Don't Scream: An Excerpt from She Dies at the End

November slept fitfully, waking up again and again, tangled in her sheets, chased by bad dreams and visions all in a jumble. She felt trapped: trapped in the house whose grounds she hadn’t left once in nearly a month, trapped in her apparent future as a vampire, trapped in this spider web of centuries-old plots spun by cruel strangers. For a few weeks, her infatuation with William had provided enough distraction for her to put out of her mind the fact that someone in this house was working for the enemy and intended her harm.

No longer possessing that luxury, she found that she was afraid. She feared being taken, hurt, forced to help Luka do bad things. She feared failing in the use of her gift to help win this fight. She feared that when death changed her into a new creature, she would become a monster. She feared finding out the identity of the mole and the pain that discovery might cause, but she feared even more continuing to live with the viper in her nest.

It was afternoon before she finally fell asleep, so she was still dozing when dusk came. She was finally up and brushing her teeth, still in her nightgown, when Pine and Greg fairly flew into her room without so much as a knock on the door. That was the first indication that something was seriously wrong. The second sign came when Pine threw her over his shoulder as Greg moved faster than she could see, clearing her room in a whirl and hiding all obvious evidence of her existence. Previously unknown to her was a false wall in the back of her closet. It concealed a cubby into which Greg tossed all her personal belongings.

Pine rushed her out the door with Greg hot on his heels, moving so quickly that November closed her eyes tight with instinctive fear, her breath frozen in her throat. Her fairy bodyguard threw open the door to the linen closet down the hall and revealed a hidden trapdoor in the floor. He then murmured, “We’re going through the chase. Don’t scream,” and dropped dozens of feet straight down, landing lightly on his toes.

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