PETRA
“What’s happening, Sin? Why are you here? Why didn’t you come earlier?” My voice trembles as I speak, and I barely stop myself from adding—why didn’t you come in time, like before?
But that would be low of me, especially now knowing what he went through: how long he’s waited for me and everything that he’s done to get me back.
“Calm down? How can I calm down? I killed someone!” I burst out. “I killed someone and . . .” I trail off as I look around.
Fiona’s body is a mess, and as my eyes zero in on her shattered skull, a sliver of shame consumes me. Yet even as I look away from her, there’s still Daphne. Equally as disfigured, equally as viciously killed. Could it be that . . . ?
“Fiona wasn’t Sister Agatha,” I whisper, more to myself.
“Petra, please,” Sin adds, moving to come toward me. But the stranger with him extends his arm to the side to stop him.
“Not yet,” he says.
“What’s happening? What’s going on?” I demand as I glance from Sin to the stranger.
“You have fulfilled your bargain. It is time I fulfill mine,” the stranger says as he steps forward.
I back away until I hit the cold wall, at which point he touches my forehead with two fingers.
A burst of light explodes behind my retina, and a whirlpool of lost information fills my brain. At first, it’s haphazard pieces, but soon the puzzle gains contour.
My lips part, and a harsh gasp escapes me.
Images roll in my mind. What I’d read in that journal had been mere tidbits of information compared with the images I see.
It’s like a video playing right before my eyes.
I see him—Elroy. But it’s not him, is it? It’s . . . Sin. My Sin.
I see everything, us growing up together and falling in love before tragedy struck. Then the images become bleak and hopeless, marred by my own lost sense of self. Slowly, my—is it really mine?—life at the convent takes shape.
All the exorcisms, all the caring for the sick.
Until he appeared. Valerion. The stranger standing in front of me right now.
We made a deal. Five souls in exchange for meeting Elroy and my baby again in a future life, all the while having the memories of the previous.
Yet something else happened.
I . . . couldn’t fulfill my side of the deal.
Soon after, I fell ill. Consumption.
I became so weak I could barely leave my room. Yet I wouldn’t give up. So instead, I trudged my way to the tunnels, and with the last of my strength, I painted.
Because those terms I agreed to were . . . tricky.
I, Agatha, would have to deliver those souls. I, Agatha, would have to find evil souls and devise their demise. Yet if I, Agatha died, then everything changed.
I might get reincarnated in the future, but without my memories. I would still have a pending bargain, but I would be unable to remember the terms, or why I committed to them in the first place.
So I did the only thing I could.
I tried to tell my story through my journal and through paintings, as much as my frail body would allow me to.
For days on end, I toiled in the tunnels, adding as much detail to those paintings as I could—for the future.
But before I could finish, I gave my last breath.
My next life, just like I anticipated, I could not remember anything.
I saw those paintings in the tunnels, and they moved in strange ways, but without my memories, I could not fulfill my bargain—not even when I shot and killed Snowden. His soul was already damned, so it would not count.
Without being able to remember the past, I would forever be locked in a vicious cycle of being reborn, with no memories, going through life without knowing what I was meant to do.
But there was one thing that changed that.
Sin. His bargain.
While my bargain asked for a reunion with my baby and my beloved as well as our past memories, he simply asked for his person, his fated one.
Me.
His choice to sacrifice tens of people just to meet me brought me closer to the fulfillment of my own bargain.
Because when I died as Petra in 1896, when Sin had fulfilled his bargain yet had still lost me, he gained another boon from Valerion—the opportunity to be with me again; for me to relive the past, to remember it.
When he slipped a drop of Jí in my drink, it wasn’t just the memories of past Petra that were awakened. It was also the memories of Agatha. The former took on the shape of dreams, but the latter manifested as a split personality.
Or, as I see snippets of everything that happened, that is the only way I could describe it.
Perhaps it’s because present-day Petra was far too innocent of the evil in the world. Perhaps because Agatha’s twisted bargain could not coexist inside my mind—yet.
But as the Jí worked in my mind, the consciousness of Agatha became stronger and stronger. And she—I—knew what she had to do.
Deliver five souls. Five evil souls.
What is perhaps even more surprising than the fact that I developed a split personality of my past-life self is that Sin has known about it all along.
