Chapter 9

NINE

AMETHYST

I roll onto my back, my eyes widening at the sight of Xero. He wears the tuxedo from last night at the Ministry of Mayhem, or was that the night before? I have no idea how long the drug at the airport rendered me unconscious. They could have trafficked me as far as Australia.

“Xero?” I whisper. “What are you doing here?”

He leans against the padded wall, tall, and strong, and alive. “Why don’t you tell me, little ghost?”

I bite down on my bottom lip, but it’s numb. I’m not even sure how I’m moving my mouth. “You’re dead.”

He nods. “Keep going.”

“And you’re haunting me for revenge?”

“Is that what you think?”

My throat tightens. There’s no such thing as ghosts. “You’re a hallucination. Just like Mr. Lawson and the others.”

His brow rises. “Which others?”

“Sparrow and Wilder?”

“Anybody else?”

“I don’t know if I hallucinated Jake. You were always trolling me with his corpse.”

He grins, his eyes sparkling.

“Why would you even do something like that?”

“Amethyst.”

I flinch. He hardly ever addresses me by name. At least not since escaping death row. “Yes?”

“You’re in the worst trouble of your life.”

I nod, my breath quickening.

“Do you understand what’s happening?”

I stiffen. “Um… Yes? No? I don’t know.”

Xero crosses the room and crouches in front of where I’m lying. His pale eyes bore into mine with the same level of intensity as the times he disguised himself as a wraith. I swallow hard, my pulse quickening.

“This isn’t a dream. Dolly isn’t a monster or a doppelg?nger, but an identical twin.”

“I don’t have a?—”

“Listen to me,” he snarls. “You have a twin.”

“How?”

He taps the side of his head. “You’ll have to work that out for yourself. Dolly knows you. She thinks you stole from her, and she’s brought you here to die. Just like Lizzie Bath.”

“And you’re here to help me escape?” I whisper.

His eyes soften, and the look he gives me is so pitying that I squirm within my straitjacket and bandages.

“I’m dead, remember? You broke a bottle of somnochloride over my head and set the crawlspace on fire.”

A sob catches in my throat, and my eyes sting with tears. “Xero, I’m so sorry. I thought?—”

“Save your apologies for later. You need to focus on escaping.”

I give him a shaky nod. “Do you know where we are?”

“Anywhere within the United States. Based on the amount of time you were on the plane, we could even have made it to Canada.”

“Okay.”

“The surroundings are familiar. This is certainly where they took the polaroids. Are you getting stronger feelings of déjà vu?” he asks.

My breath shallows. “I think so.”

“Listen, Amethyst. The time for hiding behind excuses is gone. You’re about to face unimaginable torture and pain, but you might have a chance of escaping this ordeal with your life.”

I scoot forward, my heart pounding so hard that every inch of my body throbs. “What do you mean?”

The door opens, and the large man in white from earlier steps into the room. I want to shrink away from his touch, but my body still feels numb. He lowers a double dog bowl on the floor, with one side containing water and the other some form of mush.

Even though his face is partially obscured by a white surgical mask, I still recognize his gray eyes.

“Fen?” I whisper.

He pauses, his gaze meeting mine. “It’s Grunt,” he replies, his voice muffled. “Eat.”

Straightening, Grunt turns on his heel and exits the room. I stare at his broad back, wondering if Dolly relegated Fen to being my caretaker. Xero and I remain silent as his footsteps disappear down the hallway.

“Don’t trust him,” Xero says.

I nod. Everyone who associates themselves with the likes of Dolly and Delta is automatically deemed as evil.

“Xero, why can’t I move properly?”

His face tightens. “You don’t remember?”

“Remember what?”

“Kicking Delta in the balls,” Xero replies with a chuckle. “Locke had to administer a neuromuscular-blocking agent to stop you from tearing down the rigging.”

“You saw me do that?” I ask.

“What does Dr. Saint say about the brain’s ability to absorb information?”

“As long as our senses are still working, we take in more sensory data than our brains know how to process,” I reply.

Xero nods. “You’re more capable and intelligent than you give yourself credit for. I’ll help you process everything around you that you can’t handle.”

