I start running faster, the broadsword heavy in my hand, slowing me down just the tiniest bit. “Yeah, I’m ahead of you there, Graham!” I shout, skidding around the corner. The hunting parlor is on the first floor and the door is close.
“Not so fast, Miss Walker.” A shot is fired and we duck as the bullet slams through the front door, a single little circle of white piercing through the wood. I lift my sword defensively, but what is steel to a bullet? “The game has only just begun.”
There’s a click of another bullet being loaded and I duck again, yelping when my ankle twists underneath me and instantly starts throbbing.
Leighton aims the hunting rifle at the pair of us, her lips curling, but I’m surprised to see her tilt it at Graham.
“You were always so disappointing, Graham,” she sighs, like it’s no big deal that she’s pointing a rifle at his head.
For a moment I imagine abandoning him here. I can make it out the door without him. But he came for me last night. He’d agreed to play, finally stood up to Pierce. I won’t leave him until I have to.
“Upstairs! Upstairs!” I screech, and start hobbling sideways, tugging Graham along this time.
Leighton fires another shot and it whistles to the side of him.
“Fuck! Why is she aiming for me?” Graham yells as we scramble up the stairs, practically tripping over each step, rushing up past the second floor, up to the third, farther from the freedom I am so desperate for. My ankle twinges again and I fall hard on the last step, but I shove myself back up.
“Because killing Miss Walker is a privilege I’d like to savor. You are a Remington, and thus, a chore,” Leighton says, her voice finally, after all these carefully controlled weeks, rising into a roar. She’s coming closer, the click of her heels growing louder as she ascends at a steady pace, like she’s savoring this moment. “Miss Walker, I really am saddened by this turn of events. I thought you were here for the right reasons.”
Graham and I try door handles frantically but they’re all locked. The sound of the bolts rattling in the frames sounds mocking and my heart sinks. We rush back to the stairs to ascend to the next floor, just as Leighton appears.
“I came here for your right reasons—because I thought I wasn’t enough. But I’d rather die than be turned into some weird shiny smoothed-over version of myself that self-medicates with wine and becomes some fucker’s puppet,” I say viciously, lifting the sword again. “I’m good. Thanks.”
Leighton loads the rifle again and lifts it to aim. “Well, I can oblige,” she says.
I back myself up the steps to the fourth floor, my ankle stepping it up from a twinge to a steady throb, and I know I won’t make it. I squeeze my eyes shut, but then I feel Graham throw himself in front of me, shoving me back and causing me to lose my grip on the sword, like he’s going to take the bullet for me. But no shot sounds.
No pain blooms across my chest. Slowly, I open my eyes.
Leighton stands there, her eyes open wide with a childlike sense of wonder. She looks down at her blue silk top, and it begins to darken to a big purple splotch in the middle of her chest. She drops the rifle and it fires into the ceiling. And then she falls backward, sliding down the steps, revealing Penthesilea on the third-floor landing, hand outstretched, like she’s just thrown something. Leighton’s body rolls, and there, in her back, is the smallest black handle of a knife.
Penthesilea tears her attention away from Leighton and takes a step upstairs, like she’s ready to pursue a new target. Graham drags me back to my feet. I reach for the sword on the landing, where it fell, but Penthesilea steps hard on the flat of the blade and slides it behind her, out of reach.
“Pen—” he starts.
“I thought you took the bat,” I say.
“Come on now, Adina. You know I always have something in my pocket,” Penthesilea says, and then she lifts her bat, holding it like she’s goddamn Babe Ruth. But then a voice shouts:
“ADINA WALKER IS MINE.”
Penthesilea doesn’t say a word, she simply steps to the side and darts back the way she came, clearly deciding to let Hawthorne deal with us. Coming down from the fourth floor, Hawthorne has us cornered, her crossbow aimed at us. We’ll be dead before we even think of diving down the long flight of stairs.
“Hawthorne, come on. Third…，” Graham swallows heavily. He shakes his head like a wet dog clearing its ears. “Third is dead. Leighton is dead. We could all just leave—”
“No,” Hawthorne warns. “Esme didn’t get to leave. So neither does she.”
“Hawthorne, please. Please,” I whisper. I try to take a step forward, but my ankle pops again. Graham holds me up, as we slowly back away against the wall, out of the corner of the third-floor landing, as Hawthorne walks down the stairs, never lowering her crossbow.
“You killed Esme. You murdered her,” Hawthorne says, her voice cracking. “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t kill you right here. Right now.”
“She was going to kill Saint. She… she killed Margaret—”
“Adina, smell me,” Hawthorne commands.
For a moment my fear freezes in the pit of my belly, and confusion is the far more overwhelming, more complicated emotion.
“Did she… just ask you to smell her?” Graham asks. He is about to make a move to look behind his shoulder at me, before he recognizes that it’s probably a bad idea to turn his back on the girl with a crossbow.
“I wasn’t asking,” Hawthorne spits. “Smell me, Adina Walker.”
I duck under Graham’s outstretched arm, limping closer until there’s only a foot of space between Hawthorne and me.
And then I smell her.
Dior. Not the sandalwood and lavender Chanel perfume Esme took to wearing here. But the floral one that was her signature.
It’s the perfume that killed Margaret.
“You’re wearing Esme’s perfume,” I whisper quietly, confused.
“No,” says Hawthorne. “I’m wearing my perfume. Esme has always borrowed my perfume, not the other way around.”
The world stops turning on its axis, just for a moment. My mouth goes dry.
“No, it was Esme,” I say simply. “Esme…”
“What aren’t you getting?” Hawthorne drops her crossbow to her side, nearly cracking it in half against the landing. There’s a horrible plea in her voice as she tries to force me to understand, to see what she’s been hiding all this time. Look at the monster I can be. “I killed Margaret!”
I try to speak but choke on it.
“Didn’t see that coming,” Graham murmurs.
“No, you didn’t kill her,” I say, shaking my head at her. “You couldn’t’ve—”
“Why?” Hawthorne spits. “Because I’m quiet? I killed Margaret and Hannah G and Jacqueline, too. Esme’s my best friend and she needs me. She has to win and can’t do what has to be done.”
My heart cracks; Hawthorne is talking about her like she’s still here.
Hawthorne’s voice grows higher again. “I’m not afraid of her. I’m not a coward. I protected her. I helped her. I got the rest out of the way to make it easier for Esme. She couldn’t do it. She didn’t hate them like she hated you. You, she could kill. So I cleared the rest out. I cleared them out and kept you alive so she could do what she needed to. You were never her friend. She realized it. I realized it. You just used her. And then you humiliated her. You don’t do that to friends. So now I’m gonna kill you for her,” Hawthorne screeches, and then she’s aiming the crossbow again.