If I had any question about how I, five-foot-three-one-hundred-twenty-pounds Petra could have killed guys twice my size, now I know—I see it.
Sin facilitated every single murder.
The first one was Edwin.
Present-day Petra had felt so sad about him, had pitied him for the way he’d been killed. Because that Petra did not know the depth of his depravity.
Days before his death, he’d been planning a massacre at the school. He had everything ready. Hunting rifles stolen from his father. Makeshift bombs to create mayhem and confusion. And a list of victims, most of them professors and a few students who’d made fun of him.
Was he evil, or just traumatized? the still-normal part of me asks. He must have been evil, since his death counted as one.
The next was Harry.
Present-day Petra had mourned him, too, without realizing that at the very ball at which he died, he’d planned to spike her drink, bring her to his car, and do . . . unspeakable things to her.
She’s felt sad for the poor kid while he was planning to assault her.
My features harden as I realize just how na?ve I’d been, how easily I’d been misled by seemingly nice people who were in fact evil. Because Harry’s death counted. He was number two.
Francois had terrorized half the female population at St. Anselm Hall. Present-day Petra had been far too asocial and secluded to know that he’d been taking pictures and videos of girls, sharing them without their consent, blackmailing them.
He was evil! He deserved to die, and he more than earned his place as the third.
That Daphne was truly evil is not a surprise.
Present-day Petra had not been the only victim of her bullying. She’d driven at least one girl to suicide and bullied a few others to the point of self-harm and mental breakdown.
She deserved to die, and so she was fourth.
Now, Fiona was a bit more tricky.
As Fiona had tried to find evidence to pin the murders on me, Sin had done his best to sidetrack her. But in his research, he’d discovered some things that did not make sense.
Complex murders seemingly solved overnight. Rushed convictions. Lives ruined.
Fiona was in the business of planting evidence—all to get a conviction.
For her stellar record, she’d been sent to Radcliffe to investigate the murders. Even if she were correct that I was the murderer, she developed her theory without much evidence at first, based solely on her hunch.
Then, she became single-minded in her focus, which allowed Sin to question her true motives; after all, with his assistance, I had left no evidence at any of the crime scenes.
All the information solidifies in my mind until the shock I felt earlier at having killed Fiona vanishes. In its place, a sense of fulfillment and gratitude appears.
The past and present merge until there is only one Petra—me. The sum of all past selves and the convergence of only one desire: to be reunited with her loved ones.
I open my eyes.
I ignore Valerion’s presence. My gaze is drawn to Sin—my darling Sin, who’s suffered so, so much to get me; who sacrificed the world for me.
My feet move before my mind can register it. And once I’m in front of him, I drop to my knees, my head bent. Tears drip down my cheeks as shame eats at me from inside.
“I’m sorry I ever doubted you,” I whisper.
The way I’d been so suspicious of him, how I thought the worst of him, physically hurts me. Yes, I can blame it on the fact that I did not have all the information. But still, I should have known better.
If all else failed, I should have trusted his devotion.
“Petra—” His eyes widen in shock, and before I can blink, he’s on the ground, kneeling next to me. “Don’t. Don’t you dare kneel before me.”
“I am so sorry, Sin,” I repeat. “I said words I regret. I blamed you for things I did not understand . . . oh, how you must have felt when you saw me back away from you.”
He pulls me tightly in his arms, his hand stroking my back in slow, languid movements.
“Don’t. I was prepared for it—for all of it.
In fact, you reacted to everything far better than I expected you to.
You think in all the time I’ve been waiting for you to be reborn I did not entertain scenarios in which you shunned me?
I was aware you would have no memory of me in the beginning.
I knew you would not see me as I see you. And I was prepared for all that.”
He lifts my chin to gaze into my eyes.
“And once more, you proved to me why I love you so much; why all the sacrifices were worth it. Because even when all the circumstances told you I was the bad guy, that you should run away from me, you still stayed.”
“I almost did,” I whisper.
“But you did not. You had your suspicions about me, but deep down, there was still a part of you that trusted me enough to allow me to explain myself. I could have never asked for more.”
I swallow a sob. “Thank you. For everything.”
Valerion clears his throat in the back. We both turn to look at him.
“I believe I still have to fulfill my side of the bargain.”
I frown, not understanding at first. But then Valerion produces a small glass vial and extends it toward Sin.