She knew right away that Villanelle had been taken.

Curtains torn down. Bottle of wine left open on the counter. Blood smear leading out the door. They'd been clumsy about it, clumsy on purpose, and Eve didn't even have a name or a location. The Twelve were hunting them and so far, after three months of hotel rooms and laying low, they'd found out jack and shit about who, exactly, was out to kill them.

"Crap. Crap, crap, shit, fuck - god damn it." She ran to the kitchen and rifled through the drawers, looking for something - anything - that might tell her where they'd taken Villanelle. Nothing on the counter, nothing in the cabinets - a whole hell of a lot of nothing.

She went to the bedroom. They'd been renting this place for a couple weeks now. They should've moved on, she knew that now, but -

She thought of Villanelle smiling at her under the sheets, sulking when Eve made her stop narrating how she might kill someone. Laughing. Touching, because Eve was an idiot, because three months was a long time to deny to herself what she wanted from Villanelle.

She found it in the side table, a single scrap of paper.

Hello:

I would like to know where they will take me. It will be educational, don't you think? I do have a guess.

xoxo.

No signature, but then, none was needed. Eve knew what her handwriting looked like.

She almost threw the note away. There was nothing here except an infuriating confession of a dick move Eve had already suspected. It was sheer happenstance that she turned the paper over and saw the drawing on the back.

She knew that skyline: Chicago. God fucking damn it.

-

She'd been to Chicago a few times. Niko had cousins there. But she'd always been with him, always had to stick to his schedule. And, okay, that was the point of marriage, but she wasn't married anymore.

That had been the last thing she'd done before she'd agreed to go off with Villanelle. She could be so damn stupid sometimes.

She booked a hotel in Evanston, where it was all college kids and their parents this time of year. Easy to blend in, easy to run from. Then she took the train into downtown, telling herself she knew what she was looking for.

She had no idea what she was looking for.

She rode the train all day, looking at a few surveillance cameras for good measure. If she didn't find Villanelle, they would find her and bring her to Villanelle. That had kind of been the thesis of going on the run together.

Bring me plums. And a Coke. I like the Cokes they have here.

Eve had wandered the Italian market, picking up fruits and things she thought Villanelle would like. She'd felt fond about it, like Villanelle hadn't killed Bill, like she hadn't ruined Even's entire fucking life and then had the nerve to expect Eve to pick up the pieces. She'd let Villanelle -

Touch her. Fuck her. Pleasure her, as Villanelle insisted on calling it in that ridiculous pouty tone of hers.

Even now, walking from the Metra stop to her hotel, she felt fond. What was she going to do?

She didn't have to wait long. Right outside the World Market, as she started at kitchy suburban bullshit and tried to keep a lid on her anger, a man approached her.

"I could kill you right now," he said in a thick Northern English accent.

"Sure about that? We're a couple blocks from campus. There are cameras everywhere." She turned to him, taking in his face all at once: fish-belly pale skin, a nose that had been broken a few times, mean gray eyes. He looked like some random thug. He had red marks all over his neck, like he'd been scratched.

Like she'd scratched him. Hope and anger rose to choke her in equal measure.

"Come with me, eh? Let's not make a mess."

She followed.

-

She smelled the blood before he let her in. Or she felt it, maybe, the hair on the back of her neck raising. A hunch, an intuition, because she knew Villanelle and she understood the sick urge to see it all play out. Villanelle didn't just want to live a safe life, like Eve did.

("Stop lying to yourself, Eve," Villanelle had said, murderous delight in her eyes. "You would be so bored without me. Without us.")

Villanelle wanted to find them and kill them. Eve knew before the door opened that she'd succeeded.

"Holy mother of God," her kidnapper whispered.

That was the last thing he said. A knife appeared in his throat, dragged across with surgical precision. His body fell perfectly, away from Eve, so that the arterial spray hit the wall and not her hair.

"Hello," Villanelle said from behind Eve, and pushed her hard into the wall, face first.

"God damn it," Eve said. She raised her hands, pressing them into the wall, grounding herself - or showing Villanelle that she understood and wasn't about to whip her own dagger out. Same thing. "You had me worried sick."

"Oooh, poor baby. I'm so sorry." Mocking, laughing at her. Eve shivered as she felt Villanelle's lips against her neck. They were clammy, a little tacky. She'd gotten messy today, then.

"I enjoy it," Villanelle said. She always knew what Eve was thinking with creepy precision. "I had fun." Teeth dug into the back of Eve's neck. She felt the prick of a knife at her side, and gasped, holding herself as still as possible.

Villanelle wouldn't like her to impale herself. But she wouldn't like this if it weren't a game, either.

"It would have been better if you were with me." Villanelle's free hand sneaked up Eve's top, brushing her nipples, splaying on her lower belly. Feeling her up and spreading blood everywhere, probably, which shouldn't have been what Eve wanted.

It was, though. She wanted this and only this: Villanelle, alive and touching her, a non-neutralized threat. Eve's threat.

"Kiss me," she whispered into the wall.

Villanelle laughed and grabbed her shoulder, turning her around.

The sight was as grisly as Eve had expected. Her face was covered in blood, her clothes soaked in it. But she looked alive, healthy, unharmed. "They thought they could convince me to work for them again," Villanelle said, like that was a reasonable explanation.

"I thought he might've hurt you."

"Ha. He thought so too." She smiled; her teeth were bloody, too. "I told him you were the only one allowed to do that."

Need rocketed through her, stealing her breath. She had her hands in Villanelle's hair before she was aware of reaching out, pulling her in for a vicious kiss.

Bodies everywhere, disgusting smells in the air, Villanelle's hands slick with blood: Eve didn't care. Or, no. She pulled Villanelle against her as hard as she could, yanked her shirt until it ripped, got her hand between Villanelle's legs, touching the exact spots she'd learned so perfectly.

No, she cared. She liked it. When Villanelle got her off, three knuckles buried inside her, Eve looked between the blood spatters on the wall and Villanelle herself, and she soared.

-

"I think we should keep killing them."

"I don't disagree."

"But you want it to be neat, like assassinations in the dark or whatever. I think we should find the leader and hang his head from the top of the Eiffel tower."

"Okay, no, I just want to be alive at the end." Eve shook her head, taking a bite of her hot dog and surveying Lake Michigan in front of them. "With you. And cut the crap, you know that's how I feel."

"I do. I just think we could be together, and I could hang heads from somewhere very high."

Eve watched the waves crash against the concrete. What had been here before concrete? Rocks, probably. She didn't even know what this kind of structure was called. Pier? Probably. "Are you going to kill me?"

"Maybe," Villanelle said. She finished the second half of her hot dog in one grotesque bite. "Probably not, though," she said when she'd finished.

"Why?"

She watched as Villanelle shrugged, her eyes as flat as the lake. "I want to settle down."

It sent a shiver of delight through her. God, this whole mess was going to kill her one way or another, and she was going to enjoy it.

"Me too," she said. She didn't so much as flinch when Villanelle locked a hand around her wrist, tight enough to bruise.