Chapter 20
Monica Love was famous, but softly, in the way TV presenters and news anchors are.
I couldn’t quite place her face, but I knew with certainty that I’d seen her before, maybe in the supporting role of a movie I’d liked as a kid or on one of those late-night infomercials that play on repeat in the wee hours of the morning.
A face you only half remember but never quite forget.
Monica’s home was filled with old Hollywood memorabilia. There was a large and glossy poster for some off-Broadway musical I’d never heard of featuring a younger Monica dressed as a flapper. Beside it, in a frame no bigger than my hand, was a receipt with some scribbled writing on it.
“Marlon Brando wrote his number on that,” said Monica when she caught me looking.
Monica led us into a large living room with gleaming floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the pool out back.
All the furniture was sleek, with the same aerodynamic dimensions of the house itself.
A cowhide rug stretched across the floor, layered with Persian tapestries and sheepskins.
In the far corner of the room sat an acrylic baby grand piano beside what appeared to be some kind of altar, complete with melting candles and crystal balls, burnt bundles of sage.
In what seemed like something of a Palm Springs cliché, there were also plastic flamingos everywhere.
“God, I want your life,” said Chloe, gazing around the room. The other girls—apart from Shiloh and Naomi—seemed similarly awed.
I had always been scared of getting old.
It’s vain, and I feel bad admitting it, but the idea of gray hairs and liver spots, wrinkles bracketing my mouth, had always filled me with fear.
I just couldn’t imagine who I would be at that age, when all my youth was gone.
But Monica was a living hope of something more than that.
I’d be lucky to grow old the way she had, in her glamorous house with the suave velvet sofa and a record player whirling in the corner, its speaker blasting a twangy folk song.
Monica ducked into the kitchen, and all the girls, even Shiloh, followed her like ducklings. She took two trays of muffins out of the oven, steam trailing off them.
We hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, so we finished two dozen muffins, slathered with jam and vegan butter, in a matter of minutes.
Monica made mocktails—with lime, lavender syrup, and tonic water so bitter and bubbly it burned my throat when I swallowed.
We drank from chilled cocktail glasses and sat around the kitchen, snacking on olives and crackers and other tidbits served in plastic dishes patterned with cartoon flamingos and other tacky designs.
Skye watched all of us, looking proud and content despite the grim circumstances that brought us here. I wondered if this was something she’d wanted for some time, her two worlds brought together into a kind of harmony. Sad that it had only happened then, as we stood on the precipice of tragedy.
After we ate our fill, Monica led us back to the living room. Skye claimed a furry beanbag chair, while Naomi and Iona settled on a curved love seat opposite the couch. The rest of the girls sat on the couch or floor.
But Monica loomed over us, frail arms folded across her chest. “So, what’s happened now, love?”
“Trouble with Death,” said Skye. “He wants us to kill one of our own. Someone in this group. We have until midnight to decide, but we can’t go through with it. We need your help.”
Monica’s expression remained neutral, totally composed. “Well, there’s no help to be had here. You’ve got to do as he says. Appease him.”
“But Skye told us you negotiated with him,” said Shiloh.
“That was a long time ago.”
“And yet you’re still here,” said Shiloh.
Monica’s eyes narrowed. “I am for now.” She moved to sit down on the edge of the couch, fumbled with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, her hands shaking so badly she could barely get the flame to catch.
She finally lit up and spoke in an exhale of smoke.
“At a certain age, you come to accept the harsh reality of your own mortal life. You hear your cue, and if you have any dignity at all, you heed it and step offstage, so to speak.”
“Are you telling us to go belly-up?” Riley asked. I could tell she was incredulous, pissed that we’d come all this way just for Monica to tell us to give up.
Monica shrugged. “Death gets what he wants in the end, so you might as well save yourself the time and give it to him. After all, it doesn’t take long to die.
For most of us, it’s a few bad moments if we’re lucky.
Or a few bad years if we’re not. In the scheme of things, it’s really a rather short process.
But we spend our whole lives waiting for it.
Trying and mostly failing to come to terms with the inevitable.
I must admit I don’t see the point of it anymore. ”
“So you just…accept it?” said Skye, gazing at her mother. She looked like she was on the verge of tears. “Mom, he’s telling us that one of us has to die. That’s not something we can stomach.”
Monica plucked a tissue from a box shaped like a topless woman. She dabbed at Skye’s eyes. “Sweetheart, don’t cry. It’s going to be okay, I—”
Skye slapped her hand away. “It’s not okay. We’re not going to let this happen. I’m not just going to sit here and watch him kill off one of my friends.”
Monica stared at the floor. “It’s not so bad, unless you make it that way. There’s that old saying, right? The lucky ones die young.”
I thought of Adeline, alone in the playhouse. “You’re wrong,” I said.
Monica’s gaze shifted to me for the first time. Her eyes reminded me of Death’s. Eyes that had seen so much, eyes that held so much of what they’d seen. “Your name?”
