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“You matter to him,” Tory said. I knew, in the pit of my stomach, that it cost her to say the words, because there was a part of her that couldn’t be sure that she mattered to Aaron. “You mattered to him before he even knew who you were.”
Webber. Daniel Redding’s apprentice. Hunting me like a deer.
“You’ve been buried alive in a glass coffin.” Those words came from my right. I turned. It was dark in the hole, but I could just barely make out the features of the girl next to me. She looked like Sloane—but I knew, deep in the pit of my stomach, that she wasn’t. “There’s a sleeping cobra on your chest,” the girl wearing Sloane’s body said. “What do you do?” Scarlett. Scarlett Hawkins. “What do you do?” she asked again. Dirt hit me in the face. I looked up, but all I saw this time was the glint of a shovel. “You’ve been buried alive,” Scarlett whispered. “What do you do?” The dirt was coming
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“Victimology,” I told Dean. “We don’t have four victims. We have five.” Michael’s not a victim. Not Michael. Not our Michael.
Tears welled in Sloane’s eyes. I knew her—I knew her brain was racing, and I knew that number after number, calculation after calculation, all she could see was Aaron’s face. His empty eyes. The shirt he’d bought her. I wanted him to like me, she’d told me.
“I’m not normal,” Sloane said simply. “I’ve never been normal.”
It was always going to be you. Beau would have killed her. She was his family. He loved her, and he would have killed her. He had to, had to, for reasons I couldn’t quite grasp.
“I heard our foster mother talking about him once,” Tory said after an extended silence. “I heard her say …” I could hear the effort it took for her to even form the words. “They found Beau half-dead in the desert. He was six years old, and someone just left him there. No food, no water. He’d been out there for days.” Her voice shook slightly. “No one knew where he’d come from or who left him. Beau couldn’t tell them. He didn’t say a word, not to anyone, for two years.” No one knew where he’d come from. Like dominoes, falling one by one, everything I knew about Beau’s motivation, about the
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“The child of the brotherhood and the Pythia. Blood of their blood.” Seven Masters. A child. And the child’s mother. The woman at the fountain had strawberry blond hair. It would be red in some lights—like my mother’s. Nine members. Seven Masters. A woman. A child. “The Pythia was the name given to the Oracle at Delphi,” Sloane said. “A priestess at the Temple of Apollo. A prophetess.” I thought of the family—the picture-perfect family I’d looked at, knowing to my core that it was something I’d never have. Mother. Father. Child.
“Briggs saved my life.” Judd forcibly shifted his eyes away from the man in the picture and turned to look at me. “He saved me, the day he brought me Dean.”
“Are you her father?” I asked. “The girl has many fathers.”
“One woman to provide counsel. One woman to bear the child. One child—one worthy child—to carry the tradition on.”
I can see exactly where this is going. fuckk
“We all have choices,” Nightshade replies. “The Pythia chooses to live.” Why bring me here? I thought, aware, on some level, that my body was shaking. My eyes were wet. Why tell me this? Why give me a glimpse of something I’m not blessed enough to know? “Perhaps someday,” Nightshade said, “that choice will be yours, Cassandra.”
“If you want to see the woman, you’ll find her in room two-one-one-seven.” The Pythia chooses to live. The words echoed in my mind. Perhaps one day, that choice will be yours. Room 2117.
“I’m Cassie,” I said. The child said nothing. “What’s your name?” I asked. She looked down. Beside her on the ground, there was a white origami flower, soaked in blood. “Nine,” she whispered. “My name is Nine.” A chill ran down my spine, leaving nothing but fury in its wake. You’re not a part of them, I thought, fiercely protective. She was just a baby—just a little, little girl. “Your mommy called you something else,” I said, trying to remember the name the woman had used that day at the fountain. “Laurel. Mommy calls me Laurel.”
That’s my mommy, Laurel had said. But the woman in the picture was my mother, too.
“Laurel,” I said, my voice hoarse. “Where is Mommy?” “In the room.” Laurel stared at me and into me. “Masters come, and Masters go, but the Pythia lives in the room.”
