I laugh dispassionately.
What a mess, indeed.
We watch Lainey talking animatedly with her hands. I try to catch a glimpse of her wrist, but her coat sleeves are too long.
“I keep wondering why we don’t just wack her over the head and use the dots on her wrist to force our way in.”
“Into a realm of monsters,” Naomi says.
An ecosystem built on trauma, according to Bramble.
One my mother has been living inside for five years.
Simon, for thirty.
My persistent, gnawing dread expands.
A Taylor Swift oldie plays on the bluetooth speaker. Lainey shrieks, grabs Kate by the arm, and pulls her onto the dance floor. Lainey jumps and spins, shaking her head, singing along. Kate joins her half-heartedly, glancing in our directionwhen Lainey unzips her coat and tips her head back with a laugh.
The Christmas lights catch on a chain around her neck.
A familiar key rests in her décolletage.
My ears begin to ring.
The periphery of my vision bleeds red.
Everything else fades.
The music.
The laughter.
The sound of Naomi’s voice as she talks beside me.
“Hey, where are you going?” she calls, before I even realize I’m moving.
I stop in front of Lainey in the middle of Taylor’s song. “Where did you get that necklace?”
Kate stops dancing.
Lainey keeps moving to the beat as she takes the key between her fingers and slides it up and down the chain. “At the Lucky Penny. It’s a whole mood, isn’t it?”
“You’re a liar.”
People nearby turn to stare.
Lainey laughs. “That’s rude.”
“That necklace was my mother’s.”
“Remind me to thank her for donating it.”
“Do you have the ruby, too?” I ask. My voice is shaking. So are my knees. She has the key. Shewent down into the well and got it. Then she went into the crypt and let herself in. “What are you doing with it?”
She gives her hair a flip. “What are you talking about?”
“Are you using it to hurt Jude?”
