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A lock clicked.

Someone had opened a door no guest was meant to open.

I turned toward the black door set flush into the far brick wall. It led into a restricted corridor that ran the length of the lower level and ended at one place:

The red door.

Pulling the door open, I stepped into the corridor without a sound. Dim red emergency lights ran along the baseboards, leaving everything above knee height buried in heavy shadow.

A figure came around the corner and stopped dead.

So did I.

A black lace mask covered the upper half of her face, leaving her mouth and throat bare. She looked like a woman in her mid-twenties, maybe older—hard to tell in the red glow. Her chest rose and fell in fast, shallow breaths beneath her black dress. Her pulse jumped at the base of her throat, frantic and visible.

She was terrified.

Good.

“You’re not supposed to be down here,” I said.

Her eyes tracked down my bare chest, over the black ink and scarred flesh, down to my hands, settling on the iron chain dangling from my waist. Recognition hit her face, sharp and clear.

“You’re one of them,” she said.

I pushed off the wall and moved toward her. “One of what?”

She didn’t back down.

“The freaks.”

I’d heard that word screamed from stages and whispered in dark corners for years. It was printed on the billboards outside. But when it came from her mouth in this empty hall, something dark shifted under my ribs. I wanted to hear her say it again. Wanted to make her choke on it.

I took another step forward.

She took a step back.

I kept coming, closing the distance until her shoulder blades hit the concrete wall. She ran out of room. I stopped inches from her face, towering over her, close enough to feel the heat radiating off her skin in the damp cold.

“Say it again,” I said.

Her eyes widened behind the lace. “What?”

“Call me a freak again.” I leaned in, letting my breath brush her cheek. “I want to hear how it sounds when you’re scared.”

“I’m not scared.”

I laughed. Low and mean. “Liar.”

Her jaw tightened. Defiant. Bratty. I liked that.

Raising my hand slowly, my knuckles hovered an inch from the edge of her mask. She flinched, but she didn’t run, and she didn’t tell me to back off.

“What are you doing down here?” I asked.

“I got lost.”

“Wrong answer.”