“Thanks,” I rasp, my chest tightening with gratitude, and also regret, knowing I don’t deserve kindness from the ghost of the man I betrayed. “What do you think is happening with Grunt?”

His face tightens. “There are only five men in this abandoned asylum: Delta, Locke, Barrett, Seth, and Fen, who was sent away after they strung you up. They want you to believe that Fen has either fallen out of favor with Dolly or has become the group’s scapegoat.”

“So, it’s a trick?” I whisper.

“This is the same group of people who sent photos of you as a child with threatening letters. They also created that graveyard scene to fuck with your mind. Grunt is a persona designed to be your caretaker or even a confidant.”

“Why do you think it was me in that photo and not Dolly? She has the same major scars as me.”

“Which of you has no memory of the other?” Xero pauses, his pale eyes boring into mine, challenging me to engage my brain. “Which of you holds an unreasonable amount of resentment towards the other, and which of you has a brick wall around their childhood memories?”

I shift uncomfortably on the padded floor. “It’s obvious when you put it like that.”

The screen mounted on the wall still plays, this time with body cam footage from the point of view of someone walking through Mom’s driveway. The sound of multiple footsteps echoes through the speakers, accompanied by excited breaths.

Based on the dim sunlight, I can tell it’s morning. The point of view character walks around the hedge maze, lifts one of the stones at the foot of its shrubs, and picks up a key. The hand is identical to mine, save for a scar running from the wrist to the space between the thumb and forefinger.

My heart sinks into my stomach as she continues toward the back door, unlocks it, and strides through the mud room, into the kitchen, pausing at the counter to extract a knife from the block.

“I can’t watch Dolly kill Mom,” I whisper, my eyes squeezing shut.

“What the hell did I tell you about hiding behind excuses?” Xero growls. “Open your fucking eyes so I can see what’s happening.”

Unease churns through my gut, and I force my gaze back to the screen, where Dolly walks across the flagstone steps, through the house’s wood-paneled hallways, and up the stairs.

“Mom had her faults, but she didn’t deserve to be murdered by her own daughter,” I murmur.

Xero grunts, considerate enough not to mention that I drove to Alderney Hill to do the same, but my hypocrisy hangs over my head like a cloud.

I fall silent as Dolly reaches the upstairs landing and heads straight to Mom’s room. The morning sun drenches the space with light, illuminating the mahogany four-poster bed and its rumpled sheets. Scoffing, she turns toward the fireplace, continues toward the ensuite, and knocks on the door.

The sound of running water stops. “Clive?” Mom’s voice drifts through the closed door, sounding completely at ease. “Is that you?”

“Mom?” Dolly says, her voice broken.

Mom sighs. “Amethyst Crowley. What the hell did I tell you about turning up at my house?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Yes, you do.” Mom flings the door open. She’s wearing a cream silk dressing gown, with her hair hanging loose at her shoulders. Her eyes are hard, but there’s no trace of fear.

“Because she thinks that’s you,” Xero adds, seeming to be in tune with my thoughts.

Before I can remind myself that he’s a figment of my imagination, Dolly raises the knife.

Mom’s eyes widen. “What’s this?”

“I’ve thought about how our conversation would go if we ever met again,” Dolly says. “How could someone be na?ve enough to believe the word of one child while condemning another to a painful death?”

“What are you talking about, Amethyst?”

“Amethyst,” Dolly says, her voice hardening. “Guess again.”

Mom pauses for a beat before her eyes widen and her face turns slack. “It’s you.”

“It’s you,” Dolly mimics.

“Dahlia?” Mom’s whisper rises an octave.

“Is that all you have to say after fourteen years?”

For the next several heartbeats, Mom’s gaze darts to a point beyond the camera, as if she’s calculating her method of escape. I’ve never seen her look so unsettled. She was always distant with me, but her expressions were always tinged with impatience and irritation. Never terror.

If Mom treated me like a dog making messes, she looks at Dolly like she’s a wolf.

“How did you find me?” Mom asks.

“When your golden child went viral on social media with her Xero Greaves fan club, she left several clues, including a New Alderney mailing address.”

Mom’s face twists with a mix of fury and disgust. “Amethyst.”

“Say her real name,” Dolly says through clenched teeth.

“You have to understand that we looked for you,” Mom says, her voice rough. “By the time I realized the truth, you’d disappeared. It was like you’d never existed.”

