“The animals?” Sloane said, cocking her head to the side. Clearly, she hadn’t foreseen that admission. Neither had I. The difference was that I knew immediately that when Malcolm Lowell said animals, he meant dead animals.

“They weren’t clean kills.” Lowell looked back up at the camera, a hard glint in his eyes. “Those animals died slowly, and they died in pain.”

“You thought Mason was responsible?” Agent Starmans asked, speaking for the first time.

There was a long pause. “I thought he watched.”

 

 

YOU

You’ve been chained to the wall for hours, bleeding for hours.

But really, you’ve been chained and bleeding for years. Before this place. Before chaos or order. Before knives and poison and flame.

You are the one who lay in Lorelai’s bed as a child.

You took what she couldn’t.

You did what she couldn’t.

As the seconds and minutes and hours tick by, you can feel her, ready to stop hiding. Ready to come out.

Not this time. This time, you’re not going anywhere. This time, you’re here to stay.

Night falls. The Masters return. They have no idea who you are. What you are.

They’re used to Lorelai’s dramatics.

Let them see yours.

 

 

I was aware, as the clock ticked past midnight, that another day had passed without answers. April fourth. Somewhere, Agent Briggs was waiting for the Masters’ next victim to turn up, strapped to a scarecrow post and burned alive.

Unable to sleep, I sat on the counter of our kitchenette, staring out into the night and thinking about Mason Kyle and Kane Darby, dead animals, and the large, lumpy shape at the bottom of those stairs.

It was a body. I hadn’t seen that at the age of six, but even with a fragmented memory, I knew it now. I’d been trying not to know it, trying not to remember since I’d gotten back in town.

“No offense, but you have the survival instincts of a lemming.”

I jumped at the sound of those words and scrambled off the counter. Lia stepped out of the shadows.

“Relax,” she said. “I come in peace.” She smirked. “Mostly.”

Lia was wearing the uniform I’d seen on the rest of Holland Darby’s people, not the white peasant top she’d been wearing when I saw her last. In all the time I’d known her, she’d never ceded control of her wardrobe to another person.

In all the time I’d known her, she’d never looked so blank.

“How did you get past Agent Starmans?” I asked her.

“The same way I got out of Serenity Ranch. Sneaking around is just another form of lying, and God knows my body is even more talented at deception than my mouth.”

Something in Lia’s words triggered an alarm in my head. “What happened?”

“I got in, and I got out.” Lia shrugged. “Holland Darby likes making claims. That he would never hurt me. That he understands me. That Serenity Ranch has nothing to hide. All lies. Of course, the most interesting piece of deception I picked up on wasn’t from Darby. It was from his wife.”

I tried to remember what the police files had said about Mrs. Darby, but she’d been little more than a footnote, a fixture in the background of the Holland Darby Show.

“She told me they had nothing to do with what happened to ‘that poor family’ all those years ago.” Lia gave me a moment to process the fact that she’d seen deception in that claim. “And she said that she loved her son.”

“She doesn’t?” I thought of the Kane my mother had known. And then I thought about the body at the foot of the stairs, the blood on my mother’s hands.

There was a thump. Had Kane been there? Had he done something? Had my mother?

It isn’t safe for you to be asking questions. Kane’s warning echoed in my mind. Your friend will be okay at Serenity, but you wouldn’t be.

“Agent Sterling talked to Malcolm Lowell.” As I sorted through the bevy of thoughts in my head, I caught Lia up on what I knew. “Back before Nightshade’s parents were murdered, someone at Serenity Ranch had developed a fondness for killing animals.”

“Cheery,” Lia opined. She reached past me and helped herself to a four-dollar Dr Pepper from the mini fridge. As she did, I caught sight of her wrist. Angry red lines crisscrossed the exposed skin.

“You cut yourself?” My mouth went dry.

“Of course not.” Lia turned her wrist over to examine the damage as she lied to my face. “Those lines just magically appeared and were not in any way a method by which to make sure Darby bought my story about how empty I feel inside.”

“Hurting yourself isn’t the same as donning a costume, Lia.”

I expected her to shrug the words off, but instead she met my eyes. “This didn’t hurt,” she told me quietly. “Not really. Not in any way that mattered.”

“You’re not okay.” My voice was every bit as quiet as hers. “You weren’t okay before you went there, and you sure as hell aren’t okay now.”

“I forgot what it was like,” Lia said, her voice absolutely devoid of expression, “to be special one moment and nothing the next.”

I thought about what Dean had told me about Lia’s childhood. When you pleased him, you were rewarded. And when you displeased him, he put you in a hole.

“Lia—”

“The man I grew up with? The one who controlled everything and everyone I knew? He never laid a hand on us.” Lia took a sip of her soda. “But some days, you’d wake up and everyone would know that you were unworthy. Unclean. No one would speak to you. No one would look at you. It was like you just didn’t exist.”

I heard the implication buried in those words. Your own mother would look right through you.

“If you wanted anything—food, water, a place to sleep—you had to go to him. And when you were ready to be forgiven, you had to do it yourself.”

My heart jumped into my throat. “Do what?”

Lia looked down at her angry red wrists. “Penance.”

“Cassie?”

I turned to see Sloane standing a few feet away.

“Lia. You’re home.” Sloane swallowed. Even in dim lighting, I could see her fingers beginning to tap against her thumbs. “You two probably want to talk. Without me.” She turned.