On some level, I was aware of the fact that shots were being fired. On some level, I was aware of the fact that arrests were being made. But as I stood there, the bloody knife in my hand, I couldn’t bring myself to look up. I couldn’t watch.
I couldn’t look at anything but the body.
My mother’s red hair was splayed out around her, a halo of fire against the bright white of the sand. Her lips were dry and cracked, her eyes unseeing.
“Put down the knife!” Agent Sterling’s voice sounded like it was coming from very far away. “Step away from the girl.”
It took me a moment to realize that she wasn’t talking to me. She wasn’t talking about my knife. I turned, forcing my eyes to the stands.
To the director. To Laurel.
He was crouched behind her, his knife at her throat. “We walk out of here,” he said, “or the child doesn’t.”
“You don’t kill children.” It took me a moment to realize that I was the one who’d said the words. Of the hundreds of victims we’d identified as being the work of the Masters, not one of them had been a child. When Beau Donovan had failed their test, they hadn’t taken a knife to his throat.
They’d left him in the desert to die.
“There are rituals,” I said. “There are rules.”
“And yet, you’re not quite eighteen yet, are you, Cassie?” The director never took his eyes off of his daughter. “I’ve always believed the rules are what we make of them. Isn’t that right, Veronica?”
Agent Sterling stared at her father, and for an instant, I could see the little girl she’d been. You adored him once. You respected him. You joined the FBI for him.
She pulled the trigger.
I heard the shot, but didn’t register what I’d heard until I saw the tiny red hole in her father’s forehead. Director Sterling fell to the ground. As the FBI rushed Laurel, my little sister knelt, touching the wound on her captor’s forehead.
She looked up and met my eyes. “The blood belongs to the Pythia,” she told me, her voice haunting, almost melodic. “The blood belongs to Nine.”
