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She’s one of them, I hissed, and the sound was a shudder through the air that made the walls shake.
“Please. She’s my mother,” he said.
The word swirled with meaning. My mother had been Mary Beaumont, cast aside and forgotten. Annalise Vaughan, my uncaring guardian, my captor. Rachel Vaughan, whose love, real or not, had shaped the girl I was—for a little while.
These people had killed us. They had hurt us. Again and again and again. I knew the scent of their blood. I knew their faces. There was no mercy in them.
But there was a measure left in me.
Desmond looked blindly toward me.
“Go,” I told him.“Take her and go.”
He nodded. He held Victoria’s arm and guided her toward the exit, Celia taking up the rear. He looked over his shoulder. “End this,” he said grimly. “Bring this whole fucking place down.”
“Go,” I told him again, and I left them there.
It was time for Harrow to fall.
I tore at the stones of the house, and plaster rained down. The heat of my anger blistered the wallpaper, leaving smoke curling from the wood. Windows shattered and the wind howled, a gale that ripped its way through every corridor, tearing open every locked door.
Every door but one. The one blue door, its doorknob carved crystal. I stilled before it, my rage made momentarily quiet.
I stepped through the door, wearing my own face like a mask—a figment that looked like Helen, except for the sharp hook of shattered light that obscured her face.
My mother and Sandra were inside. My mother hunched in the corner of the room, away from the shattered glass that had burst from the windows. Sandra stood a few feet away, tiny cuts like tally marks across her forearms, a single red line across one cheek.
My mother looked at my figment in wild fear. “Helen?” she whispered, rising unsteadily to her feet. There was fear in her voice, but hope, too. “Where’s Caleb?”
“Caleb and your mother are dead,” I told her. It was hard to put words in an order that would make sense. I had a hundred thoughts at once, and only one voice. It was hard to believe I’d managed like this for so long. I wanted to tell her all of it. That I was sorry, that I was glad, that I loved her.
So much of me was focused on my mother that I did not see Sandra move until it was too late. Did not notice the wicked glint of light off the spar of glass she held in one hand until the tip of it was pressed to the underside of my mother’s jaw.
“Don’t come any closer,” Sandra hissed, eyes wide with the panic and adrenaline coursing through her. I looked at her in confusion. I couldn’t come closer because I was already all around her. But she was focused on the figment as if I were contained within that image.
“What do you think you’re doing, Sandra?” Mom asked. Sandra’s arm was a bar across her chest, holding her in place.
“Getting out of here,” Sandra said. She bared her teeth at my figment. “Let me out, or I’ll slit her throat.” She dug the point of the glass against my mother’s neck.
Mom yelped in pain. I surged forward—an instinct, an involuntary reaction to that sound of pain. It was over before I knew I’d done it, Sandra collapsing unceremoniously to the floor, her eyes staring upward, smoke coiling faintly from her skin.
Mom screamed, staggered away. She fell back against the bed, grabbing hold of the post at the footboard to keep herself upright. She took gulping breaths, beating back panic. I wanted to comfort her, reach for her—but I knew it would only frighten her more.
I was the thing she was terrified of.
“She hurt you,” I said, the words so inadequate.“She hurt you and she wanted to kill you—I could hear it singing in her bones. She had sipped poison for so long she had become poison, and I couldn’t let them hurt you like they hurt me. You took me away from this place, but I took you away from it, too.”
“I didn’t know about the girls,” Mom said. “Did I? Or did you make me forget?”
“You didn’t know. Leopold hid it from you,” I told her, and she sagged, relief breaking through her.
“Caleb and Mom are really dead,” she said.
My figment nodded.“I’m sorry. They were going to kill me, and I couldn’t let them. I didn’t want to die again.”
She shut her eyes, and I saw her shudder. “You tricked me. You’re a trick,” she whispered, half to herself.
“I tricked us both,” I said.“I made us both believe. I can’t tell you if you really loved me. I don’t know. But I loved you. That was real. The most real part of me.”
