Margo and I watch him disappear up the stairs. As soon as he is out of earshot, Margo lights another cigarette. Bean has gone quiet. I’m about to ask where she is when Margo announces, “He’s bored,” like it’s a death sentence. She ashes her cigarette too early. “He’s been bored for a while now.”
“You’re such a dear to care so much,” I growl.
Smoke spools from Margo’s nose, dragonlike. “You’re going to lose.”
My nerves coil. “You set me up?”
Margo shakes her head. “She’s smarter than you. She plays dirty. Do you know how she got her job at Alphaspire? She left a trail of ruined careers behind her. She destroyed people’s lives. You won’t best her. She’s nasty. I selected her especially for you. You’re going to lose.”
No one has ever lost before. There is no hard, fast rule for what will happen. But it is obvious. These people don’t lose. If I do, I am not one of them. If I am not one of them, I am out. Graham will leave me, and that is just for starters. I know too much. I can’t just walk away.
“Does Graham know?” It’s the only thing I care about. Is he in on it, too?
“Not yet, but it’s for the best. I’m doing him a favor. He’ll appreciate it in the long run. Not that long.” The sad thing is, I don’t think she’s wrong. He is bored. He’s tired of me. I don’t want Margo to be right but she is. “It’s her or you.” Her dimples are showing. She thinks I still have a chance. I do still have a chance.
If anything, this makes it easier. Demi is nasty. She’s destroyed people’s lives. She’s not the nice, nervous girl she seems to be. She’s not a victim; she’s an adversary.
I can prove myself to Margo, to Graham. I can keep them entertained. I can shock them.
I will destroy her.
LYLA
I drink too much at dinner, and by the time we get home, my body feels tight. My muscles ache. I want to collapse into bed. Graham reeks of cigarettes. He smoked all the way home. He takes one last puff and pitches the cigarette into the dark. In California. Where the whole state is a tinderbox.
Our entryway is pitch-black.
“The bulb must have gone out,” Graham mutters at the gate, looping his hand around my waist to help me, shepherding me down the short steps to the courtyard. My foot lands on something soft. It gives beneath my weight and I startle, try to back away when it caves in with a wet popping sound.
I scream. Graham flicks on his phone light. It washes over the steps and I see Bean lying on our patio. Her eyes are glassy. Her tongue licks the floor. Blood stretches like fingers toward our door.
Graham pulls me back up the steps. “Oh, my God.”
“I’m going to throw up.” But I don’t.
“She’s dead.” He peers over my shoulder. “Maybe a coyote . . .”
I leave a bloody footprint on the stairs. I slip my shoe off and stand in one shoe.
“Shit.” Graham’s fingers play along my hip. We scan the dark: the cold stones of our patio, the sharp drop to the apartment below, the weird trees twitching. He kisses me quick on my neck. “Margo will never recover.”
“We can’t tell her,” I say just as fast. She will think it’s me. She will think its retaliation for what she confessed to tonight. Even though I was with her. Even though I have an alibi. The dog is on our doorstep. “She’ll find a way to blame us.” We both know I mean me.
Graham nods, but I don’t know if I can trust him to keep a secret from Margo. “Maybe we should call the police,” he says. “I don’t think an animal would do this.” A human is an animal, but I know what he means.
* * *
THE POLICE SEEM skeptical at first, but once Graham gets on the phone, they’re convinced. Graham switches out the shattered bulb on the outdoor light. He bags it.
“Evidence,” he says, proud of his work.
Two officers arrive. They look like father and son, like they were cracked from the same mold: black hair, cropped pants, one neck more crinkled than the other.
They seem happy to take their time, circling the body, taking pictures on their iPhones of the dog, the broken gate. They seem like amateurs dressed as cops, the way every cop does.
The younger one bends down, brushes the fur aside where the blood is the darkest. “It looks like a knife wound—”
“We can’t say for sure.” They are like this on everything.
“It was probably the same guy who blew through your gate.”