The muscles under Howard's eyes twitch. He allows his gaze to just slightly depart from Aunamee's eyes, to look at his face, look at his body language, and then snap back to his eyes. Aunamee does look tired. The light above catches his nose and forehead and pools into dark, ugly blots under his eyebrows, nose, lower lip, chin.

Howard slept with evil in the basement for four months. Evil never looked so tired. It frightens him, knowing that sadism can have other faces, and he doesn't want to believe.

"Yeah, I'm sorry you feel bad about stabbing me to death. That must be really hard on you," he says, then looks mortified. The sarcasm just tumbled out, the gates of his self-restraint opened by his tiredness, his lack of guard. He shakes harder, and he realizes he's going to vomit, if not right now than in a few minutes at most.