The poison the Masters used to kill was one of a kind. It was, I’d been told over and over again, incurable.
Because the only people who have the cure are the Masters.
I flashed back to the room with the shackles, to the poison, to the pain. I’d heard footsteps. I’d heard someone saying my name.
“For some of us,” the director said, his voice low and smooth, “this has never been about murder. For some of us, it was always power.”
There are seven Masters. And one of them is the director of the FBI.
Agent Sterling’s father stood and stared down at me. “Imagine a group more powerful, more connected than any you could possibly conceive of. Imagine the most extraordinary men on earth, sworn to one another and a common cause. Imagine the kind of loyalty that comes from knowing that if one of you falls, you all fall. Imagine knowing that if you could prove yourself worthy, the world would be yours for the taking.”
“How long?” I asked the director. How long have you been one of them?
“I was young,” the director said. “Ambitious. And look how far I’ve come.” He spread his arms out, as if he could gesture to all of the FBI, all of the power he held as its head.
“Masters only have a seat at the table for twenty-one years,” I said. My voice was hoarse—from screaming, from hoping, from knowing that this was about to get worse.
“My time as an active member had come to an end,” Director Sterling admitted. “But the Pythia rather obligingly slit my successor’s throat.” He withdrew a knife from his jacket pocket. “I can’t say I mind. Certain privileges are only afforded to those with a seat at the table.” He lifted the knife to the side of my face. I waited for the pain, but it didn’t come. Instead, he lifted his free hand to the other cheek, trailing it gently over my skin. “Other privileges aren’t impossible to obtain as an emeritus member.”
I shuddered beneath his touch.
“Scarlett Hawkins.” I fought the only way I could, cuffed and held at knifepoint. “You knew that she’d been killed by one of your brethren.”
The director’s knuckles tightened around the hilt of the knife. “Scarlett was never supposed to be a target.”
“Nightshade killed her,” I shot back. “He didn’t care that she was one of yours.”
Director Sterling angled the blade at the underside of my chin and pressed just hard enough to draw blood. “I made my displeasure known—at the time, and again…later.”
He lowered the knife. I could feel the blood dripping down my neck.
“You killed Nightshade,” I said, the truth coming into focus. “Somehow, you got past the guards—”
“I chose the guards,” the director corrected, a light in his eyes. “I arranged the shift changes. I oversaw the prisoner’s transfer myself.”
I saw what I should have seen before—the kind of access he’d had, the fact that as soon as we’d had a break in this case, he’d sent us on a wild goose chase after Celine.
“You knew where Laurel was being held,” I said, my voice cracking.
“The child is back in the proper hands.”
I thought of Laurel staring at the chains on the playground. I thought of the way she’d said the word blood.
“You monster.” The word ripped its way out of my mouth. “All this time, you treated Dean like he was less than human because of what his father had done, and the whole time, you were worse.”
“The whole time, I was better.” Director Sterling surged forward, his face inches from my own. “Daniel Redding was an amateur who thought himself an artist. And his son dared to lay a hand on my daughter?”
Show your hand, Director. Show me your weaknesses.
I saw the exact moment he recognized my strategy for what it was. His eyes were cold and assessing as he leaned back. “I watched the tape of your interview with Redding, you know.” He let those words sink in. “And he was right. Your mother is the type of person who can be forged in the fire.” He stood and began walking toward the door. “She’s everything we could have hoped for—and more.”
YOU
Cassie is here. They have her. That’s hardly a surprise. You’re the one who gave the word, the one who told the poison Master to take Cassie and let the FBI director use his resources to lay a false path for her team to follow—far, far away from all of you.
“It’s not that I want to kill her,” you murmur as Lorelai fights weakly for control. “But if it’s her or us…”
The door opens. Nine enters. Malcolm. He stares at you, then glances over at Laurel, who’s asleep in the corner. The child was born to replace him. He’ll see her dead first.
“The first test will come when she’s six,” the old man comments, his voice eerily calm. “It’ll be a kitten, perhaps, or a puppy. She’ll need to take it slow. When she’s nine, it will be a prostitute, bound and strapped to the table of stone. And when she’s twelve…” His gaze flickers from Laurel back to you. “We’ll strap you to the table.”
You read between the lines. “You killed your own mother.”
“And embalmed her corpse so that she could continue to sit at the table, perfectly preserved, for decades.” He shook his head. “Eventually, she was replaced. Woman after woman, child after child, and none were worthy.”
You can feel the blood thrumming in your veins as you remember the feel of the knife in Five’s flesh.
You are worthy.
“It’s been too long since you’ve been tested,” Nine continues. “There’s something poetic, don’t you think, about the nature of this one?”
He thinks you’re Lorelai.
He thinks Cassie is your daughter.
