Chapter Thirty-One
Thirty-One
Outside, the storm rages. Thunder roars and lightning slices the sky, the white-hot glow strobing across Violet’s face. I stare at her, dumbstruck, trying to think of a way in which this could logically happen.
I can’t do it.
There is no logic to this scenario. Just a shuddery feeling that it’s not only the cottage that could be haunted.
The whole island might be touched in some way, slightly removed from the laws of science and nature.
Some people claim there are places like that all over the world. New Avalon could be one of them.
Either that or Violet is simply acting. A skill for which she is world-renowned.
“You’re not fooling anyone,” I tell her, even though she is. Just a little.
“I’m not trying to,” Violet pretending to be Daisy says.
“Then why are you doing this?”
“I’m not doing anything. I don’t know who you are or how I got here.”
Violet’s appearance suddenly seems off. She looks the same—same keen eyes, same sharp nose—but also changed.
Her body exhibits a wired spryness, like she’s shed several dozen years.
The result is a weird mutation. Half Violet, half Daisy.
She gives Ronan a flirty wave and says, “Hello. I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of meeting. ”
The transformation is enough for me to concede that it might no longer be a ruse.
It might be real.
And Violet—inexplicably, impossibly—might now be possessed by Daisy Rue.
There’s only one way to find out.
“Ronan,” I say, “everything that’s happened this past week has been a lie.”
I look to Violet, checking her reaction. There isn’t one. She just listens politely, as if all of this is news to her. And it would be, to Daisy.
“What are you talking about?” Ronan says.
“Everything was faked. Brad’s illness. The disappearances. The séance and the ghosts and the dresses in the trees.” I sneak another glance at Violet. Still no reaction. “Everyone was in on it except you and me.”
“Is that true?” Ronan asks Violet, who perks up at the attention.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t privy to any such deceit.”
“They did it to scare us,” I say. “But mostly you.”
“Like a prank?” A grin spreads across Ronan’s face, dumb and toothy. “Is that what’s happening right now?”
I don’t know what the fuck is happening, so I keep talking. I literally can’t think of another option. “They did it so that we’d think the island was haunted, that we were in danger, and that during this séance you’d admit what you did to Elise Haines.”
Ronan’s eyes ping-pong behind his glasses as he lists to the right, woozy. “Elise?”
“The sex tape. And that Elise killed herself when she found out about it. We all know. Violet and everyone else. Now you need to admit it. Admit what you did, and this will all be over.” I turn to Violet. “Right? You’ll stop then?”
“Stop what?” she says.
“See?” I tell Ronan. “This is her way of getting you to confess. And she won’t quit until you do.”
Ronan leans back in his chair, thumbs over his closed eyelids. A low moan escapes his lips. “I didn’t—”
“Didn’t do what?” I say when he fails to finish the sentence.
“It wasn’t what you— What I mean is—”
He starts listing again. Worried he’s about to faint, I clap my hands in front of his face and say, “Ronan, did you do something that caused Elise to kill herself?”
“She wasn’t supposed to know!” he snaps. “None of them were.”
“So you did it to others, too?”
Ronan lowers his head. “Yes.”
“How many?” I say.
“I’m not sure,” Ronan says. That he can’t even remember leaves me sickened and stunned. Those feelings only get worse when he adds, “Seven or eight.”
Now I start to sway. It’s more than we thought. Holy fuck.
“It was just harmless fun,” Ronan says. “If I’d known it would fuck Elise up so badly, I never would have done it.”
Violet-as-Daisy tilts her head at Ronan, curious. “Did you hurt someone?”
Ronan says nothing at first. Just stares. At his hands. At the table. Then, eventually, at me.
“Yes,” he says, sighing out the word.
I exhale, relieved it’s over. Ronan confessed and Violet can stop pretending to be Daisy.
I half expect Brad or Loretta to emerge from behind the furniture and yell, Cut!
But Violet doesn’t instantly return to her former self.
She remains Daisy, a strange glint in her eyes as she leans across the table and says, “I hurt people, too.”
The wobbly feeling returns.
Violet wouldn’t say that.
She’d be content with that single, simple yes.
But she doesn’t look content, still leaning forward and fixing Ronan with an angry squint.
“You need to say it,” I tell him, knowing that’s what Violet really wants. A full confession caught on tape. Unless she’s no longer Violet. Then all bets are off.
“What do you mean?” Ronan’s face is pale, the skin on his forehead shining with stress sweat.
“State specifically what you did and who you did it to.”
“Why?”
I will myself not to look at the camera’s hiding spot for fear I’ll give it away. “Because this won’t stop until you do.”
Ronan wipes his brow, thinking it over. His eyes open and close in a rapid-fire blink as he makes his decision.
“No,” he says. “Fuck that. I’ve said enough. I’m done talking.”
“I don’t think you are,” Violet says, still not sounding like herself.
Or quite looking like it.
Or moving like it.
She leaps from her chair with the speed of someone decades younger. In a flash, she grabs the ice pick from the sideboard and holds it to Ronan’s neck.
“Violet, no!” I shout. When that doesn’t work, I change tactics. “Daisy, stop!”
She freezes. Ronan squirms. I rock back and forth on my heels, stunned and scared and numb with disbelief.
