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.
“Hold up,” Lia said.
Sloane stayed where she was, but didn’t turn back to face us. “That’s what you were doing. Talking to Cassie. Because Cassie’s easy to talk to. She understands, and I don’t.” A breath caught in Sloane’s throat. “I just blurt out stupid statistics. I get in the way.”
“That’s not true.” Lia stalked toward Sloane. “I know I said it, Sloane, but I was lying.”
“No. You weren’t. If Cassie or Dean or Michael had been the one to catch you leaving, you wouldn’t have said it. You wouldn’t have meant it, because Cassie and Dean and Michael could go with you and lie and keep secrets and not say exactly the wrong things at exactly the wrong times.” Sloane turned to face us. “But I can’t. I would have been in the way.”
Sloane was different from the rest of us. That was easy for me to forget— and impossible for Sloane to.
“So?” Lia retorted.
Sloane blinked several times.
“You can’t lie worth a damn, Sloane. That doesn’t mean you matter any less.” Lia stared at Sloane for a few seconds, then seemed to come to a decision. “I’m going to tell you something,” she said. “You, Sloane. Not Cassie. Not Michael. Not Dean. You know the Salem witch trials?”
“Twenty people were executed between 1692 and 1693,” Sloane said. “An additional seven died in prison, including at least one child.”
“The girls who started the whole thing off with their accusations?” Lia took another step toward Sloane. “That was me. The cult I grew up in? The leader claimed to have visions. Eventually, I started playing his game. I started having ‘visions,’ too. And I told everyone that my visions showed me that he was right, that he was just, that God wanted us to obey him. I built myself up by building him up. He believed me. And when he came into my room one night…” Lia’s voice was shaking. “He told me that I was special. He sat on the end of my bed, and as he leaned over me, I started screaming and thrashing. I couldn’t let him touch me, so I lied. I said that I’d had a vision, that there was a betrayer in our midst.” She closed her eyes. “I said the betrayer had to die.”
I killed a man when I was nine years old, Lia had told us months ago. “If I had to choose between being like you and being like me,” Lia
continued, holding Sloane’s gaze, “I’d want to be like you.” Lia tossed her
hair over her shoulder. “Besides,” she said, shedding the intensity she’d borne a moment ago like a snake wriggling out of its skin, “if you were like Cassie and Michael and Dean and me, you wouldn’t be able to do anything with this.”
Lia reached into her back pocket and pulled out several folded pieces of paper. I wanted to see what was on them, but was still paralyzed by the words Lia had spoken.
“A map?” Sloane said, thumbing through the pages.
“A layout,” Lia corrected. “Of the entire compound—the house, the barns, the acreage, drawn to scale.”
Sloane wrapped her arms around Lia in what appeared to be the world’s tightest hug.
“‘Drawn to scale,’” Sloane whispered, just loud enough that I could hear her, “are three of my favorite words.”
