That little whore with the jade-green eyes takes Piper’s hand and slips it away from her sabre. Holds her gloved fingers tight and drags them through the red. Brings them to the space where the floor is still white. Writes one word, shaking and huge:
DUFFY
—and lets Piper’s hand fall defeated next to the last trailing letter.
That little whore with the jade-green eyes steps back. Picks up her mask and her phone and her sabre: everything that proves she was here. There are no footprints and no fingerprints. Just angry wide-flung drops of red and a heavy sword on the floor.
That little whore with the jade-green eyes backs all the way to the end of the piste. The room fades in and out.
Mads follows me silent to the door. I open it and she slips out into the night.
I stare across the endless miles between Piper and me. She stares and doesn’t see.
She walked out that night.
She left me there with them.
I step out into the dark with Mads and let the door swing shut behind us.
Escape
Mads drives my father’s red car fast, so fast, weaving through the crawling traffic and flying hungry along the shoulder, never stopping, never slowing down. Her hands grip the wheel tight. Her jaw is set so hard it could break stone.
I sit in the passenger seat on the bright silver sunshield Mads found in the trunk. It shines all the freeway-light back up around me and webs me in white and red and gold. Piper’s blood drips down and paints the shield the color of Mack’s lies and her truth.
The sky glows with city lights. The stars hide their fires the way he wanted when he knew they knew too much. The cars blare loud and angry at Mads speeding furious between them.
Nothing is real.
It’s a night that won’t end.
It’s darkness and light and blood—
—so much blood—
It’s wings that follow us all the way home, swooping low, whispering my name, whispering you’re her—
I don’t remember how to scream.
Home
Hancock Park is dark and blurred. The branches hang so low the car snaps them apart. The jacarandas are all in bloom for a bright shouting moment and then when I blink the dripping petals are gone again and the branches point and writhe like snakes—
My house is as empty as I left it. Windows staring blank. Birds in the eaves. Mads has the lights off the way we did when we left Banks to drown. She pulls my car into the garage and the door clanks down heavy behind us. The chains grind. The air is still and cold.
Mads is on the phone with our coven, saying words in broken bloody pieces—
get my car from St Andrew’s and get here now, to Jade’s—
get rid of the phone—
stay in the shadows—
don’t stop for anyone—
—and her hands shake black bags free from the box by the door.
Come on, Jade, give me your shoes, give me your mask—
And I do.
Stand up.
And I do.
We have to get rid of this—
She folds up the bloodied sunshield.
I take off my gloves. Unzip my jacket and slide my arms free. Step out of the white pants heavy with red. Stand in my hanging sequins and my bare feet and feel my lungs flutter—
Mads says, You have to go wash off the blood. I’ll be right there—
Jenny and Summer are coming—
We’ll be right there—
We’ll get rid of all this—
And I slide ghostly up the steps and into the house. It’s dark. Everything is dark. My breath is too loud. Rasping like Duncan, cracking like Connor, choking like Banks—
and I hear glass shattering and the croaking bird that sat on the oleander branch above the gates of Inverness—
and all their ghosts cling close to me; all their hands grab at my dress, grab at my ankles, grab at my skin—
It’s too dark. I need light. I need to see them, chase them away, chase them out of my house—
I need light—
Fire
They keep the candles in the tall cabinet in the dining room. I find the drawer in the dark. I find a candle, pale and narrow and new. I find the matches. I strike one and it flares and fades before my fingers find the wick.
Strike a second and it sparks and dies and falls to the floor.
Strike a third and hold it close until the wick catches fire and the match burns all the way to the end and I smell scorched blood.
I walk up the stairs with the candle held tight in both hands. It smokes the air clean so no ghosts can show their rotting faces and bare their loosening teeth.
My room is dark. My bed is empty. Outside the window a thousand birds cluster so close all the starlight is snuffed out.
In the mirror on my vanity I am a glowing dead girl. My face is striped in red. My dress catches the candlelight and dances bright and broken.
Blood drips down the candle instead of wax.
There are voices all around me, whispering—
god damn, she’s feisty—
fuck, Dunc, you know how to pick them—
give her a minute, she’ll be gone—
I’ve never loved anyone more—
And my hand is on my knife, the good long knife from my sister’s wedding silver, and my knife-hand digs into my pillowcase and the candle drips blood onto the sheets. I find the folded paper with my four dead boys gouged out. It’s time to cut Piper free but she doesn’t have a picture because she didn’t do anything—
The blood drips down my hands, down my arms, down my dress. I grip the candle and the knife and the paper, all my weapons against the whispering dark and the blood that marks me guilty and dead and her—
The birds watch from the windows.
The bathroom lights up bright with the tiny flame. I balance my candle against the curving neck of the faucet and stare into the mirror at the girl from the St Andrew’s Prep party on my sweet sixteen.
Revenge-black hair.
Blood on my face.
Blood on my hands.
A long silver knife—
Blood
I wash my hands.
The water rushes fast and clear. I leave it ice cold, as cold as my heart, as cold as murdered Piper with her sabre on the floor.
The girl in the mirror watches dead-eyed and soulless. I hate her. She is weak. She is guilty. She trusts. She shouldn’t.
Downstairs voices echo. And I see her—
—the girl who fought and couldn’t fight.
I look at my hands. They’re shivering and clean and wet. But the blood blooms back out of them like the summer-flowers breaking blue and sticky outside, and I see her—
—the girl who said I’m going to kill them.
The birds shriek and the tall clock from Inverness groans. Outside an engine fires hot and Porter speeds hard onto the freeway and crushes to dust between metal and pavement.
I drown my hands under the water and feel it close deep and unforgiving over my head. The blood flows thick and I see her—
—the girl who held a dripping knife and all the power in the world.
I pull my hands free again. They’re redder than before. My dress is stained and torn and the bruises are back. I taste Duncan’s blood on my teeth. I feel it drip down my legs. The circle of red spreads thick around me and I see her—