“That won’t bring them back.” Malena scuttled lower on the wall, holding out her hand toward me. “Give me the phone. I’ll get those pictures you want.”

“See if you can get close-ups of the spike,” I said. “If there are any carvings or anything, we need to know about it.”

Malena nodded once, closing her sharp-nailed fingers around the phone. Then she scurried off, starting her photo project.

I turned. Pax was black-eyed and shaking, staring at the pool of blood that covered the floor. “Dominic, take Pax up to the hall. The two of you need to keep an eye out, in case the people who did this come back.” And in case the smell of blood overwhelmed the Ukupani’s ability to keep himself under control. I had faith in Dominic’s ability to restrain Pax without hurting either of them too badly. There was one big advantage to Pax losing control, rather than Malena: if his transformation became too advanced, he’d lose the ability to breathe oxygen, and would pass out before automatically reverting to an air-breathing form. Malena would just keep going until she had more ripped-off faces for her collection.

“Thank you,” said Pax, and virtually fled back up the stairs, with Dominic following close behind him. Alice watched them go.

“Do you think the cultists will come back?” she asked, turning back to me.

“Not for a while,” I said. Malena was clinging to the ceiling now, taking overhead shots. “I think they’ll leave the bodies here for a few hours, and then magic as much of the mess away as they can. There won’t be any sign of what happened here by morning.”

“I see.” Alice shook her head. “I should have realized there was a confusion charm on the building. It only makes sense, given the way you described everyone else’s behavior. Verity, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You had no reason to suspect.” I took another step down and crouched, trying to get a better look at the spike that held our latest victims’ hands together. “I’ll call home when we get back to the apartments. Daddy can FedEx us some anti-telepathy charms.”

“I have a better idea,” said Alice. “I meant it when I said we could get counter-charms from Bon. She’s a routewitch, and she knows me well enough that my word is good when I tell her she’ll be paid.”

“Do routewitches usually take money?” My Aunt Laura was a routewitch, but she disappeared before I was born, and I’ve never had that much direct dealing with them. They were mostly active on the highways and in truck stops, and those weren’t places where you found many ballroom dance studios.

“They take distance,” said Alice. Her expression went briefly unreadable. “I’ve traveled a very long way.”

Malena dropped from the ceiling onto the stairs behind me. It was abrupt enough that I jumped as I whirled to face her, and behind me I heard the click of Alice removing the safety on her gun. There was another click as she put it back. Malena thrust the phone at me, stone-faced and slowly reverting toward her usual human form.

“Here,” she said. “Enough gore to keep a teenage boy happy. I need to shower forever. We done here, or are we gonna hang out and see if we can’t murder the shit out of the people who did this?”

I hesitated. There were five of us, and I might be up for elimination next week; even apart from the need to save the lives of my fellow contestants, my own life was potentially in imminent danger. At the same time, we had no idea how many snake cultists there were, or whether they were human or something else. If we stayed, if we waited, we could be wasting five lives for a chance at saving two.

The thought was followed by a wave of guilt. Since when was my life worth more than anyone else’s? Since when did I get to value my friends above the people I was supposed to be protecting and taking care of? No. I couldn’t think that way.

“Yes,” I said. “We wait.”

Hopefully, we wouldn’t be waiting for nothing.

There were no other entrances to this particular basement: just the one door, leading down to the abattoir the previously innocent space had become. Malena crawled up the wall while I took to the rafters. Alice elected to wait just inside the basement door, sitting on the steps and waiting for someone to come and make her night more interesting.

Pax and Dominic were a problem. Neither of them were climbers, and we couldn’t put Pax on the other side of the door with Alice unless we wanted him driven wild by the smell of blood. In the end, we’d sent Pax down the hall to hide in the curtains and watch for people who might be coming to check on their handiwork, while Dominic went outside to watch the parking lot. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but this wasn’t a perfect place to put together an ambush. The basement was a killing jar . . . if we could get our killers inside. Until then, they had all the hallways and hidey-holes of a very large theater at their disposal, and we needed to be careful.