“I heard myself ask if she could help me load something into my car. She was confused, asking what was wrong, if I was okay. I must have looked… I don’t know what my face looked like.
“I cracked her head on the side of my car and forced her through the door, then drove forty minutes outside of town to a service road in the national forest,” Nico says quickly. “I led her deep into the woods. Gave her the car keys and told her I’d give her a two-minute head start to run back to the car. She ran so hard. I was so much faster. I tackled her. Pinned her down. Strangled her with my bare hands. Then I buried her in the woods.”
I press my hand over my mouth. Tears are already streaming down my face, dripping off my chin onto my lap.
“I was so scared,” Nico says. “I wanted to turn myself in, but every time I got near a police station or even thought about calling 911, Billy took control. Only two weeks passed before… Lila.”
He chokes on her name. My heart rises until I can feel it clogging my throat.
“She was Nora’s—my sister’s—friend, so she knew me already. I was driving home from practice when I saw her walking along the road. Billy shoved me into the back of my mind before I could even think to drive past her. I watched myself offer her a ride. As I drove, she talked about some drama with her director while I screamed at her to jump out, do anything to get away from me. But she kept talking, oblivious to what was about to happen to her. When I passed her street, she was more confused than anything. It wasn’t until we reached the woods that she realized something was wrong.”
The memory of his scar rushes to me, the one on his temple. Lila was fighting for her life against someone who was fighting just as hard to save her. Neither of them could win.
“Billy marched her to the same place while she begged, saying my name like she could reach the real me,” Nico says. “I chased her down and smashed her face with a rock, and then he… he made me…”
I can hear a strangled sob, and the sound drives into me.
“Nico,” I say, reaching for him out of instinct.
He jerks his leg away. “Wait. Just—I learned Billy’s patterns. He got so strong that he could control me for days. I waited until he relinquished control after four days, when he was at his weakest. I swallowed every pill I could get my hands on. I was dead for four minutes. I told you that already. But they got me back, and I woke up to find my parents and sister all in the hospital with me, but this time, I couldseeBilly hovering behind them. He was shaking his head with this amused look on his face.”
Imagining it sends a full-body tremor through me.
“There were five more girls,” he says. “I’d just killed Celia and was back at my house, Billy scrubbing blood from my hands, when Donny came up behind me, gun drawn. I was so relieved that someone was there. That someone would see me coveredin blood and I’d be arrested or, even better, shot, and all of this would be over.”
Nico gulps, and I can feel how hard he’s trying to stop his tears.
“Donny held me down while he poured salt water down my throat. I could feel Billy fighting it, feel him clawing at me, trying to stay anchored. It was more pain than I’d ever experienced. Billy was so strong that pulling him out felt like Donny was reaching into my chest and yanking out my spine. By the time Billy was out, I was choking on ectoplasm and shivering so hard that Donny had wrapped me in every blanket in my house, but my head was mine again. Completely mine. Donny said police were on their way with enough evidence to arrest me. I had two options: wait for them and spend my life in prison, or go with him and learn what had really happened to me. I’d thought it was me. ThatIwas mentally ill, that there was something so wrong with me that it made me capable of those things. I was so desperate to believe that I wasn’t a monster, so I went with him. I never talked to my family again. I’m sure they think I’m dead. They could get in serious trouble if they were found hiding me from the FBI, even if they did believe me. I don’t know if they would. I think they’d turn me in. Truth is, I’m too scared to find out.
“I changed everything I could about my appearance. Donny set me up with a Social Security number, which belonged to a boy who passed away years ago, and used that to get me a driver’s license, passport, and insurance. He paid for me to get surgery to change my face enough not to trip off facial recognition. I dyed my hair. Added the tattoos. Got bigger. I couldn’t believe the lengths Donny had gone to help me. I wanted to repay him in any way I could, so I gave the work everything I had. He needed someone who could communicate with entities. His need for me was the only thing keeping mealive. It was only him and me back then. Every entity we captured felt like saving someone from what I went through.
“Zoey joined the team after two years,” Nico says. “It took a year before Donny let her move in. He was so sure she’d sell me out. But one day, Zo asked if the reason Donny wasn’t letting her move in was that he was harboring the Boy Next Door Killer.” He lets out a laugh that doesn’t sound completely miserable. “I thought I was a goner, but Zo never turned me in.”
Every detail I learn about Zoey makes me want to be her friend more.
“Then DJ joined the team, and she was so much like Nora,” Nico says. “I was expecting her to get the hell out of there when she found out what I did, but when I worked up the courage to tell her who I was, all she did was give me this big… hug? Bonnie recognized me from the news. Benji figured it out immediately, but never approached me about it. They all treated me like a person. Slowly, they became my family, and for the first time since Allison died, I felt like maybe I could have something good in my life again.
