Page 51 of Unalive On Air

“I was told Jason died at the lighthouse,” Camille says. “So the Old Scares may have got to him.”

Peter’s nodding along. “Jason Barlby never stood a chance. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Old Scares were the ones who killed him in the first place. Saul too.”

“By killed, do you mean killed-killed or ghost-killed?” I ask.

He shrugs casually. “Both.”

“What about you, Peter? Do you believe in unfinished business? Are you worried about getting sucked into the after-afterlife, or are you cool with it all?” I say. My eyes keep drifting back to Trystan, who’s determinedly not looking at me.

“Oh, yeah. Unfinished business is absolutely a thing, but I’m not concerned,” he says.

Over his shoulder Pixie whispers something to Jeanie. I can’t be one hundred percent certain, but by the way her lips move, I figure she says, “Here we go again.”

Peter continues. “No, not worried.” He shakes his head and holds his arms out Jesus‑style, and in that moment it dawns on me just how much he embodies his ex-career. He is the ’80s magician. I have the absurd urge to laugh, but I swallow it down and listen to the rest of his words. “One, because I already know who killed me, and two, I can categorically say with unwavering certainty that solving that riddle for everyone else is not my unfinished business.”

“What is your unfinished business, then?” I ask.

“That . . .” He swishes his cape, causing Pixie to turn her head to the side, hiding her eye roll. “Is for me to know and for you to find out.”

“Good job finding stuff out is my jam,” I say, and then even though I know what his answer will be, and everyone else knows what his answer will be, I ask, “So, who killed you, then? And is it the same person who killed all the others?”

As predicted, Pixie and Jeanie both heave out weary sighs. Camille, although only dead for a few months, gives me a look that screams, “Why?” Trystan still seems to be midway through his spiral-sandwich. Only Stove bears the slightest hint of enjoying this.

“It was her,” Peter says with finality.

I raise my brows. “A name would be nice.”

He glances at me like I’ve lost my mind, and gestures through the wall to what I assume—going by my mental map of the hotel—is Helga’s office.

“My ‘darling’ wife. Till death do us part. Or whatever.”

Okay, he’s not wrong. Helga had indeed been the person to drive the sword through Peter’s heart, thusly making her his killer. I scramble through my memories of Helga’s recollection. She had said she’d felt no resistance, that the weapon was a trick weapon, and it felt as though it was sliding through air. She could of course have been lying.

I humour him. “Why, though? What was her motive?”

Pixie groans and flops to the ground, her face buried in the crooks of her elbows. I suppress my laughter.

“Apparently promises mean nothing to her. Apparently our love has only ever been one‑sided. She got what she wanted from our relationship.”

I don’t want to ask what that was, everybody else doesn’t want me to ask, and I already know I won’t believe Peter, but I ask anyway. “Which was?”

“A ticket into the country. Leave her old, shitty life behind for the glitz and glamour of being my assistant.”

“But she’s Swedish?”

The UK joined the European Union in ’73 and Sweden not until the mid ’90s, but something about a green card motive feels all wrong. And why, if she loved the “glitz and glamour,” would she murder the headline act? The one person making that particular lifestyle possible. I could perhaps get behind the reasoning if she’d taken over from Peter as the star magician. Instead, she took a job here as a room attendant. Why go from semi-stardom to scrubbing toilets and changing sheets?

I feel as though Peter’s unrequited love theory might be entirely inside his head, but I guess he’s had over forty years to mull it over. Forty years to bolster a lie he’s been telling himself, all to make himself feel better.

Is it easier to believe someone killed you deliberately or accidentally?

I have no doubt Helga was the one who physically ended his life. There were plenty of eye witnesses, in fact an entire auditorium of them, to back up that theory. Yet, from my years of figuring shit out, I just know there’s more to the story than is being told. Either it wasn’t the sword that killed Peter—perhaps something else inside the trick box may have been triggered when the lid was closed, or someone else had tampered with the illusion’s equipment prior to the show—or Helga’s lying.

Maybe she did murder her husband, and the motive was . . . the motive was . . .

The motive is something I’ll figure out in due course. If there is one.

One question remains to be answered, though. “Do you think Helga killed everyone else as well?”