Excerpt:

The cheerful ding of the elevator was followed by the sound of the doors pulling open. Mechanically, Callie lurched from the little chamber, walking towards the door, eyes numbly searching for 1412. Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. There she was. Just open the door and she'd be inside and all she'd have to do was find the couch and close her eyes and sink down into that marble-smooth space inside her head. Just go into that quiet place she'd found once, a long time ago, under Klavier's touch.

Key in door. Turn. Unlock. Find couch. Sit. Disappear.

Callie's eyes didn't close, but they might as well have. Everything felt so heavy and it was so easy to sink down and just forget there was a world. It was soft and quiet inside her head, floating away into nowhere while her body was stationary. Just stay in there, her mind crooned. Just stay inside and forget and don't move and let it all wash over you. It's a good place. It's nice. Stay here. Stay here.

She remembered this place. She found it years and years ago when she found herself tied into a pretty dress and brought down a grand staircase and look at all those lovely people, Callie, he'd whispered in her ear. Look at all those lovely people and they all wanted her, wanted to find their deaths at her hands, and if they weren't all dead before the dinner bell rang, he was going to make her regret it, make her regret it with her soul and body and every inch of the skin he'd flay off her, always in the same spot because it could heal. And she'd trembled and begged and said no and he'd slapped her hard, so hard it seemed her mind must have just come loose enough to find that pretty little safe space.

She'd sunk into it and she'd moved and those people weren't really there anymore. They weren't screaming for pity or mercy or from pure ecstasy. No, that was all just a dream, her mind playing silly tricks on her as she fed. She was safe in bed while her body played Klavier's stupid party game, wrought the deaths on a room full of people as she glutted herself on blood, beyond safe limitation, beyond fullness, so that when she awoke, when Klavier dragged her back to his world, her whole body wanted to reject what was in her. Wanted to reject and cling at the same time, because it was so wonderful and so good and yet she felt so raw and sick.

It was a good place, a good, safe place. A place Callie hadn't had to visit in two years. Not since she'd fled a villa in Tuscany and left that place behind. She had left behind the villa, the death games, that headspace, all of them. None of them were hers anymore, none of them were her prison.