“Helen,” I guessed, remembering the capricious queen whose beauty had brought nothing but destruction. It was a strong choice. One I felt neatly summed up this Queen.
“You think my face could launch a thousand ships?” She beamed. “I’m flattered, Ellerie, but no, that’s not my name.”
Two chances left.
I racked my mind, trying to remember every story in the book of myths that Sam and I had pored over as children. There were tales of heroes and rulers, gods and monsters. Some seemed to fit, but I remembered Whitaker’s mention of the stars. It was another clue, I was certain of it.
“Cassiopeia,” I tried, brightening. It was the constellation I’d pointed out to Whitaker at Christmas. The vain queen. I couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to me first.
Her smile grew into a wicked grin. “No.”
“You’re lying,” She had to be. It made too much sense to not be true.
“One guess left.”
I wanted to howl.
I thought through every constellation I knew, not just considering the shape—what it was meant to depict—but what the object really represented as a whole.
Orion and his famed belt did me little good, and neither did the sets of bears. My mind was dizzy with stars as I imagined their points and patterns, dredging up the stories Papa had told us when we were children and the summer nights were long and bright.
Whales and swans, foxes and dragons.
None of them were right.
But then…
The Harp.
Orpheus’s harp.
Would you follow me to the underworld?
Whitaker had seemed so horrified when I’d told him of the doomed musician. Orpheus had had the chance to have everything but had lost it all.
All because he’d turned and watched.
Watched.
A smile curved over my lips.
This was it.
It had to be.
The Harp.
But it wasn’t a harp exactly, not in the original myth. What was it called?
A lyre.
“Lyra,” I said, remembering the constellation’s proper name. Its right and true name.
She froze, and for one horrifying second, her whole façade fell away, revealing the true creature beneath the dazzling charms.
The jaw hanging too long, with too many teeth.
The frame, hunched and hulking.
Sinewy arms hanging past her knees.
Lank hair falling to her calves, matted and snarled.
For that split second, I saw the monster from Ephraim’s journals, and everything within me quivered.
“What—what did you say?” she asked, pushing back a lock of hair, shiny and lush once more as she fought to keep herself together.
“Lyra,” I repeated, more loudly this time. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”
She opened her mouth to reply but stopped short, her eyes darting to the other Dark Watchers in the glade.
Awareness burned in their eyes once more. They were no longer mindless drones carrying out their Queen’s orders. When her control had slipped, it must have freed them from their catatonic state.
“How?” the man asked, taking a step toward the Queen—toward Lyra. “How did she know?”
“That fool must have tipped her off somehow,” the older woman snapped. “It was stupid for us to have followed him here.”
“He can’t do that. None of us can. You made certain of that,” the man said, whirling back to the Queen.
Lyra shook her head, denying everything. I could see her mind racing, trying to spin the situation to her favor, even as she lost grip on her mask of composure.
Other faces appeared in place of hers, their features morphing as fluidly as water over stone.
Twisted noses.
Inhuman ridges.
Exposed bone.
So many kinds of teeth.
“What now?” the older woman asked. “What happens now?”
Lyra balled her fists and, with a howl of frustration, grappled back to her previous form, even though it no longer seemed to sit on her correctly. Once you saw behind the illusion of a trick, it was impossible to believe it had ever been magic.
But still, she tried.
In a single motion, perfectly synchronized, every Dark Watcher’s eyes fell upon me.
“Well, little honey-haired girl?” Lyra asked, her voice high and imperious. “You’ve won the game. What will your prize be? Go on, tell us the deepest desire of your heart.”
I knew my answer.
Amity Falls.
But as I stared at her, unbidden thoughts entered my mind, sparkling madly like facets of a priceless diamond.
Pretty dresses, jewels, and charms. Eternal beauty, admiration, and praise. What would my life be like if I traipsed through the world as radiant and beguiling as the creature who stood before me?
She smiled as if sensing my thoughts, and I suddenly realized she knew exactly what I’d been thinking because she’d engineered them all in an attempt to distract me from my true mission.
“I want the madness to stop. I want my town to go back to how it was before you arrived. I want you to leave here and never return.”
A frown marred her beatific face. “But that’s impossible. The hatred, the violence—the madness, as you call it—was always there. It’s been there, hidden away in the hearts of every person in Amity Falls. Our arrival didn’t change that. We simply unlocked the door holding it back.”
I shook my head. “I don’t believe that. The Falls is full of good people. People who would never behave as they are now if they’d not been bewitched by you. By all of you.” I shot a daggered glare toward Abigail and the others.
“I can’t undo the past, Ellerie. No one can. Too many things are in motion already. It’s like dye spreading across cloth—you can scrub till your knuckles are raw and bloody, but the two will never be separated again.”
As if punctuating her words, a great rumble exploded through the forest, coming from the direction of town. Its force brought me to my knees as the ground shook. Little pebbles of slate and shale trembled free from larger rock faces, spilling down the incline with the loose clatter of an avalanche. A nearby pine, dead and dry and as yellow as a corn husk left after harvest, ripped free from its stagnant roots and crashed to the ground with a terrifying boom.