Chapter 25
“Dina.” Kai’s voice finally pulls my attention away from Kiki’s body. I look up at him through the dark and can barely make out the shadow of his arm reaching toward me.
My brain tells me to run away from him, but my heart begs me to stay.
To believe that he wouldn’t purposefully stab his twin sister—that he wouldn’t do the same to me, if I got in his way.
He did it to protect you, I try to tell myself to calm the panic flooding through me, threatening to make me bolt out into the woods to get as far away from this place as possible.
He’s not that kind of person, I tell myself easily, but it’s harder to convince myself to believe it.
Didn’t I say the same thing about my family last year? And look where we are now.
Kai’s arm stills when he sees me stumble back from him, falling limply to his side as he breaks out into quiet, whimpering sobs.
“I-I didn’t… she pulled and she… I let go…
I didn’t…,” he stammers, unable to form a full sentence.
“I didn’t mean to,” he repeats again and again, his voice a broken whisper.
Confirming what I knew deep down—he would never hurt someone on purpose.
Tears stream down his cheeks and blood—either his or Kiki’s—travels over his wrist to stain the cuff of his shirt.
We only have a small window of time to help Kiki before she winds up like Carla. There’s only so much we can do, but every second counts.
“We need to help her,” I tell Kai, my own voice shaking.
“W-we don’t have the keys,” Kai stammers out, the tears coming even faster as it dawns on him how terrible our situation is.
“Then we have to try to help her here,” I say.
I run into the kitchen and grab the paper towels I remember seeing on the edge of the counter before returning to Kiki’s side.
Suddenly, I wish I’d paid more attention in biology.
That I knew more about the body and what it needs to survive.
I have no idea if it’s better to leave the knife inside of her, or if we should try to pull it out, but I can at least apply pressure.
Kiki lets out a pained groan and the towels soak through almost instantly, my palms damp again from a new type of blood.
It’s impossible to tell how deep the wound is, but based on how little I can see of the knife’s blade, I know we’re working with limited time.
But how much can we do, really? It’s only a matter of time until the person hunting us gets inside, through another door or a window. And when they do, we won’t have anywhere to run. It’s either fight or wind up like Carla.
Kai stumbles closer to me, collapsing beside his sister. His sobs have slowed, but he’s trembling so badly it’s a miracle he’s still holding himself up at all.
“Apply pressure here,” I tell him as I guide his hands toward where I’ve pressed a wad of the paper towels to the edge of the blade. Kiki whimpers when Kai’s hands take over for mine, applying a heavier pressure.
Instantly, he drops his hands, looking down at the blood staining them in horror.
“I-I can’t,” he chokes out, looking from his stained hands to Kiki as she beings to writhe.
I do my best to stabilize her with a hand against her shoulder, worried the knife will go in deeper or fall out if she moves.
One small mercy is she’s too delirious from the pain to realize I’m the one helping her.
I pick up the towels Kai dropped, holding them back in place and applying an even, steady pressure with one hand while holding down her shoulder with the other.
“I-is she gonna be okay?” Kai asks between sobs, hands trembling as he reaches out to take Kiki’s in his.
In the few seconds since I pressed the paper towels against her wound, she’s gone limp.
Her eyes are glossy and unfocused, her breath coming out in short, sporadic bursts.
It grows shallower and shallower, until the only sign I have that she’s still alive is the faint rise and fall of her chest against my palms. She’s still with us, but I’m not sure she will be for long.
My mind reels with a thousand questions and not a single solution, panic threatening to take over.
But one of us has to stay calm if we want to make it out of here alive.
If we want any chance of saving Kiki. And as much as I want to lie to Kai and tell him that everything will be fine, I can’t look at him—broken and sobbing as he looks down at his dying sister—and not tell him the truth.
“I don’t—”
I’m cut off by another round of pounding at the door.
We both jump back, Kai toppling over onto his butt while I drop the wad of tissues.
Kiki’s the only one who doesn’t react, her eyes finally slipping closed.
Before I can panic about what that might mean, a voice calls out to us from the other side of the door.
“Dina!”
“What’s going on?” Kai asks, looking frantically between me and the door as the knob begins to jiggle, followed by more pounding. It’s steadier now, heavier, not from a fist or an arm or even a shoulder.
From an axe.
“Who is that?” Kai continues, grabbing my arm with an unexpected amount of force, his fingertips smeared with Kiki’s blood. “Dina, who is that?!”
Fear finally takes over. Clogs my throat and steals my breath. The nagging feeling that’s clung to me ever since I got here consumes me whole like the darkness.
Coming here was foolish—I’ve always known that.
Thinking that Kai’s friends would accept me even more so.
But I was so desperate to take control of my life that I didn’t care.
It didn’t matter that I was making a foolish choice so long as it was my choice to make—something I haven’t done in years.
Maybe ever, really. But there was a deeper fear that I’d ignored the minute I agreed to Kai’s invitation.
Something I told myself wouldn’t happen because we’d already hit rock bottom.
Things were already as horrible as they could possibly be.
We were the town villains. Enemies of people who’d never met us.
No chance of us ever making friends, at least not ones who knew what our family had done.
Finally, we were as closed off from the world as Mami wanted us to be. There wasn’t anything else to lose.
But I was wrong. It’s happening—again. The same thing that ruined our lives. That put Papi away.
Mikey tried to warn me, to tell me that I was in trouble. And I was the fool who let myself believe that he was just talking about a harmless prank. When I knew just how awful things could be.
Legs shaking, I stumble up to my feet just as the axe breaks through the wood of the door.
So similar to the one we buried in the backyard deep underground where we were sure the cops would never find it, hoping that they couldn’t pin the murders on Papi.
But you don’t need a murder weapon to find someone guilty.
Through the splintered door I catch glimpses of the person on the other side.
Blood-soaked hands gripping the axe’s worn wooden handle, stained with mud and wet leaves and dried blood from two boys long buried.
Wild brown eyes and a wolflike snarl. A glistening gold ring on her left hand—the one she refuses to take off, even though her husband is never coming back.
Somewhere behind me Kai shouts in protest as I march toward the door, but I don’t hear anything he says.
Don’t hear anything but the pounding of my heart and my feet against the wood floor.
My lungs burn from the effort of holding in a vicious scream as I throw the door open, the axe tumbling out of the wood and falling to the ground.
And, finally, I’m face-to-face with the person responsible for all of it.
For ruining my life. Joel’s. For taking someone else’s—those boys’.
Carla’s. Papi’s. Whose smile I inherited.
Vicious and full of sharp teeth. I tried running away from her, but I should’ve known she’d find a way to track me down.
Mami was never going to let me leave.