“Roslyn.”
“Pretty name for a pretty girl. Let me guess: You’re new to all of this?”
“Not very,” I said, a bit defensive. “I’ve had my dealings with Death before.”
“You lost someone.” It wasn’t a question, but I had no idea how she knew. Why was it so easy for her to see right through me? “Who was it?”
“My sister.”
“Older or younger?”
“Older.”
She gave a low whistle. “That’s a hard thing. In my experience, sisters always hate each other a little bit. That’s the way it was with me and my sister. Our hatred for each other would’ve ruined everything if the love between us wasn’t that much bigger.”
“I didn’t hate my sister,” I said, fast and too defensive.
Monica gave me a gracious and knowing smile, as if to let me win. “Tell me, what are you doing with these girls?”
I froze, feeling singled out. Exposed. Was it really so obvious that I didn’t fit among them? Was I really that different? “They’re my friends.”
“Are they? Can you have friends in your line of work?”
I could tell Naomi was growing uncomfortable, but she kept her gaze level, firmly fixed on Monica. She might’ve lacked the steel of some of the other girls in the group, but she knew how to fake it. “We can and do. Roslyn is one of us. Just like anyone else here.”
“Hm.” Monica looked unconvinced. I was relieved when her gaze finally shifted away from me. “Sometimes it’s better not to fight. You do know that, right?”
“How about you let us make that choice?” said Shiloh. “Tell us how you cut a deal with Death. How did you convince him?”
“I offered him something he wanted,” said Monica, mumbling around the filter of a cigarette. “There was nothing more to it than that.”
I didn’t believe her. Not fully, anyway.
It wasn’t what she said, exactly, so much as the way she said it.
Intentionally casual, composed. But the longer I watched her, the easier it was to see the girl hiding behind that facade.
She was one of us, maybe the very first of us, and perhaps that was why Death had really chosen to spare her.
Not because she begged or bargained well, but because she was different in a way that piqued his interest.
“Please,” said Shiloh, a broken whisper, like a knife’s edge dragged across concrete. “We’re running out of time. We only have until midnight.”
Skye leaned into her mother, shoulders rounded, chest bone caving inward, looking even younger than she usually did. “Just tell us what you did, Mom. How did you best him?”
“Oh, baby…I didn’t.” Monica cupped a hand to Skye’s cheek. “I did the same thing he wants you to do now. I offered someone up in my stead. Someone I loved very much so the sacrifice was great enough.”
“Who?” Skye asked, squeezing her mother’s hand. “Was it Grandma? It’s okay if it was, she was kind of a bitch—”
Iona’s eyes flashed wide. “Jesus, Skye.”
“Could we do something like that?” Skye looked to her mother again. “Like, is there some sort of ritual or sacrifice we could make—”
“No.” Shiloh and I said it in unison. But the girls, I noticed, looked to me for an answer.
I shifted in my chair, uncomfortable with the idea of standing in as Death’s proxy. “Death said it has to be one of you. He thinks you’ve grown…complacent. Rebellious.” I hated the idea that I was speaking for him like Shiloh usually did.
Chloe’s hands tightened to fists. “So this is a punishment?”
Shiloh nodded.
Monica leaned forward, her chest pressed nearly to her knees.
When she spoke, her voice was a stern and scathing whisper, like she feared Death was eavesdropping.
“Listen, girls, very carefully. There is no way to work around him. To get what you want, you have to decide among yourselves who to give up. That’s the only choice you have now, and you’d be fools to squander it. You care for each other, don’t you?”
Skye nodded vehemently. “Of course we do.”
“We’re all we have,” said Iona, her voice breaking a little. “We just want to protect each other.”
“Then find someone to give to him,” said Monica. “Make your sacrifice so that the rest of you can carry on somehow. That’s the way it was for me. I made the tough decision, and…it wasn’t so bad after that. He let me be.”
“So that’s it, then?” Riley looked crestfallen. I hadn’t realized that she’d been allowing herself to hope until I saw the disappointment written across her face. “We came all this way, wasting time we didn’t have, just to give up on ourselves?”
Monica pressed to her feet. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid that’s the only choice you have now. And you’d better make it quick.” She extended a hand to Skye. “Come on. Let the big girls talk.”
But Skye didn’t move. “I’m staying with them. I—I…I want to put my own name in the ring.”
“No,” we all said in unison, horrified by the idea of it.
“Not you, Skye. You’re the youngest,” said Naomi. “Whoever we choose, it won’t be you. It can’t be.”
She looked to the other girls for confirmation, and we all nodded. Even Riley. At fourteen, Skye was the baby of the group. None of us were willing to lose her, and it felt good that we could all agree on that when everything else was so uncertain.
But Skye remained defiant. “You don’t get to make that choice for me no matter how young I am. I’m in this group too—”
“No one’s forgetting that, kid.” Shiloh mussed her hair. “Whatever comes next, we’ll meet it together. I promise you that.”