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As I drag her wordlessly from the room, toward the servants’ quarters below.
—
CHAOS BEHIND US. THE MAYOR hastily pushing back his chair, scrambling to follow. “Wait. Stop!”
The Southern cop: “This is a crime scene.”
The purple sheriff: “Mayor Howard, you will sit down. Right now!”
I don’t pause. I’m slow, my right leg dragging, but I’m also sparking with energy. The blond cop questions nothing. She grips my hand as tightly as I hold hers. I lead her to a small door off the back hallway. The few rooms in this section are administrative—Mrs. Counsel’s office, the filing room, housekeeping supplies. But this door. This unmarked door...
I wrench it open, and as always the first thing that hits me is the whiff of decay. While the house sighs in agitation. Buildings have feelings, too, and what has happened in the levels below has hurt it. I understand these things, though from what I can tell, others don’t.
I risk a glance at the detective. Her face is impassive. If she catches the odor, feels the house shift nervously, she doesn’t show it. Maybe she’s like the others, deaf to such things.
Maybe there’s no one like me.
The stairway light is on. I don’t wait. I can feel a relentless pressure building in my chest. Hélène. Something is wrong. Toward the bottom of the stairs, I trip and nearly go down.
The detective catches me. “Easy,” she murmurs.
I’m so strung out I think I might vomit.
This is it, I realize now. I’ve taken my last stand. Without the killing rage and heroic drama I’d always envisioned. I was going to feel my real name flood through me. I was going to gather my mother’s spirit close. Then I was going to unleash myself like an atom bomb through the black rot of this house, searing away the mayor, his wife, the Bad Man. Reducing them to ash.
Now I’m down to a frantic race. To find Hélène. To find something, anything, that might communicate all the words I can’t say. If I can make the detective wonder, arouse her suspicions about this place... She’s fire, not easily doused. She might leave today, but she’ll question, she’ll gather more information. She’ll know enough not to be put off by the mayor’s fancy ways.
She’ll leave after this. Then I’ll wait. Because given this stunt, my fate is sealed. Tonight, the Bad Man will return. He’ll step inside my room, lift his knife, and prove what a Stupid Girl I’ve always been.
Maybe my death will finally give the blond detective what she needs to make the Bad Man pay.
She is fire.
And this whole place needs to burn.
I start throwing open doors. I don’t even know what’s behind some of them. The Bad Man? Rooms of whips and chains and instruments of torture? Given the sounds I’ve heard over the years, I’ve always wondered.
The detective is still holding my hand, but I notice now she’s unsnapped her holster. I nod approvingly. She squeezes my fingers.
The first few rooms are empty. Bare cots, blank walls. These spaces are bigger than mine and hold two to four beds. Hélène’s is farther down the hall. Small like mine. Once she was in a big room with roommates, but when they left, she was sequestered. She doesn’t talk about it. None of the girls ever talk about it. For the past few weeks it’s just been her, me, and Stacey. But then Stacey found the knife and I cleaned up the mess and now it’s just Hélène and me.
Which is also not good.
The basement never stays empty for long.
I come to my little room on the left. I throw open the door, stumble in before the detective can stop me. Is he here? Is he waiting?
For an instant, I think I see his hulking shape loom ahead. My eyes widen. The Bad Man is here to kill me. But my detective and her fire will get him first.
Except when I flinch and press back against the wall, the dreaded demon turns out to be only a shadow after all.
The detective is at my shoulder, breathing heavily. My fear has spread itself to her.
I try to pull it together. Communicate, communicate—how can I explain?
Pictures beneath my mattress. I grab the thin mattress, toss it up. I should have a drawing or two. But the floor is bare, the pictures gone. The Bad Man got here first.
I whimper in sheer frustration. I need to talk, I need to tell. Hélène, Hélène, Hélène.