“I’d still get urges even after Billy was contained, but I knew what they were, so I learned how to ignore them,” Nico says. “I still got the dreams, but this time, they were memories, and the guilt never went away. I’d run until I threw up or my legs gave out. Until I was too exhausted to think about anything except putting one foot in front of the other. I couldn’t…bearound women. DJ convinced me to go out with her once. To some club she likes to go dancing at. I let her drag me there, but when this girl started talking to me, when she put her hand on my arm… I panicked. Had to leave DJ there and run all the way home. I accepted that some things would be off the table for me forever. I didn’t deserve them, after all the pain I caused.”
I’m aching with this need to wrap my arms around him and get rid of this ugly thing he’s been carrying around for all theseyears. I wish someone were there to protect him back then. I want so badly to protect him now.
Nico lets out a thin laugh. “That night you punched me, I was so shocked. I’m used to people being afraid of me. Nobody on the team would ever admit it to my face, and I know they care about me, but eventhey’venever dared so much as raise their voice at me—except when Griffin punched me a few days ago, I guess. I think a part of them has always worried about what I’d do. If, under the right pressure, I could go back to how I was when Billy was in control. But you looked at me with no fear. I wasn’t expecting you to show up the next day, but Donny was sure you would. And then you demanded answers from me. Everyone else on the team could sense something was wrong when they met me, but you stood in that parking lot, talking with me like I was normal. I hadn’t felt normal in years. I thought I’d never see you again, so I let myself enjoy those few minutes.
“When Donny offered you the job, I panicked,” he continues. “I knew if you came to live in the house, you’d figure out who I am, but more importantly, I was terrified of what I could do to you. Yes, I’d tested things with Donny. But I hadn’t felt the things I did when talking to you since… well, since high school. I got tongue-tied when I was around you. My God, Eden, you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.”
My insides feel like they’re filling with champagne, all bubbly and golden and impossibly light. I want to tell him how beautifulheis, but his words keep tumbling out.
“I was so scared of what that might trigger in me,” he says. “You looked like the girls Billy made me kill. Billy did that on purpose—targeted girls I was attracted to, to mess with my head, to make me think I was culpable. He took just as much pleasure in ruining my life as he did with the murders. But it was done, and my head was fucked up. I had to stop myself from wantingthings I had no right to, because I knew what horrible things could happen if I lost control.
“I tried to push you away, but you made it so hard, always trying to get to know me and asking me all these questions. I’d see your face fall when I shut you down, and it would kill me, but I didn’t know what else to do. I never sleep well, but with you in the house, it got so much worse. I dreamed about your throat under my hands. I’d wake up in a cold sweat, able to smell your shampoo so vividly it felt like you’d been in my room. I was so fucking scared. The dreams felt so real, like memories of something that hadn’t happened yet. I didn’t know if they were coming from me or from some leftover piece of Billy in my head.
“I was going to tell you who I was, but Donny begged me not to, afraid you might turn me in. I genuinely thought you’d be safer far away from me, so I kept trying to get you to leave, or convince Donny to fire you, but you wouldn’t go, and fuck, Eden, I want you so bad it scares me. I couldn’t stop thinking about kissing you. I’d lie awake at night thinking about what it would be like to touch you in ways I’ve never touched anyone. In ways I’ve never been allowed to. In ways I hadn’t allowed myself to want. I’d always thought I could never let myself get close to anyone, but you made me want to try. You made me think that maybe I could be something other than a monster. That I could find a way to tell you the truth and, somehow, you wouldn’t run screaming. But I kept returning to the same question: would my feelings for you be the thing that made me finally snap?”
I can hear him crying, these broken sobs that echo off the distant walls. My ribcage feels like it’s being crushed and pried open at the same time. How has he survived this? How is he still here?
“I confronted Billy,” Nico says. “Demanded answers about why he chose me all those years ago. I knew I shouldn’t engage with him, especially since I’d had this conversation with himbefore and it went nowhere, but I was so desperate for answers that I didn’t care. Billy played me perfectly. I left that basement angrier than I’d ever been in my life, and that’s exactly what Billy wanted, because the second I was gone, he called for you. I was pacing around the kitchen like a caged animal when I heard the door creak and realized, in my rage, I’d accidentally left it open. By the time I got back to the vault, you were already there, and the terror I felt in that moment… Jesus, Eden, there aren’t words. I thought I was going to watch Billy destroy another girl I cared about, and this time, it really would be my fault.
“I’d run for hours, trying to exhaust myself enough that I could fall asleep without dreaming, but it never worked. I’d hear you singing and laughing with DJ, and all I could picture was squeezing your throat until the sound cut off. I’d see you coming in from your morning training, your face all flushed, and imagine touching your body when it was cold and still. I wasn’t sleeping. Wasn’t eating. Couldn’t focus on anything except this constant, overwhelming fear that I was going to hurt you the way I’d hurt those other girls. It felt inevitable, like I was barreling down this tunnel at ninety miles per hour toward a solid wall at the end.
