Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
44
Nae-nae.” A breath of sound, the scent of summer sunshine and peach blossoms, the feel of fine cotton and gauzy lace. “I tried to—”
Her eyes fell shut, her head lolling on her neck.
I was frozen, locked in time in this moment, my brain broken.
Bea was dead.
Bea was dead.
Bea was so light in my arms.
Another scream, this one without air, barely gasped out.
But enough to snap me out of the slip in time that had brought Bea back to life.
I looked up.
To a sea of red splashes.
On Kaea’s skin, on Vansi’s face, on the floor, sprayed on the wall.
Terror shredding me, I tried to make sense of what was going on.
Vansi, collapsed on the same couch as Kaea, was spotted with red.
Kaea was the same . . . and he lay so motionless that I couldn’t tell if he was even breathing anymore.
Grace and Darcie, however, staggered on either side of the fireplace, one bloody hand on the mantel each and the other clutching at their wounds.
Darcie’s stomach was a blur of red, her sweater a Rorschach painting. But her horrified eyes were on me, on Bea. “She’s dead!” White face. A voice shrill with fear. “There was a funeral. I paid for a casket.” Gasped-out words. “Suicide. There’s a d-death certificate.”
Releasing her grip on the mantel—leaving behind a smeared handprint—she pressed both hands to her stomach. “Grace is—” she managed to get out before she lost consciousness so fast that I had no way to catch her even if I hadn’t been still holding the woman who looked like Bea.
It was pure luck that Darcie’s head didn’t crack on the sharp edge of the brick footing that bordered the hearth.
Still upright but pale, Grace threw down a large butcher knife she’d been holding, its blade slick with scarlet. “I had to use the knife,” she sobbed as blood dripped from a wound on her side, enough blood that a droplet hit the hearth in front of me. “She was about to stab Vansi. I had to do it, Luna!”
I looked from the unconscious Darcie to the conscious Grace.
Before I could speak, however, Grace staggered, looked at me with a startled, devastated expression, then fell to her knees with a thud that couldn’t have been faked. It was too brutal. Hard enough that my own knee throbbed in remembered pain.
Then she kind of toppled over in slow motion until she lay unmoving on the ground.
The entire series of events couldn’t have taken more than thirty seconds, but it felt like an endless lifetime.
A crackle from the fireplace.
I began to move because I had to move. Don’t think, Luna. Just do. Don’t think.
First, I put the woman in my arms gently on the floor on her back. Only then did I notice that the white of her dress was saturated with blood all down her front. Streaks splattered her chest and neck, too. A droplet marred her jaw.
Don’t think. Just do.
Shoving up her dress without regard for her modesty, I checked for wounds. Nothing. Her skin flawless but for a small birthmark shaped like a crescent moon on the curve of her waist.
I dropped the blood-soaked dress back down.
Stumbling past the unconscious woman with Bea’s face and Bea’s birthmark, I wiped the blood off Vansi’s cheek—and realized it wasn’t her own. Her skin was as smooth and unmarked as that of the other woman, her body clear of visible wounds. Fingers trembling, I checked her pulse. Steady like Aaron’s.
“Drugged,” I decided, only then noticing the bloody steak knife half under the sofa.
Stomach threatening to spasm, I kicked it deeper underneath.
Kaea wasn’t feverish any longer, and he did have a pulse, albeit weaker than Vansi’s. Because Vansi had spent the day caring for him, getting food and medicine into him. Only, she’d been sabotaged by an invisible enemy who had to have been dosing Kaea’s food or drink with something.
My foot hit an object.
I jumped, half expecting another fucking blade—but it was Vansi’s skillet.
Taking the makeshift weapon in hand, I walked to Grace. Her pulse was stronger than I’d expected. Not about to be caught flat-footed, I forced myself to pinch the skin on the soft underside of her arm with vicious intent. No reaction. She really was unconscious.
I made sure the butcher knife—Jesus, a butcher knife—was far out of her reach regardless.
Then I checked on Darcie. She was so clearly unconscious that I didn’t bother with a pinch. Her wound looked far worse than Grace’s, but for all I knew, Grace was bleeding out on the inside.
Putting the skillet on the old fur rug, I sat down with my hands gripping my hair. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
What was I going to do? What the hell could I do?
Especially with the snow.
Jolting upright on a sudden thought, I ran to the window. Enough light from the room fell beyond the glass to reveal that the heavy sheet of white had turned into slushy rain.