Thirty-Four

THIRTY-FOUR

I drop to my knees beside Jin. His eyes are closed, his nose is broken and bloody, his shirt is ripped.

My hand flies to his chest, and I nearly collapse in relief when I feel a heartbeat. He's unconscious, though. Unconscious and battered on the garden path.

How is that possible? I saw him leave. Watched him drive away.

Did he come back? Was the leaving a trick? He pretended to leave and then returned—

No. Keith was expecting Jin, which meant he really was heading to Toronto. He must have returned for something and found the front door locked, so he came around the back.

A twig cracks. My head jerks up, and I remember Patrice. She'd be out here by now, and she's searching for me because the damn bugs mean she can't see, and I've stopped running so I'm not making any noise.

I grab Jin's shoulder. I need to wake—

I remember Cirillo's decapitated corpse.

That's what happened when someone got in Patrice's way. When someone came between Patrice and me.

I need to lure her away from Jin.

I carefully check Jin's pockets. My keys are there, but his phone isn't. Where is—?

The bugs clear enough for me to see the cell phone near his outstretched hand. As I reach for it, I stop. Beside Jin is a broken paving stone flecked with blood. That's what hit him. Someone used it to strike him over and over—

I push the thought aside and pick up the phone. It's working but locked. I can still call 911, right? When I can't remember how to do that, I send up a silent apology to Jin and try to unlock it with his face, but that doesn't work.

I take the phone and keys. I also take that paving stone, because I'm not leaving a weapon for Patrice to use on him.

With the keys and phone in my pocket, the stone under my arm, and the knife in my other hand, I veer out into the gardens. Or I think I do. I can't see a goddamn thing with these bugs.

That first day with the midges, I'd chastised myself for not being able to ignore them. Now they're all over me, hitting my eyes, crawling on me, being inhaled with every breath… and I don't care. I do not care if every orifice in my body is crawling with midges. I don't care if I'm shitting midges for weeks. I just want to live.

I've said before that I don't want to die, that I was furious at any insinuation I should join Anton, but it was only today that I realized it's not just that I don't want to die. I want to live.

Patrice almost killed me in the basement, and now she's stalking me, waiting to do it again, and I will not let her.

I want to live.

I'm sorry, Anton. I'm sorry if you are waiting, and I'm dragging my heels getting to you. I'm not ready to go. Nor am I ready to just surrender and wait for death to catch up.

I keep moving. When I think I'm far enough from Jin, I set down the paving stone. Then I take a few more steps and squint through the bugs. I need to make noise. I want to lure Patrice in this direction and then run—

Something swings at my head. I don't even see what it is. I only see the bugs part as something comes at me. I dodge and trip and catch myself… and a voice laughs in the darkness.

"Cut this shit out, Patrice," I say. "You know I'm going to win. I always do. I'm the one who got away. The one who escaped and changed her name and lived a damned good life, while you rotted in a mental hospital. Couldn't kill me then. Can't kill me now."

I'm taunting her. With every word, I look from side to side, waiting for her to give herself away.

Instead, she laughs again. Then she says, "Not Patrice."

I spin toward the voice and step backward. "Fine. You aren't Patrice. What would you like me to call you? Evil Patrice? Patrice spelled backward?"

"You do think you're clever. Got it all figured out, don't you, girl?"

I keep my gaze fixed in the direction of her voice as I fish out the keys and plan my next steps.

Run to my right. Around the house. Hit the key fob. Climb in.

"Don't want to talk?" she says. "Not as much fun when it isn't your old friend Patrice."

I break into a run. I've got the knife in one hand and the keys in the other with my finger over the unlock button. I'm running as fast—

"Nic!" The voice comes from right in front of me, and someone materializes. A figure waving his arms madly. "Stop!"

The voice is muffled, even though he's right there.

Anton.

I see Anton. He's indistinct but waving his arms, mouth open as if shouting words I can't hear. I slide to a stop, and my foot slips, taking me down to one knee as my brain screams that I can't stumble, can't fall, must keep going, just keep running—

The crash of waves.

I hear the crash of waves… right below me. The bugs clear enough that I can see my bare foot… at the edge of the cliff.

"Anton?" I whisper.

I look up, and he's speaking, but I only catch one word in five.

"Don't—go—run—"

I might not know what he's saying, but I can understand the gist of it.

Don't run off the fucking cliff, Nic.

My eyes fill with tears.

"You always have my back, don't you?" I whisper.

He shakes his head, his face filled with anger and frustration, because he can't truly have my back. He's stuck somewhere between here and there, and this is all he can do, half appear and half speak.

"It was enough," I murmur.

He shakes his head again. Then his gaze goes over my shoulder, and it contorts into the rage I saw last night.

That was Anton. I thought it couldn't be because I'd never seen him like that. I could not imagine him being that angry and certainly not at me.

But it's not directed at me.

I spin just as Patrice runs at me. I dive to the side before she shoves me off the cliff. When she wheels, there's something in her hand. Something big and sharp.