“None of this would have happened if you hadn’t thrown me away like trash,” Dolly says.

“Dolly… Dahlia.” Mom’s voice breaks. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“What’s this?” Dolly asks with a harsh laugh. “The slow realization that you sent away the wrong killer?”

“Please—”

“I’ll count to ten. If you can escape me, then I’ll put aside the knife and listen to your side of the story, but if I catch you, I will cut out your vocal cords.”

“Dahli—”

“One.”

Mom’s eyes widen, and she bolts out of screen, her heavy footsteps disappearing. Chuckling, Dolly pivots, and the camera pans to the bedroom door.

“Two.”

My gaze darts to Xero, who turns from the screen to shoot me an annoyed scowl. It finally registers that he can’t see what’s happening if I’m too busy looking at the patch of empty space my brain imagines he inhabits.

“Sorry,” I mutter, and force myself to watch.

Dolly jogs back through the house, her breath quickening, seeming so excited by the hunt that she’s forgotten to finish counting. When she reaches the kitchen, Uncle Clive is entering through the mud room, clad in a white shirt and cummerbund.

“Amethyst?” he says.

“Don’t call me that!”

The man’s eyes widen. “Amaryllis?”

“Wrong answer!” She hurls the knife across the room, lodging it in his gut.

Eyes bulging, he stumbles back through the mud room and out into the garden.“Dahlia.”

Dolly stridesacross the kitchen, snatching up another knife from the counter before reaching the mud room. As she steps outside into the garden, Uncle Clive staggers backward, only to trip head over heels into the hedge maze.

A scream has Dolly turning away from my fallen uncle and toward the side of the house. At the second scream, she breaks into another jog, her feet crunching over the gravel path.

If I wasn’t so numb with drugs, the fine hairs on the back of my neck would rise. “What the hell happened in our past to make Dolly so murderous?”

“Same reason why you went there this morning to kill Melonie,” Xero mutters.

“I thought Mom was Dolly.”

“How the hell do you think a girl your age ended up marrying a man like my father?” he replies.

Xero is right. From the way Dolly speaks, she makes it sound like Mom handed her over to Delta. And nobody gets that amount of knife wounds without suffering something heinous.

Back on screen, Dolly rounds the corner to find Mom wriggling within the grip of Locke and Fen dressed as guards.

“What should we do with the MILF?” Fen asks with a grin, his fingers in Mom’s mouth.

Dolly stops moving. “You want to fuck my mom?”

Fen’s features fall. “No, it’s just a figure of speech?—

“Don’t gaslight me with mansplaining,” Dolly snarls. “You distinctly called her a Mom I’d Like to Fuck.”

“I didn’t?—”

“Fuck, Fen. Dolly is a goddess, not some bitch you can disrespect,” Locke says. “Apologize to her and stop wasting precious time. One of our members just live streamed his altercation with Amethyst Crowley.”

“He’d better not hurt her,” Dolly says.

“She defeated him and escaped.”

“Good. Let’s get moving.”

My stomach churns. I don’t want to watch, but I also don’t want to miss any vital clues. Dolly trails after the men as they drag Mom back around the house and back into the kitchen.

“I wish there was more time to carve you into strips,” she says, “But Amy keeps messing up my schedules. Men always disappear when I send them to her house, and now she’s found herself a protector.”

The two men release Mom’s arms, just as Dolly reaches out and slashes the knife across her neck. A red line of blood appears on her skin, and Mom clutches her throat before crumpling down to the floor.

“Leave,” Dolly says and crouches to get Mom in the shot.

Blood roars through my ears, muffling what Dolly says next. My vision blurs as I try to focus on the screen.

“Blink, little ghost,” Xero says, his voice soft.

I obey, loosening two fat tears that roll down my cheeks. When I open them, Dolly’s hand is grabbing Mom’s chin.

“Thank me, Mother, because I showed you mercy. You were just a stupid bitch who believed the word of a sniveling psychopath. Amy won’t be so lucky. I plan on keeping her alive long enough to know what it feels like to be me.”

My stomach plummets, and my mind fills with memories of Lizzie Bath’s snuff movie.

I can’t let her punish me for something I don’t even remember.