It was a ridiculous thing to do. She couldn’t will the malfeasance away. It was inside her. She’d been four years old when it happened—when she’d toppled headlong into a gorge like Alice down the rabbit hole and come face-to-face with something sinister waiting at the bottom. When it gave her comfort, she’d taken it. When it offered to help, she’d accepted. She hadn’t known there’d be a cost. How could she have? She’d been a child, lost and afraid, the night closing in. She would have trusted a wolf had it promised her deliverance. She didn’t know she’d carried it home. Didn’t know that it
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