Our off-the-cuff plan has bombed. No one is able to escape now and we may have given a trained fighter a weapon. Could we trust Cardinal?
“Now everyone is going to behave whilst I take our little Robbie on a walk.” Lily grits.
“I think fucking not.” Cardinal aims the gun, but it only causes her to pull me forcibly against her front, pushing the gun harder against my skin. It hurts, the harsh coldness causing tears to wellin my eyes. His eyes assess her grip on me and he curses under his breath, next checking over Starling who has Wren tightly in a headlock. I'm scared he’s going to pass out if he can’t wedge his arm from his neck.
Knowing he can’t aim his gun at him either, he wavers for a second before lowering it. His hands remain in the same positioning on the gun, and I think if we can just cause another distraction, I could worm out of her grip and he’d be ready.
Grabbing my wrist, she twists it behind my back. “Walk. Now.” I have no other choice than to be led out of the room, tears swelling as I walk past Merle's unconscious body and expect Goldie's arm to snatch at my ankles, but he remains facedown into the carpet. The entire floor is covered in mud and splatters of blood, but there’s a stain starting to pool from out of his ear.
“Don’t do this, please.” Phin slurs, no doubt the drugs are still tugging on his senses, but she doesn't let me turn to see his face. In response she clicks something on the gun and it echoes against my head, causing an audible shudder to escape me.
“It’s al-alright, Phin. Don’t worry. Please.” I try to soothe him, but I hear his little whimper at understanding it probably won’t be ok this time. I want to tell him how much I love him, my best friend in this entire fucked up world–my brother,but if I do I’ll accept I'm not coming back into the library.
“Don’t you fucking dare hurt her.” Wren chokes, causing more tears to flood down my face.
She maneuvers the door open and I think about all the ways I could push out of her hold right now, but like she reads my thoughts, the gun is pushed harder against my head and she pulls at my arm. Once we’re in the hallway, my feet drag, not knowing which way she’s wanting to take me. I assume we’ll walk to the lobby, maybe she’ll finish the job and drown me in the lake, but instead she pushes me hard onto the wide staircase.
“Walk slowly up the stairs and if you even try to run, I’ll shoot you in the back.”
I gulp, unable to tamp down my anger. “I bet you don’t even know how to fucking use it.”
She kicks me in the back of the thigh and I wince, not wanting to give her any more of my pained cries. “Not the time for your pathetically bad humour. If I aim at your head, I bet I won’t miss from here.” She says as she presses the gun to the back of my head. “Climb.”
I have no other choice but to slowly start to move up the stairs, hands shaking so much I grip the banister.
“You’d have gotten away with it, if you hadn't written that night into your book. We’d all be none the wiser. My parents were going through a rough patch, you’re too young to remember, but I always saw them arguing and they slept in different rooms. Probably because he liked your slut of a mother.” She grits, the gun pushing into me as she degrades Mum. I’m too scared to speak, so I just keep slowly climbing the stairs. “That night she’d come home from an event hammered, so drunk and piss-wet through from the rain. She’d kissed me goodnight, thinking I was already asleep, but I remember thinking it was for the best I kept my eyes closed. She left mud all over my carpet. That’s how I knew you were there. Your character had the same description, a dripping wet phantom of a woman. The police obviously assumed she was wet from the rain after her fall, so only someone who was there with her would have known the truth.”
I’m practically choking on early memories of my own Mum now, trying to suppress the hurt of missing her so much. “Lil, I was only five. I couldn’t have pushed her.”
“Stop fucking lying. How else would you have known? Why would you have written that? How sick do you have to be to include a murder like that?”
I know she’s questioning why I wrote something so similar to her mother's fall, especially when that woman raised me alongside my own.
Only because I know he’s downstairs, much safer than I am right now, I swallow down my fear. “You’ve got it all wrong. Phin helped me with my early ideas. I credited him for helping with the set up. He has this nightmare of a creepy woman trying to find him.”
“Just stop with your lies.” She hisses and I tumble over my own feet when I get to the landing. Grabbing my arm, she hauls me up and pushes me towards the stained-glass window that overlooks the fountain at the front of the house. In the panes of clear glass I can see down the drive and into the forest, a flash of yellow contrasting against the watery landscape. “No amount of lying is going to save you. Just admit what you did and accept your punishment.”
I wait for her to turn me in a direction down either corridor, but she pushes me again towards the large window and I spin around, back flush to it. “What’s my punishment?”
“Death.” She shrugs, before her face twists and she grabs me by the hair to push me harder into the window. Instinctively I grab a fist full of her curls and pull so hard. She cries out loudly, over the scuffle of our movements but she doesn’t let go of me. The only thing that makes me stop is the gun pressed to my cheek, right under my right eye. I want to keep fighting, want to push and hit and run, but that piece of metal drains every ounce of energy I have left. My body is bruised and cut, head a pounding mess that has me blinking back the urge to just shut down.
I’m exhausted and completely at her mercy.
We can hear commotion downstairs but it’s muffled. Lil pays no attention to it and leans into my face, our noses brushing asshe reaches her free arm around me and unlatches the window lock.
No.
“Lily, please.”
“It’s only fitting that you follow in her footsteps. Eye for an eye. Fall for a fall.”
I try to push off the window but she grabs me by the back of my neck, gun pressed to my face and she’s still so close to me I can see the cold silver in her eyes. They’re so void of anything.
A soft crunch has me looking away briefly, but the hand on my neck is removed to push at the window latch and the two panes separate, letting in cold, wet air. I shiver as mist-like rain hits my back, my hands gripping into her flesh in an attempt to attach myself to her. She can’t throw me out of it if I’m clinging to her, right?
I’m shoved hard backwards and my bum hits the edge of the window, my hands flailing but I manage to catch myself on the wall and not tumble right out of it. The gun is pointed at me again, her blonde hair a bird's nest and I’ve never seen a person look more unhinged.
She truly believes she’s seeking revenge.
