CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I awoke in the hour be-fore dawn to a pierc-ing scream.
A full moon hung low over the mir-rored sur-face of the lake, round and sil-ver as a ten-pence piece, and a dark-ened fig-ure knelt on the shore, shriek-ing like a wounded an-i-mal.
Blink-ing sleep from my eyes, I squinted through the arched win-dow in my dorm room. With a sick-en-ing lurch, I rec-og-nized the long, spi-dery limbs and the short black hair.
Davina.
Af-ter what she’d done in the mas-ter and sub-ject class, I should have felt a surge of joy, of sat-is-fac-tion, at the sound of her gut-tu-ral cries. But they cleaved right through me like a butcher’s knife, and I threw my-self out of bed.
Some-thing was badly wrong.
Stuff-ing my feet into sheep-skin boots, I tossed a trench coat over my pa-ja-mas and hur-tled out of the flat. The night air was so cold it felt solid, and the Great Lawn was slicked with dew as I sprinted down to-ward the lake.
Maybe she wasn’t ly-ing about her wounds, I thought fear-fully. Maybe she re-ally is be-ing maimed too.
Which would mean she isn’t the killer.
And I’ve mis-judged ev-ery-thing.
A low mist gath-ered in the Cross-woods be-yond, swirling with moon-light to cast a spec-tral glow over the grounds. Ev-ery-thing smelled of frost and silt.
As I grew closer, Davina’s howls ebbed to a low sob, and some-how that was worse.
Breath-less, I skid-ded to a halt be-side her. Her head was in her hands, nar-row shoul-ders shak-ing vi-o-lently in-side her leather jacket. Her knees pressed into the wet lakeshore, and damp was spread-ing up her black leg-warm-ers—she must have been freez-ing.
“Davina,” I said, torn be-tween soft-ness and fe-roc-ity, the words com-ing out some-where in be-tween.
She stilled at the sound of my voice. “Leave me alone, Penny.”
“No.” I pulled my coat tighter around me, teeth chat-ter-ing. “You’re up-set.”
Please don’t be hurt.
Her hands clasped her face with a kind of fierce des-per-a-tion, as though try-ing to hold her fea-tures in place. “Just fuck off.”
“No.”
I wanted to drown her in the lake and hug her tight in equal mea-sure. I didn’t un-der-stand the lat-ter in-stinct at all. I still burned with shame over the al-most nu-dity she’d en-forced on me. I still loathed her for mak-ing me lose the game. For toss-ing my en-tire fu-ture at Do-rian into the gut-ter with a task she knew I’d for-feit. And yet the bro-ken-ness in her called to the bro-ken-ness in me, and the de-sire to share the bur-den was al-most over-whelm-ing.
Now Davina be-gan hy-per-ven-ti-lat-ing, rol-lick-ing gasps wrack-ing her whole body as she tried to take in air. Then she said some-thing else, but it was so ob-scured by her la-bored wheezes that I didn’t catch it.
“What?” I asked. I’d been crouch-ing be-side her but had to give in to my trem-bling mus-cles and lower my knees to the ground. The cold wet earth turned my silk pa-ja-mas into ice in an in-stant.
Slowly, silently, Davina low-ered her hands from her face, turn-ing to face me.
My stom-ach heaved, and I fought the urge to cry out.
Her left eye was gone.
But there was no blood. The socket was sim-ply welded shut, bi-sected by a ragged gash from the arch of her brow to the ridge of her cheek-bone. Even in the sil-very moon-light, it was clear the scar was a faded pur-ple, as though the wound were weeks or even months old.
Plant-ing a palm on the ground, I stared at the earth and fought to keep from faint-ing. My vi-sion blurred, shim-mer-ing like mist and silk and shad-ows.
“Oh my god,” I whis-pered, bile sting-ing the back of my tongue.
I looked up at her again, dizzy and dis-ori-ented, the feel-ing of land-ing into a par-al-lel world where ev-ery-thing was wrong.
Davina was shak-ing un-con-trol-lably now. “It’s real, then. Not a night-mare.”
Pull it to-gether, I told my-self. This isn’t about you.
Ex-cept it was.
I’d been so con-vinced it was her wield-ing the knife. So con-vinced that she was the vil-lain. But I was wrong. Wrong about … al-most ev-ery-thing. She hadn’t killed any-one. She hadn’t laid a fin-ger on me.
“I’m so sorry,” I all but moaned. Blood thun-dered in my ears. “I’m so sorry.”
She cov-ered her face once more, and my heart broke for her. She started mur-mur-ing lowly, ur-gen-tly, like a litany. “Not my eye. Please, not my eye, I— It can’t be gone. No, no, no. I’ll do any-thing.”
My skin prick-led with vi-car-i-ous dread. “Does it hurt?”
A fran-tic sob. “I felt the blade, I— It doesn’t make sense, there was no real knife to my face. How can— Argh-h-h-h-hhh.” She drove her fin-gers through her black pixie-cropped hair, grab-bing des-per-ate fist-fuls of it.
“Were you awake?”
She shook her head fiercely. “The pain woke me up pretty quickly.”
“And you came here?” My stom-ach was gripped in a vice, threat-en-ing to empty at any mo-ment.
“I don’t know why I was com-pelled to.” She dropped her bone-white hands into her lap and stared out to the eerily still wa-ter. The swans barely caused a rip-ple as they cir-cled hyp-not-i-cally. “It was like my feet dragged me of their own ac-cord.”
I thought of the ghost story whis-pered in Lawrie’s stand-ing les-son, back when the Sep-tem-ber heat shim-mered on the wa-ter. A stu-dent out swim-ming, back in the late nine-teenth cen-tury. Beaten un-con-scious by swan wings, sink-ing to the bot-tom of the lake. By the time help ar-rived, her body was nowhere to be found.
Whether it was true or not, there was some-thing badly wrong with this place.
“I didn’t even scream, at first. I thought it was a dream.” Her whis-per-ing voice rose an oc-tave. “It has to be a dream, Penny. It has to.” I’d never heard her sound so young.
A strange kind of pro-tec-tive-ness came over me. I grabbed her by the shoul-ders, look-ing at her straight on, not flinch-ing at the sight of the wound even though I so badly wanted to. “We’re go-ing to find who did this.”
Be-cause she was a vic-tim too. We were on the same ter-ri-ble side of this. We had both made the same ill-fated de-ci-sion, and we both bore the wounds of that cat-a-strophic er-ror in judg-ment.
But she wasn’t in the right place for a rally cry, a plan of ac-tion. That dev-as-tated dis-be-lief had de-scended on her once again, and the trem-bling in-ten-si-fied. She once again be-gan pray-ing to a face-less de-ity. “No, no, no, please, please don’t be real, please—”
“Davina…”
Then she fully loosed her emo-tions, let the pain and an-guish and fear roll out of her in vis-ceral screams. She dug her fin-gers into the earth, drag-ging deep claw marks along the shore. “No, no, no, no…”
A new breed of ter-ror sank into my bones. Some-how, the fact that Davina wasn’t the mur-derer felt a thou-sand times scarier than when I’d be-lieved she was. Bet-ter the devil you know than the devil you don’t.
The ghostly swans on the lake watched with fu-ne-real am-biva-lence. Fear gripped me by the ribs as I ran a fin-ger over my own sav-age warn-ing scar.
The mes-sage was clear: If we didn’t find the killer soon, we would be next.
But why? Who hated both Davina and me enough to want us dead?