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“I know.”
“That was just the beginning?”
“The very beginning.”
He put his head in his hands, then looked back up at me. “I’m not trying to make you feel bad. But what the fuck with that gender essentialism? That male and female empowerment, submission bullshit. Why was that appealing?”
I wanted to say it wasn’t. It was the other thing, the way Don could see me, hurt me like I was only beginning to discover I wanted. It was the way I felt powerful when I hooked him, reeled him in, put him in a position where he neededme. I wanted to say Don could have told me anything, invented any pretense, as long as we ended up where we did, with me confessing and his hand around my throat.
But I knew Jamie wanted to draw a straight line connecting the girl he’d known in Heller—bookish Shay, then Shay the boy-hungry beauty queen—to the girl in Don’s house with her back against the wall. He thought he already knew what explained my choices: internalized misogyny, case closed. And maybe that was right. Hell, maybe deep down, despite my proclaimed feminism, I’d believed the content of what Don was saying, not just the effect. God only knew I didn’t deserve to be let off any hooks. But it just didn’t feel like the whole story.
Jamie read my silence differently. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “That was out of line. Don was manipulating you. You were what…twenty, twenty-one? You were young and naive. Laurel was carrying around all that trauma, maybe Clem, too, from the way she grew up. He took advantage of it. You were victims.”
I didn’t know about that word. What did you call yourself when you’d taken an active role in your own suffering? When your hands weren’t clean, when there wasn’t a single part of you that was, especially not your mind, all those deep, dark corners?
“I don’t think it’s that simple,” I said finally. I rose and picked up my purse from the table. Jamie stayed motionless, crouched on the edge of the bed.
“I’m going back to my place.” I stopped at the door. “I’ll call you tomorrow. We’ll plan for Tuesday night, whatever this thing is at Fox Lane.”
He nodded, but right before I slipped out of the room, I saw it flash across his face: Uncertainty. Apprehension. And the coolest little sliver, right behind the eyes, of fear.
I shut the door quietly behind me.
He was starting to get it.
Chapter Twelve
I stood across the street from 7 Fox Lane at midnight, hidden in the coal-black night like a vengeful ghost. The place was a mansion, in a neighborhood full of them, all the houses spaced so far apart no one could see each other. The wealth didn’t surprise me. Neither did the fact that Jamie had looked up the address and it belonged to a John Smith, a dead-end name with no accompanying records. What surprised me was that there were no cars on the street. No people milling in and out, no noises. A few windows glowed behind tightly turned shades, but that was it. A far cry from Tongue-Cut Sparrow and its pulsing dance floor.
I was about to cut across the front lawn when a man in a suit stepped out of the shadows from behind the house and strode to the entrance with a single-minded focus, rapping on the large, ivy-covered door. I ducked behind a tree at the edge of the lawn to watch.
The door cracked open. The man who’d knocked exchanged terse words with whoever was behind it; abruptly, the door snapped wider and the man was yanked inside. I caught a glimpse of the other person: another man, all in black, his outline blending into the darkness behind him. But there was something about his face… It was unnaturally white, his features grotesquely distorted. He scanned the yard quickly before the door closed.
I jerked behind the tree. This didn’t feel right. My gut told me I didn’t want to knock on the door like the woman at Tongue-Cut Sparrow had instructed. Maybe Jamie had been right. He’d begged to accompany me, but I’d resisted because the invitation was for me alone. I’d also resisted his offer to drive me and wait a street over. I’d told him I could do this on my own, and I would meet him at my hotel after. But now that I was here, I felt a quiver of fear turning my hands cold.
A far window caught my attention. A small sliver of light peeked out from where the window had been cracked, curtains nudged apart.
I rubbed my hands together to bring the blood back. The window was low to the ground, practically an invitation. What if I climbed in? I darted across the lawn and peeked inside. Nothing but the shadowy outline of an empty room. It was intimidating, but less so than the man at the door. So I wrested it up, shoes slipping in the slick grass, and hauled myself inside.
***
The house was magnificent but eerily empty. I moved cautiously, unable to tell where the ambient light was coming from. Was it recessed in the floors? Pouring through the seams? The light looked redder than it had from the outside.
The halls were grand and sweeping. Patterned marble floors stretched for what felt like miles, walls supported by tall columns crowned with curling stone leaves, ceilings carved with intricate heaven- and hellscapes. Whoever lived here was frighteningly rich, and not subtle. The house had performed a magic trick. It looked large from the outside, but inside it doubled, the ceilings impossibly high, the hallways impossibly long.
I jerked my head in every direction, convinced I’d gotten something wrong. Where were all the people?
Then I felt it, under my feet: not music, but a percussive wave, a force shaking the floor. Was it coming from beneath me? I took a tentative step forward, and the thunder grew stronger, traveling farther up my calf. I crept, inch by inch, feeling my way to the source.
I turned the corner to find a staircase with black-and-white steps, descending into darkness. The reverberations were strongest here; they came from wherever the stairs led. I had a sudden, uninvited memory of the day I’d found Laurel in the basement, following the sound of her fear, like a thread unspooling into the dark. I crept down the stairs, surprised by how long the journey was, picturing Laurel walking the same steps.Is this where the ground swallowed you whole?
At the bottom was a door. I rested my palm against it. It vibrated, then stilled. Vibrated, then stilled. Like a beating heart. I cracked it open and slipped inside, turning the corner.
I almost screamed.
Before me swept a vast room, dark as a crypt, marble columns tracing up to the ceiling, flames flickering on the walls. Kneeling in a circle in the middle of the room were a dozen women, naked except for their sharp-pointed heels, hands tied behind their backs, heads hanging. In front of them, forming an inner ring, stood a circle of men. They wore dark suits, navy and charcoal, the kind worn to board meetings. Their faces were hidden by white theater masks, frozen in exaggerated expressions of sorrow, horror, agony. The combination was monstrous.
In the very center of the circles stood a man in black, his face a white mask of fury. It was the man who’d answered the door. A naked woman knelt before him, smiling up at him as if entranced. She was small and downy-limbed like a rabbit.