She lifts a pair of pruning shears, and her gaze goes to the little steak knife in my hand. Her lips curl in a half smile, half sneer.

"I win," she says.

A flicker of movement as Anton runs at her. She quicksteps back and frowns at his indistinct ghost.

"Roddy?" she says.

"Get—fuck—" he says, his voice cutting in and out.

Patrice laughs. "Not Roddy, but you must be related. Just as cute… and just as useless."

Not Patrice.

That's what she said.

She got in.

That's what Patrice said.

Shared blood.

Someone who knew Roddy and also shares blood with Patrice.

"You're Patrice's aunt," I say. "Lori."

She turns away from Anton's ghost, now nearly invisible as he tries to mouth something.

"Finally figured it out," she says.

I try not to look at those pruning shears. Instead, I focus on my escape routes. The one to my left is tempting, in a Thelma-and-Louise kinda way. Grab Lori and pull her over the cliff before she can hurt anyone else. But I doubt I'd survive the fall, and I kinda want to survive.

I need to get my bearings. We're not in the spot where I usually look out, and with the damned midges, I can't see anything. I wouldn't even have noticed the cliff edge without Anton's warning.

I need to catch my breath, too. My heart pounds, adrenaline slamming through me, and I need to push the panic aside and focus.

Keep her away from Jin. Get to the car. Call for help.

"Patrice said you got in," I say. "Her defenses were lowered, and you got in."

Lori's face twists. "I made a mistake. Once you're in, you can't get out. I was trapped inside her for twenty fucking years, and when we finally get out, what does she do? Drags us into this sniveling brat."

The cliff edge is uneven. I need to remember that. I can't run along it or I won't see where it curves in.

Keep her talking while I think.

"Was it the book?" I say. "Patrice found a book of witchcraft. She said she read the incantation from ‘her' book. Your book."

"Oh my god." Lori's eyes round. "That must be it. The evil book is responsible—" She breaks off with another sneer. "You want a simple answer so badly, don't you, girl? It was the book. It was the wine. It was the drugs. Patrice let me in because she wanted me in. She killed that girl because she wanted to. But then she had to blame someone else. Blame you. Blame me."

"Samantha and Roddy. You—"

"That was an accident."

I strangle out something like a laugh. "You sliced Samantha open—"

"Roddy had been messing around with me. Promised he'd dump that simpering cow. Then at the bonfire, he tells me he changed his mind. When I demand an explanation, he stomps into the forest, and she goes after him. So I followed. I caught up with Sam, and she said Roddy told her everything and she forgave him."

That sneer, twisting her entire face now. "She forgave him. She didn't forgive me. He started it, but somehow it was my fault. We fought. I shoved her, and her head hit a tree. Then Roddy comes running. Accuses me of killing her. He's waving his hunting knife around—who carries a hunting knife to a bonfire? I took it to stop him."

"You slit his throat. "

Lori shrugs. "Which stopped him. That's when I remembered the old stories we'd tell around the bonfire, about a couple who died in that forest back in the fifties. Killed by a guy with a hook for his hand. The guy had his throat slit. The girl was found in a tree with her guts hanging out."

"So you staged their bodies."

"It was a bugger getting her in that tree, I tell you. I couldn't drag her very high. Then I slit her open like Dad taught me to do with deer. Turned out she hadn't actually been dead but…" She shrugs. "She was after that."

I set my jaw against my outrage. She wants that outrage. She feeds on it.

She's right that I want answers. What made Lori brutally murder her best friend and her secret boyfriend? What let her possess her niece? What made her niece slice open her best friend?

Patrice died of an infection, and that is bitterly ironic in its truth. Infected by her aunt, Lori. Had Lori herself been infected by someone farther back in the line, a shadowy threat woven into endless Russian dolls, some ancestor into Lori, Lori into Patrice, Patrice into Shania?

A book of witchcraft is too simplistic an answer, and it's more effect than cause. Something dark lived inside Lori, and she fed it with more darkness, shoveling it in until it exploded.

That same dark thread wove through Patrice, drawing her to the book, luring her to the forest even as she thought she was in control, staging a fake haunting with Cody.

Lori slid into Patrice and goaded her to horrific violence. Both of them ended up in a psychiatric hospital, Lori as the permanently traumatized alleged innocent bystander and Patrice as the convicted killer who had apparently spent her time weaving tales of deceit and betrayal. Tales she fed to her little sister.

"But why Heather?" I ask. It's a pointless question, and that's why I ask it. More distraction with a question that doesn't have an answer.

Heather died because Heather had been there, and maybe, in some twisted way, Lori confused her with Samantha, like she'd mistaken Anton for Roddy. I remember that weird fight Patrice started, accusing Heather of messing around with a boy Patrice liked. I remember Heather's utter confusion. Because there was no romantic rivalry. Not between Patrice and Heather. That was Lori and Samantha.

"Why Heather?" I repeat.

"Is that her name?" Lori relaxes back, shears resting against her arm. "That silly—"

I pivot and run.