, pulling me up along with him.

“What now?” I ask.

“You need to sleep.”

Oh. Right. In between breaking into some old lady’s house and diverting her death, I somehow forgot Famine’s entire reason for stopping.

I let the horseman lead me to the back room. Usually I’m the one leading the opposite sex back to a bedroom. Usually I’m the one with a plan.

Famine stops at the threshold and lets me walk into this stranger’s bedroom. The air here is heavy with the smell of cloying perfume, and though it’s too dark to tell, I think the room is loaded with kitschy little trinkets, because twice I bump into furniture that sends several items rattling.

I have to feel around for the bed, and even once I find it, some combination of guilt and trepidation tightens my stomach because its rightful owner is somewhere out in the darkness.

You idiot, Ana. You should’ve known this situation would arise. It’s what happened last night, after all.