Ava can’t reach the old woman across the table, and that’s probably good. She sits in one of the chairs instead, leaning back and lacing her fingers behind her head. “That’s what you care about right now? With us here, armed, knowing you knew exactly what you were sending us in there for?”
“Kill me, if you want,” Linda snaps. “But it was fed today. You wouldn’t leave friends behind if they could join you. And the guards would have radioed if it was at the gate.” She closes her eyes and sighs in relief. “Okay. That’s good. That gives us some time. Don’t touch that!”
Mack freezes with her hand on the china hutch. She was going to replace the handkerchief.
Ava smiles. “No worries, Linda, we already found your journal.”
Linda’s eyes bug out in outrage, her drawn-on eyebrows not quite matching the sheer levels of pissed off the rest of her face is giving. “Who did you leave in the park? There are only three of you.”
“Why the fuck do you care?” Ava asks.
Linda flinches, scowl deepening. “Don’t use that dirty language in my house. I care because I need to know—” She pauses, then sighs. “No, I suppose I don’t need to know exactly how many replacements we need. It’s not my problem anymore. Ray can deal with it for once.” She lets out a hiccup of a laugh. This is the end, then. All her work, all her sacrifice, undone by these ungrateful little shits.
“Ray, the one from the diner? The cook?” Ava spins the handgun on the table, scratching tiny patterns in the polished surface.
LeGrand is standing in the entry to the kitchen, rifle held at the ready as though Linda might break free of her bonds at any moment, transforming into a monster to devour them all. It’s not an unwarranted fear, really, not after what he’s seen, what Mack read to them. He can’t shake the feeling that Linda can still hurt him, will still hurt him, will hurt them all.
Linda nods. “Yes, that Ray.”
Ava stops the gun mid-spin. It’s pointing right at Linda. Then she casually spins it again. “Oh, he’s dead.”
Linda lets out an aggravated huff of air. Her breath is stale, competing with the punch of her spiky floral perfume for olfactory dominance. “Wasteful,” she mutters.
“Wasteful?” Ava laughs. “I knew you were a cold bitch, but wow, this is a whole nother level.”
“If you were going to get rid of Ray, the least you could have done was force him into the park.” Linda twitches to rub her forehead, but of course her hands can do no such thing. Perhaps most impressive is that her hair has not migrated a single centimeter from where it is curled and shellacked into a blond sculpture. “Who did you leave behind, though? Jaden?”
“Already gone,” Mack says, staring at her reflection superimposed over the delicate china. Her eyes look like blank hollows, her face white, her hair black. Like an artist’s impression of a person, but one they didn’t think was worth finishing. Tear it out of the sketchbook, start over.
“You didn’t leave sweet Brandon, did you?” Linda has the audacity to sound aghast.
Mack shudders, remembering the sound of Brandon hitting the ground. “We would never,” she whispers.
She would have, in another life. But not this one.
“He’s dead, too.” Ava spins the gun so hard it slides off the table and falls on the floor.
Linda sucks her teeth, a habit meant to clean lipstick off them, now done automatically. “Consumed, or dead?”
“Dead.” Mack finds herself once again happy for him. Sweet Brandon. “The monster got Jaden and the other Ava.”
“Another waste. He died for nothing.”
“As opposed to the rest of them?” Ava’s voice sharpens with a hysterical edge, her face contorted in a smile of disbelief.
“Yes, as opposed to the rest of them! You read my journal. Do you think we do this for fun?”
“I don’t know. White people. You really never can tell.”
“Don’t be racist,” Linda snaps.
Mack never knew her father’s reason, whatever Jaden and that fucking podcast might have projected onto him. It suddenly feels urgent to understand the exact reason so many people were ended in the park. Why she should have ended in the park. “Why?” she asks. “Why do so many people have to die?”
The journal they had was unclear, but Ava knows enough. “Because they’re a bunch of demon-worshipping predators.”
“I am a Christian!” Linda huffs. She rushes to correct Ava’s assumption. “We don’t worship it. You don’t understand that all great things require sacrifice,” Linda says, and her voice takes on a slightly different quality. A sheen as polished as the table. This is something she has recited before, the shape of it familiar and smooth as it leaves her mouth. “And the seven families who founded our town have shaped the world in great ways. Pharmaceutical advancements, surgical innovation, technological titans, not to mention the myriad of judges, senators, local leaders, and business giants that guide our country and provide jobs for countless people.”