Chapter 39
The climb back up was painful.
Mostly I stayed on the trails. They showed as winding, dotted lines on my phone, some of them missing from the map. Twice, I tried to save time by cutting across a switchback, and regretted it. Steep ascents, cascading dirt underfoot, fat roots trying to bend my ankles sideways.
I considered lying down to wait for a ride from Arabella. But Hiromi was up there. Drugged or drunk, wondering where I was.
Lyon was up there too.
I had my knife. The flash grenade was still in my pocket.
He was closer to a Morton than I’d thought, crueler, more sudden in his attack. He hadn’t been careful about keeping me alive.
Maybe he’d thought I’d take his deal.
So many had said yes to him. Yes to glamorous new friends, the embrace of a group, the special attention of its leader. Faraday would’ve jumped at the chance if Lyon had found her first.
Unlucky for him, I already belonged to something older, crueler, more beautiful.
I kept climbing.
The party was in full swing when I reached the edge of the resort. Music boomed through the forest, laughter and a few shrieks, the smell of wood fire and pot smoke.
The ascent had seemed endless, but it wasn’t even midnight.
I drew closer, keeping clear of the light spilling from the windows, avoiding the smokers at both ends of the porch. Hiromi’s blue dot hadn’t moved in the last hour. She was still in the main building, on the backside, away from the ballroom and dining hall.
I imagined her texting my other phone, wondering why I wasn’t answering—unless they’d answered for me.
I imagined Lyon, comforting her.
My phone vibrated softly in my hand. An Upper Falls landline.
“Grandmother,” I answered.
“You’ve had some trouble, I hear.”
“They got the better of me. My mistake.”
“Never parley in someone else’s car.”
“Noted. Do you want me to kill Lyon? Or bring him home?”
“He seems difficult.” She didn’t say more, waiting for my assessment.
“He’ll never be ours,” I said. “Even if he signs. He thinks he can change people just by talking to them.”
Grandmother’s voice became slow, primordial. “A small god, feeding on ordinaries.”
“He thinks he’s infallible,” I said.
“Did he spill your Morton blood?”
“Yes, Grandmother.”
“Then kill him. That girl of yours, I’m seeing her nearby.”
“They drugged her.”
“And Garrett is correct—Lyon has an obsession with her?”
“Yes, Grandmother.”
“She did seem enchanting at Peter’s wake. Such bright, sharp eyes. We need to avoid a lengthy investigation into Dr. Lyon’s death. We don’t want his kingdom unraveling before we can take it.”
“An accident, then.”
“No, a murder. But a simple one for the police to solve. A suspect with motive.”
“Hiromi,” I said, staring at the windows of the resort.
“His obsession, his surveillance, and now drugging her at his own party.”
“She isn’t the type…to kill someone.”
“Jessica. We are all the type, under the right circumstances.”
“Yes, Grandmother.” I took a steadying breath. Hiromi was prey. She had always been prey. “She’s working on a piece, a mechanical arm that throws knives. I’ll kill him with a knife.”
Elizabeth’s laughter rippled beneath the joyous sounds of the party. “That’s my clever Jessica.”
“Thank you, Grandmother. Since Hiromi will be famous after this, Garrett might want to keep her. Should I make it look like self-defense?”
There was a pause, and time stretched out around me. I felt every scratch, every bruise, every patch of dried blood.
Finally Grandmother Elizabeth answered.
“With a man like that, what else would it be?”
Hiromi was exactly where her blue dot showed, in a small room on the second floor of the resort.
She wasn’t handcuffed or unconscious. No one else was in the room. She lay on a narrow bed, staring at her phone, a glass of water by her side.
I tapped on the window.
Hiromi startled, dropping the phone. But then she peered closer, recognition dawning, and came to the window.
She slid it open.
“Jess.” Her voice was heavy. “What the hell?”
I pulled myself inside. “Sorry. I got lost.”
“What about your family emergency?”
“That wasn’t me. Someone else texted you from my phone.”
Hiromi shook her head, confused. She reached out for me.
I drew her into a hug, held her for a long moment. With her weight against me, I could feel my own frayed heartbeat.
I waited until it steadied, then pulled away from her and checked the door. It wasn’t locked. No guard outside.
“Why are you so messed up?” she asked.
“I fell.”
“Poor baby.” She brushed dirt from my jacket, traced the scratches on my hands. “But there’s no emergency?”
I settled her onto the bed and sat beside her. “I think someone gave you something. In those drinks.”
“Yeah. Everyone’s been lovely, though. I’m glad you’re back.”
“It was Dr. Lyon who drugged you. He stole my phone and texted you, to make you think I’d left. What happened was, he took me out to the woods and killed me.”
She blinked. “What?”
“That’s why you had to stab him.” I pulled out the butterfly knife, unfolded it, and placed it in her hand. “You found this here, under the bed. It saved you.”
She stared at the blade. “You’re being weird, Jess.”
“I’m telling you what you have to do.”
“What happened to you out there?”
“Lyon and two men took me into the woods. They threw me from the car, and I died. No one will ever find my body.” I took her hand. “I know it’s terrible, but you were strong. You saw them take me, and you stabbed Lyon when he came for you. A lucky strike to the neck.”
“Jessica. Stop.”
“You will remember me being here, telling you all this, but I’m something your mind made up afterward—a way to cope with trauma. It’ll feel like you’re crazy at first, but in a week or so, the two men who helped kill me will confess. You’ll be a hero.”
She pulled away.
I looked at the door. Lyon would come here alone, surely.
If he wasn’t, I’d have to kill everyone with him. A tougher sell for Hiromi’s defense team, but as Grandmother had said, everyone is capable of great violence in the right circumstances.
The rest of her story would hold up. Perhaps, in a week or two, the police would find a body out in the woods, the right age and size. Wild animals would fix the rest.
I would knock Hiromi out before I left, as if Lyon had got in one last blow. Then an anonymous call, to get the cops here before anyone had time to clean up.
“You look different,” Hiromi said.
“Because you’re imagining all this.”
“No, you’re Jessica. But not the one I know.” She leaned forward, touching my cheeks, kissing me softly on the lips. “The real one.”
I gazed back at her, wondering what she saw. Had something dropped away, now that my cover story was done?
“I’m a ghost,” I said, returning her kiss, feeling the sparks grow.
“Ghosts don’t have scars. More like a robot. Dangerous parts, put together from scrap. You don’t really try to hide it.”
“Not with you,” I said.
There was a noise in the hallway, coming closer. A single set of footsteps.
I took the knife from her. “You’re the hero of this story. I’m just a ghost.”
“I love you,” she said.
My phone trembled softly.
I looked at it. A text from Grandmother Elizabeth.
Change of plan.