Nicole’s eyes swept behind me. “I have to go, Shay. He’s almost here.”
“Please,” I urged.
“I don’t know if she’s even real.” Nicole pulled her hands away. “I’ve never seen her. But they say she’s a sociopath. Started killing when she was only a kid in college. I can’t take the risk.”
“In college?” I barely recognized my own voice.
“They tell all the daughters the story.” Nicole’s eyes flicked between me and the bedroom. “The Paters say she hung a girl and made it look like suicide. She’ll do the same to us if we try to run.” Nicole caught my eyes. “The thing is, all the daughters who step out of line do go missing. I think she’s real and she hunts everyone who tries to leave.”
The truth surfaced like a corpse from the bottom of a lake: Clem had been murdered, as suspected—but not by Don. By Rachel. I remembered the tension that simmered between them: Clem, Rachel’s most vocal critic, the one who was least afraid to shut her down. In turn, Rachel had loved to see Clem punished most of all. She’d hung Clem in her favorite place, which meant she’d been paying attention to us, even when we thought she wasn’t.
“Just do what they want, okay?” Nicole was pulling away. “And everything will be fine. You can come with me to the Hilltop.”
I could hear Dorsey’s footsteps on the stairs. She would race to greet him; grovel, beg, throw herself on the pyre of his ego. I knew in my gut I shouldn’t let her go. I should grab her, hold her, wrest her away. She was Laurel and Clem and my mother all over again, walking straight into the razors, the fists, the fire.
But instead I stayed frozen with shock and fear, watching as Nicole disappeared into the dark. I listened to the crash of voices from the stairwell and knew what would happen. Today, tonight, tomorrow—I didn’t know when, only that it was coming.
All I’d wanted was to save one woman. But when it came time, I didn’t know how. Nicole was right: the idea had been a fantasy. A guilty mind clutching at redemption.
That’s what would go down in the history books. What the recording device in my bra would show everyone who listened: me, soundless and still as Nicole walked away, an empty void of rolling tape. In the glaring silence, they would know that when it counted, when she’d needed me, I’d once again failed to make a difference.
Part Three
Scheherazade, you upstart king
Imagine this. The night comes, the one you feared. The one you’ve been waiting for, death in exchange for an end to the mad weaving. He sees the woman you are, understands the fiction, and it is too much for his ego to bear. He takes up your father’s sword from the corner of the room, takes that thick, gleaming steel in his hands, and thrusts at your head.
You duck.
You have watched him one thousand and one nights, after all, and you know the soreness in his knee, the way his wrist stiffens and clicks in winter. You have catalogued each weakness, each chink in his armor, studying him the way prey always studies the ones who hunt it.
He stumbles. You stick out a foot and he trips, sword clattering at your feet. He looks up at you from where he crouches on his hands and knees.
You seize the sword. You could spare him, take the weapon with you, leave this room you’ve been trapped in for so long you can’t remember anything before it. Maybe there’s another world beyond the door. A thousand worlds, like you’ve dreamed, and some of them benign.
Or.
You could drive the thick, gleaming steel down in an arc that meets his neck, separate his head from his shoulders, quick and ruthless as he would do to you. You could take the crown from his forehead and place it on your own. It would smell of blood—iron and ocher—but doesn’t every crown?
What will you decide?