“Yeah, and your fingers are infected,” Beck says. “The infection’s so deep it’s gone to your head, Pais! So let me fucking go so we can take your sorry ass to a hospital.”
“Did you not hear me?” Paisley exclaims, despite Beck being inches away. My ears sting at the sudden loudness. “I can’t go! I can’t leave! And you guys can’t leave either!”
Because she’s going to kill us.
Paisley is probably burning with fever, on the brink of delusion. And this is someone who’s already unstable enough to have committed the crimes that got us here in the first place. She might’ve killed two people, cut off their body parts, and moved their bodies, but she’s weak. All we have to do is—
Beck sinks her teeth into Paisley’s wrist, so deep I can hear the sickening sound of broken flesh.
Paisley screams, any language beyond that lost to her.
It’s all the space I need.
I grab the nearest lamp off the desk and swing it as hard as I can into Paisley. Glass rains down. I put my hands up over my eyes as the shards spray around us. The glass fragments hit my non-bandaged skin, but I don’t feel the pain afterward like usual. I wait for the sound of Paisley’s body hitting the ground.
But it doesn’t.
When I uncover my eyes, I rush for the gun. It’s cooled now in my grip, nearly slipping out because of the sweat on my palms. Without thinking, IaimitatPaisleyandfire—
And it clicks.
It is empty.
A gust of wind hits me. Paisley’s body blurs in front of me, her knife at the ready in front of her.
“Stay out of this!” Paisley says.
Paisley slashes at my hands. Startled, I drop the gun.
Then Paisley stabs me in the leg. Deeply.
The knife slides through my thigh easily, enough to send me to the ground. As smoothly as it went in, Paisley yanks it back out with a spray of blood that lands on both of us. I clutch my leg as the pain screams inside me, the panic rushing over me as the blood squelches between my fingers. I’ve never seen so much of my own blood. The lamp, now nothing more than a base with a few shards of bulb glass still attached, lies beside me.
“I didn’t want you here,” Paisley says, tears in her eyes. “I didn’t want either of you here. I could’ve stayed until—”
“Yeah, well, Mom wouldloveto have me die too,” Beck says, spitting Paisley’s blood out onto the carpet. Her right hand presses into a wound on her left side red-stained. “So give it up! Just let us take you to a fucking hospital!”
Beck charges at Paisley, grabbing the hilt of the knife as Paisley clutches it.
“I hate you!” Paisley exclaims. “You could’ve left me alone! Weren’t you happy without me?”
She looks to me, her eyes wild. Fear pumps through my veins, nearly making the horrible pain in my leg go numb. “I know you were too,” Paisley says to me, her spit flying in my face. “No more people to have to measure up to and make fun of you behind your back. What are you even doing here, Emma? It’s over. They never liked you. I never liked you. You both are so fucking pathetic.”
It’s like Beck says. She’s probably deep in an infection, spouting cruel nonsense.
Beck is stronger than her. Beck should be able to overpower her easily.
But Paisley gets ahold of the knife.
Paisley raises the knife, aiming for Beck’s throat.
“Paisley!” Beck screams, animalistic in her desperation.
And my pain goes away.
I grab the lamp and crawl over to them.
I lift the lamp and shove it as hard as I can at Paisley.
