My lips part from Mack’s. I breathe it into him: four words, beautiful and deadly.
This debt is yours.
I open the door. I walk out onto the stage-lit porch. The cops shout, Don’t move. They shout, Hands up. They shout, On your knees.
I don’t listen.
I walk down the steps and onto the green lawn. They throw a blinding spotlight across the grass and circle me in. They shout. Their guns come up.
High above me the sky is made of birds.
I raise my hands.
The lights spin. My crown shines brighter than the sun. My wings stretch out so wide they cover the whole valley.
I am ruinous and unruined.
Shadows fly. They circle me, four of them, shouting and shouting with their guns up.
I say, “What’s done is done.”
They grab me all at once. They try to knock me down. They yank at my hands and I feel my gloves slipping and my stitches bursting open and my blood soaking into the silk.
They say, Elizabeth Jade Khanjara—
They say, You’re under arrest—
They say, You have the right to remain silent—
From far back behind the house one of them shouts for medics, but it’s too late to save Duffy and Malcolm. It was always too late.
They say, The hell is she smiling for—
They say, Wipe that smile off your face, you’re in serious shit—
They drag me away. Cameras flash. My heels rip through the grass. My dress shines dizzying in the lights. They lock silver handcuffs onto my wrists. They pull me across the grass toward their cars. They try to make me fall.
I don’t fall.
They push my head down and shove me into the car and slam the door. A metal grate cages me in. They’ve trapped me but I don’t care. Nothing they can do will ever bring the wolves back to life.
I lean close to the shining bars of my cage. The cop in the front seat twitches. He smells like cheap cigarettes.
I say it right into his ear—
What’s done cannot be undone.
He flinches away from me. He says, “You’re going to be sorry you did whatever you can’t undo.”
I think of dead Connor and how everyone swore it was an accident. Dead Duncan and the knife in Porter’s hand. Dead Porter who drove deathwish-fast onto the freeway. Dead Banks with his car waiting at El Matador. Dead Piper with Duffy’s name scrawled in her blood. Dead Malcolm and dead Duffy celebrating drunk and stupid with bloody knuckles and the guilt that finally caught up to them.
I think of Jenny’s father with his front-page headlines and his murderers who walk free. You’ll be a celebrity, said Summer, starry-eyed, just before they turned to birds and flew off into the night. You’ll be his goddamn dream client, said Jenny. You’re the girl who wins, said Mads. And Lilia said, For every girl who wants revenge.
I think of the four boys in the white-sheets room. Walking out. Stalking proud through the halls of St Andrew’s with everyone knowing exactly what they did that night and every other night.
But never again.
The radio gasps static and the scared-stupid cop mumbles into it. The passenger door swings open and another cop climbs in. The door slams.
The car slides back down the driveway. The sky glows bright and breathes with feathers and freedom. Mack watches from the door.
The dazzle-smiled boy who killed for me. Dizzy from my kiss and innocent, innocent, innocent. A bottle of poison hanging from his hand.
He is alone in the dead king’s house.
Far away my coven flits and flies and watches over me. They are mine and I am theirs and I will never lie to them again.
Far away my mother and my father stand tall for me. They will love me always. They will see the little laughing girl always. I am her, still, even with blood on my hands.
I am free.
I am everything I have ever wanted to be.
We drive away from Duncan’s house. Away from the spinning lights where they picked the girl fate had already chosen.
I look back, just once, before it all disappears—
—and Mack lifts the bottle to his lips and drinks the poison down.
I smile with my fangs showing.
I am the queen and the killer.
I’m not sorry.