The Goddess of oblivion was calling me home.
The darkness of the cave welcomed me. I slung myself beneath the stone and scraped at the soft mud behind me to obscure the slick of blood I left. Gravity won out over my failing strength and I slid down the small slope, coming to a rest on my side, staring at Persephone’s bones.
I could hear Cody moving. Limping along. He called my name. I squeezed my eyes shut. I had to have left a trail of blood. He could follow it if he saw it. But I hadn’t told him about the boulder. I hadn’t told him about the cave. He might not know.
He might not know, and so I would be able to die here, die with the bones of another lost girl. And we would rest, shrouded, together.
“He killed you,” I whispered. He hadn’t meant to. It didn’t matter. He’d let her die and he’d let her be lost, all these years. The secret had stayed lodged under his skin like a splinter, and infection had festered around it. Until we found it, and pricked our fingertips with that diseased bit of wood, and the infection had entered our blood as well. Had wrapped our lives around these bones and wrapped Liv’s fingers around the knife.
That secret had driven the knife into my back. It should have killed me. Cody had no idea as he wept over my bleeding body that he’d set this in motion. Not until Liv’s guilt had driven her to go digging for that splinter, that secret, slicing open the silence. All that pus and rot came spilling out, and the secret had killed her, too.
And there were other infections, too, all spreading from that first push, the crack of Jessi’s skull against the rock.
Ethan, growing up knowing that his father was condemned for the wrong reasons, unable to bring himself to admit to either truth: the one that would have freed his father or the one that would have put him away years before. That might have saved some of those girls whose names he carried now, a talisman of his guilt.
Marcus and Kimiko, gripped with fear that they hadn’t done enough to protect Liv. That the truth would come out—or that it wouldn’t, and she would hurt someone else, and it would all be for nothing.
And Jessi’s niece. The real Persephone. Not a goddess. Not bones in a cave. Not a story we’d told, but a girl who’d loved her aunt, and who missed her. Who’d never known what had happened so that she could properly grieve.
A mistake had killed Jessi Walker. Silence had killed Liv. And the truth had killed me now. And I would be lost, too. There was no one left who knew where Persephone’s bones lay. And that seemed right. I wanted to stay here forever with her. The seventh ritual. Everything would be in balance again.
But if I was lost, Marcus and Kimiko would never know that it hadn’t been Liv’s fault. I needed to tell them.
Cody’s calls were moving away. He’d lost my trail. He’d backtrack soon, but I might have a few minutes first.
My phone was a hard lump against my thigh. I pulled it out and squinted at it, the screen blurring. There was the tiniest shred of signal. I stabbed at the screen, managed to pull up the last number dialed. Ethan. I couldn’t hold the phone up anymore. I pressed the button to call and let my arm drop, holding it propped on the ground beside my ear.
It rang twice, and then Ethan answered. His voice dipped in and out, and I couldn’t tell if it was the poor signal or unconsciousness grasping at me.
“—there? Hello?”
“You have to tell them,” I said. There was blood in the back of my throat; I coughed on it.
“Naomi? Is that you?”
“Listen. Listen.” I swallowed against the blood. “Tell them it wasn’t Liv. She didn’t do it. You have to tell them.” I tried to take a breath and choked, and a whine of pain slipped between my teeth. Ethan was talking but I couldn’t understand the words. I hadn’t explained properly, but I couldn’t think of how to tell him what he needed to know. “I have to go now,” I said.
“Naomi, don’t hang up. Tell me where you are,” Ethan said.
“It’s okay. She’s here with me,” I said. I let go of the phone; it tumbled from my fingers.
I pulled myself closer to the bones and rolled over onto my back. I shut my eyes and saw again the image of Cody above me as the pain in my back began to register. The way he’d knelt over me, horrified, grief-stricken. Like it was a thing that had happened to him.
His face swam. Blurred. Other memories crowded it. Oscar’s fingers dug into my abdomen. “You and me were meant to be,” he crooned. His fingers punched through my skin, wriggling in my innards. Then he yelped as Cody pulled him away, was kneeling over me again, face streaked with tears. Young again.
“No, please no,” he said, pawing at my neck. “Please don’t be dead.” I tried to tell him I was alive, but I didn’t believe it. My fingers curled against the bark. His face hardened. “I wish I didn’t know what a liar you are,” he said, and drove a knife into my cheek.
I writhed in pain. My breath rattled, and there was a slurping feeling every time I gasped. The stones above me fractured into light-dappled branches.
“What are you doing?” Cassidy screamed, her young voice high and furious.
“I can’t. I can’t. I can’t,” Olivia chanted.
“We have to! You promised!” Cassidy yelled.
The knife flashed. I raised a hand to ward it off, striking out weakly at the person looming over me, but a firm hand caught my wrist and held it. “It’s okay. We’ve got you. She’s down here!”
Memory ceded reluctantly to the present. Cass’s hand, Cody’s, Oscar’s—they collapsed into reality, brown skin and a solid grip.
I blinked blearily up at Officer Bishop. “I’m starting to think I should have just arrested you,” she told me. She pressed her palms to my abdomen, sending a fresh wave of pain through me. I coughed and tasted copper.
I had to tell her about Cody. I tried to speak, but I only coughed again, and she shushed me.
“Just keep breathing,” she told me. “Just stay awake and keep breathing. You’re going to be okay.”
For once, I didn’t mind being lied to.
I stayed awake. I fixed every moment in my memory as best I could. I wouldn’t forget again. I might die, but if I lived, I would remember this.
Ethan was there when they hauled me out, strapped to a backboard. He tried to talk to me but the words were all slushy. I wanted to tell him I forgave him for lying, but the EMTs got testy when I tried to talk and then they were putting me in a helicopter.
“You’ve really got to stop doing this,” one of the EMTs joked, yelling over the sound of the blades.
“Last time, I promise,” I mumbled, and he shushed me again.
And then, despite my best efforts, I faded.
Consciousness seeped back slowly, punctuated by the soft beeping of a monitor. With my eyes closed and my body cocooned in the half oblivion of morphine, I might have been eleven years old again. Except this time, my dad was there when I woke up.
“Hey, kid,” he said when he saw me open my eyes.
“Hey,” I replied weakly. It came out like a shoe scraping over asphalt. “I’m not dead.”
“Go figure,” he said.
I looked down at my right hand. Even with the thick bandages, the shape of it was obviously wrong, the last two fingers gone almost entirely, the middle finger ending at the second knuckle. “Thought I still had that one,” I said, irrationally irritated at its absence.