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“Of course you’re not. I know that better than anyone, remember?”
My eyes close, and I clench my hand on his T-shirt. He’s so warm and strong. So solid, when lately everything’s felt like Jell-O beneath my feet.
“I think about that night every day,” he whispers.
Silence stretches as I remember the stench of blood and death.
“Me, too,” I finally confess.
I should have known it was Uncle Kristian beneath that mask last night because I saw him murdering men once before, when I was fourteen.
I don’t remember much about what happened earlier that day. It was a normal day, I suppose. I must have gone to bed at nine or ten, and I awoke just after two o’clock in the morning in my canopied bed not understanding why.
Did someone shout?
Did I hear heavy, unfamiliar footsteps in the halls?
As I sat up, Chessa screamed, a shrill sound but quickly smothered. My brothers and sisters started crying, and over all that was the sound of angry male voices.
I wanted to run to my family, but Uncle Kristian had taught me never to run blindly into danger. Get a weapon or get backup. I snatched my phone from the nightstand and dove into the closet. Ever since I found out that my family makes its money by less than legal methods at the age of eleven, it was ingrained in me that we don’t call the police. Cops aren’t to be trusted. Cops aren’t on our side.
So I called someone way better than the cops.
Uncle Kristian answered after the first ring, his voice hazy with sleep. “Zenya?”
I cupped my hand around my phone and whispered, “There are men in the house.”
Uncle Kristian didn’t ask questions. He didn’t even reply. A split second later I was listening to dead air, but it didn’t fill me with hopelessness or panic. Uncle Kristian wasn’t going to waste time talking when he needed to get to me as fast as possible.
A moment later, the wardrobe door was ripped open, and a huge man reached in and dragged me out. I screamed and thrashed in his grip. My bedroom was dark, and I couldn’t get a good look at my assailant, but he smelled like sour beer with a heavy layer of cheap body spray. He was laughing as he threw me on the bed. He played with me the whole time, letting me go only to grab me again and throw me back down. I was terrified, but I was getting angrier and angrier as well. I could hear Chessa screaming. I could hear more men laughing down the hall. They were hurting my family, and it wasfunfor them. I couldn’t hear Dad at all, which made me terrified that he was dead.
My attacker ripped off my shorts and undid his belt. I knew what was coming as much as a fourteen-year-old could know, and I nearly turned inside out from terror.
Then I remembered something.
The knife in my nightstand.
Uncle Kristian put it in therejust in casesix months ago and told me not to tell Dad and Chessa about it. Dad had old-fashioned ideas about girls and weapons, and Chessa worried about anything sharp that her babies could accidentally get hold of.
I flung my arm out and yanked open the drawer, and scrambled for the weapon among my diary, a spare phone charger, and half-empty tubes of lip gloss. My fingers closed against the hilt and I cried out with relief. In one movement, I yanked my arm back and drove it point-first straight at my attacker.
And it plunged deep into the side of his throat.
His eyes went wide. He scrabbled at the hilt. Then he realized what I’d done to him, his face darkened with rage, and he got his hands around my throat.
As he started to choke me, I remembered what Uncle Kristian told me about stabbing people.
Make sure you pull the knife out so they bleed.
I reached up and yanked the knife from his neck, and blood spurted all over the bed. All over me.
A moment later, the man toppled onto me.
The next thing I remember, I was beneath the man, stabbing and screaming with fury. There was the sound of breaking glass and someone came crashing through my bedroom window. He tried to grapple the knife from me.
“Zenya.Dandelion. He’s dead.”
I finally let go. Uncle Kristian pulled the blade from my fingers, stared at it with a jolt of recognition, then a surge of vindication. He threw the knife aside, heaved the body off me and pulled me into his arms.
