Instead, she said, “I want you to know now that all your planning was for nothing. I’m never giving you what you put in my head.”
“Your original said something similar,” Abigail said.
“You kidnapped her.”
“Yes, at first,” Abigail admitted. “But once we explained—”
“Yeah, yeah, she agreed to let you stab her to death with a big smile on her face.”
“That was all postmortem. She didn’t suffer,” Cabigail said in a tone meant to convey what an essential difference that made.
“She had a life. She was in love,” Con protested.
“Even so,” Abigail said. “She still agreed.”
“It’s never going to happen,” Con said, conscious of how unimpressed the Abigails were by her threat.
Abigail and Cabigail looked at each other and reached a silent consensus.
“We have to accelerate the timetable,” Abigail said. “Show her everything today.”
“We were going to give her a few weeks to acclimate,” Cabigail said, discussing Con as if she were a child who couldn’t follow adult conversations.
“With Vernon sniffing around out there, it’s a luxury we can’t afford. Otherwise, we’re going to run out of time,” Abigail said. “It has to be now.”
“Vernon.” Cabigail said the name like an ancient curse. “Nothing has gone right.”
“It’s time for tea,” Abigail said.
The suggestion seemed to demoralize Cabigail. “No, not yet. It’s too soon.”
“It’s time,” Abigail said soothingly.
“What if I need you?” Cabigail asked. “What if she refuses?”
“Convince her. Everything depends on it,” Abigail said. Outside, they’d been threatening to kill each other, but that all seemed forgotten now; the two Abigail Sticklings were strangely affectionate and gentle. “You were right out there, I think,” Abigail said. “You’re better equipped to handle things from here. You can do it.”
Cabigail nodded dejectedly. “It’s just that we’ve been looking forward to this for so long. I hate that you’re going to miss it.”
“I won’t,” Abigail said, squeezing her hand again. “Because you’ll be there. This is the plan. This has always been the plan. Nothing else matters.”
Cabigail nodded and stood up. “I’ll get the tea.”
After Cabigail went into the kitchen, Con looked across the table at her aunt. “How long have you been down here?”
“Always.”
“What does that mean, always?”
“I’ve never left the mountain,” Abigail answered. “It would have ruined the effect if Abigail Stickling was seen going to the opera at the Kennedy Center.”
“I can’t believe my aunt would commit suicide,” Con said, still shocked by the idea of one of the most notorious egos of the twenty-first century voluntarily ending her life.
“Well, she didn’t,” Abigail said.
“She jumped off a roof,” Con replied.
“And yet here I am. Two of us, in fact,” Abigail said, gesturing toward the kitchen. “So how could Abigail Stickling have committed suicide? You of all people should appreciate that.”
“You know it’s more complicated than that,” Con snapped, realizing this was how the Abigails had given themselves permission to kill Vernon Gaddis, Brooke Fenton, and the original Constance D’Arcy. By their twisted logic, it couldn’t be murder if the victim had a clone. Only the accidental death of Cynthia Gaddis gave them any pause. Not that it had stopped them. Cabigail had graduated to premeditated murder, killing Pockmark and his entire team.
“Is it?” Abigail asked rhetorically. “If I’m talking to Constance D’Arcy, how can I have murdered her?”
“The dead body, for one.”
“Ah yes, the body,” Abigail said like a professor who had finished greeting the class and was ready for the lecture to begin. “The tyranny of the body. Let me ask you this—if a soldier loses a limb in combat, should we declare him dead? No, that seems a little premature. How about two limbs? Three? How about all four? Is it time for a funeral?”
“No, obviously.”
“Of course not. We may impute some poetic importance to the human heart, but it is called brain death for a reason. Our humanity has always resided in our minds. The body is only a vessel and an extraordinarily fragile one at that. My work liberates us from that limitation.”