“Marin, help me!” Ronan barks, which sends Violet into motion again, tickling the ice pick’s tip across his neck.
“You’re not a killer, Daisy,” I say. An out-of-body experience. Is this really happening? “I read your diary. The things you did, they weren’t your fault. You didn’t know what you were doing.”
“Oh, I lied about that,” Violet says with a guilty lowering of her eyes. “I didn’t want Mrs. Semple to think I was bad, so I pretended I didn’t know what I was doing. But really I did.”
She smiles.
A wide, twisted grin made worse by the slime still at the corner of her mouth.
“Katrina was so mean,” she says. “And Jonquil, well, she knew too much. And Mrs. Minafer was such a bore. I knew exactly what I was doing when I took them out to the rock in the clearing. Mrs. Semple thought I didn’t, but I knew it was only a matter of time before she learned the truth.
So I had to get rid of her, too. Just like I got rid of Daddy. ”
The room tumbles. Like the entire universe is doing a backflip. I brace myself, waiting for the inevitable crash against the ceiling as I say, “Daisy, there’s no need to hurt him.”
“Isn’t there?” Violet’s head tilts from side to side, studying Ronan from every angle. All the while, the ice pick remains aimed at his Adam’s apple. “I still don’t know what he did. Are you going to tell me or not?”
She leans in, the ice pick following the motion, its tip sinking into the skin of Ronan’s neck.
“Marin, do something!” he yelps.
I’m trying to. But the room keeps spin-cycling, and Violet, who’s not acting like Violet at all, is holding a fucking ice pick, and honestly, I’m not sure Ronan deserves my help. Not until he owns up to his actions.
“Say what you did,” I tell him.
Ronan looks down his nose to check the position of the ice pick. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“Yes,” I say. “Now admit what you did.”
He thinks it over, red-faced and sweatier than he was a second ago. Hyperventilating, he pushes out the words. “I had sex with Elise Haines.”
Violet-as-Daisy eases up on the ice pick, pulling it a few inches from his neck.
“And?” I say.
“I recorded it.”
“Why?”
Ronan jolts, and I can tell he’s never thought about it. He just did it. Not only because he got off on it, but because he assumed he would get away with it. And he did, for a very long time.
“Because I didn’t think it would hurt anyone.”
“Daddy hurt me,” Violet says. “He hurt me all the time. That’s why I hurt him. Do I need to hurt you, too?”
She brings the tip of the ice pick back to his neck and Ronan yelps out a high-pitched “No!”
“That’s for me to decide,” Violet says.
“I recorded it, and Elise found it,” Ronan says, slowly at first. A grudging confession.
But the words soon speed up, tumbling out of him.
“She was never supposed to know. None of them were. It was my little secret, you know? Yes, I shared it with a couple buddies, but I didn’t think they’d do the same and that Elise would find out about it.
I feel bad about that. I really do. But what happened after that isn’t my fault.
How was I supposed to know she’d overreact and that it would send her off the fucking deep end? That part is not my fault.”
A long silence follows, the quiet so complete that I can hear the candle flames eating away at their wicks and the pounding of a heartbeat that I at first think is Ronan’s but soon realize is my own. Even the storm outside has gone silent.
In that elongated hush, I know that it’s over.
Violet lowers the ice pick and backs away from Ronan. She got what she wanted and can now stop pretending to be Daisy. I suspect this was her plan all along, and that she didn’t tell me because she feared I’d mess it up. She wanted an authentic performance from me—and I gave her exactly that.
“He confessed,” I say. “Happy now, Violet?”
“I already told you,” she says, frustrated. “My name is Daisy.”
Then she lunges forward, sinking the ice pick into Ronan’s stomach.
I scream.
If not out loud, then in my head.
A siren’s wail of shock that can’t quite eclipse the noise Ronan makes. A pained, confused grunt. Like he can’t understand what’s happening, even as Violet tugs the pick from his gut and shoves it in again.
And again.
And again.
When she lets go, the ice pick remains in Ronan’s stomach, jutting like a meat thermometer as he slips from his chair.
He hits the floor with the same kind of sound I’ve been hearing in my cottage. A muted thwump. It’s followed by a series of ragged breaths, each one softer than the last until they cease entirely.
All goes quiet after that. An unsettling silence during which I drop to Ronan’s side, trying to avoid the blood now pooling on the hardwood floor but failing because there is no way to avoid it.
There’s so much of it. A torrent gushing from his multiple stab wounds.
Sliding through the blood on my hands and knees, I check for a pulse.
There isn’t one.
Ronan is dead.
A gasp rises from the table. Violet snapping out of her trance.
I can tell from the look in her eyes. Gone is the dark gaze of Daisy Rue.
In its place is the confused expression of someone freshly out of a coma, trying to make sense of a world in which time stopped for them while inexorably ticking forward for everyone else.
Violet’s eyes widen as she takes in the empty chair.
Then the floor.
Then Ronan’s body, still pushing out blood even though his heart has stopped.
Finally Violet looks at her hands, also bloody. They gleam in the candlelight, sticky and wet and bright.
It takes her another moment to comprehend what’s happened—and her role in all of it. When she does, Violet, like me, reacts the only way instinct will allow.
She screams.