He thinks there are some things you wouldn’t do to survive.
Rough hands grasped me as a bag was thrown over my head. I wasn’t sure how long it had been since the director had left the room or who the men were who’d just entered it. I heard the handcuffs click open, and an instant later I was jerked to my feet.
This is it, I thought, unsure of where they were leading me or what might be waiting there.
I heard the creaking of metal. A door?
A hand in the middle of my back shoved me forward, hard enough to send me to the ground. My knees hit first, my hands catching the rest of my body moments before my face would have slammed into the ground. My palms registered the texture beneath them—sand—just before the hood was torn from my head.
I blinked against the blinding light, my eyes adjusting slowly enough that by the time I could make out the world around me, the men who’d brought me to this place were gone. I turned in time to see a metal gate slamming into the ground behind me.
I was locked in.
In where? I forced myself to concentrate. I was still indoors, but the ground was covered in sand, almost too hot to bear, like the desert sun had been shining down on it for days. The ceiling overhead was high and domed, made of stone and carved with a symbol I recognized.
Seven circles ringing a cross.
The room was circular, and recessed into the walls were stone seats, looking down on the sandpit below.
Not a pit, I thought. An arena.
And that was when I knew. You poisoned me. You healed me. Buried deep in my memory, I could hear the words Nightshade had spoken to me all those weeks ago. He’d told me that we all had our choices. He’d told me that the Pythia chooses to live.
Perhaps someday that choice will be yours, Cassandra.
The Masters had a history of taking women—women who had traumatic histories, women who were capable of being forged into something new. They brought their captives to the brink of death, close enough to taste it, and then…
A figure stepped forward from the shadows. My gaze flicked to either side, and I noticed seven weapons laid out along the wall behind me.
Seven Masters. Seven ways of killing.
The figure on the other side of the arena took another step forward, then another. I was aware of hooded figures filing into the seats
above us, but all I could think was that if they’d brought me here to fight the Pythia, that meant that the woman walking toward me was someone I knew very well.
Her face was hidden by a hood, but as I made my way to my feet and stepped toward her, drawn like a moth to the flame, she lowered it.
Her face had changed in the past six years. She hadn’t aged, but she was thinner and pale and her features looked like they’d been carved from stone. Her skin was porcelain, her eyes impossibly large.
She was still the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
“Mom.” The word escaped my throat. One second, I was stepping hesitantly toward her, and the next, the space between us had disappeared.
“Cassie.” Her voice was deeper than I remembered, hoarse, and when her arms wrapped around me, I realized that the skin on her face looked smooth in part because of contrast.
The rest of her body was covered in twisting, puckered scars.
Seven days and seven pains. I made a choking sound. My mother pulled me up against her, laying my head on her shoulder. She pressed her lips to my temple.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said.
“I had to find you. Once I realized you were alive, once I realized they had you—I couldn’t stop looking. I would never stop looking.”
“I know.”
There was something in my mother’s tone that reminded me that we were being watched. Over her shoulder, I could see the Masters—six men and one woman, sitting in a line. Director Sterling. Ree. I tried to memorize the others’ faces, but my gaze was drawn upward.
Malcolm Lowell sat above the others, his eyes locked on mine.
Nine is the greatest among us, the bridge from generation to generation….
“We have to get out of here.” I kept my voice low. “We have to—”
“We can’t,” my mother said. “There is no out, Cassie. Not for us.”
I tried to pull back so that I could see her face, but her arms tightened around me, holding me close.
Tight.
In the stands, Ree caught my gaze and then shifted hers to the far wall. Like the one behind me, it was lined with weapons.
Six of them. Not seven. Six.
“Where’s the knife?” I choked on the words. “Mom—”
The hand that had been stroking my hair a moment before grasped it tightly now. She jerked my head to the side.
“Mom—”
She raised the knife to the side of my throat. “It isn’t personal. It’s you, or it’s me.”
I’d been warned, over and over again, that my mother might not be the woman I remembered.
“You don’t want to do this,” I said, my voice shaking.
“But that’s the thing,” she whispered, her eyes lighting on mine. “I do.”
My mother would never have hurt me. My mother had left home for me. She’d left her own sister for me. She’d been my everything, and I’d been hers.
Whatever you are, you aren’t my mother. That thought took root, deep in my brain, as I thought of Lia telling me that she’d been instructed as a child to pretend that the bad things hadn’t happened to her. That the things she’d done hadn’t been the work of her hands. I thought of Laurel telling me that she didn’t play the game.
Nine did.
In Laurel’s case, her inner Nine wasn’t a full-fledged person. But you are.
“Seven days and seven pains,” I said softly. “They tortured her. Over and over and over again. They forced themselves on her, one by one, until she was pregnant with Laurel.”
I saw the exact moment that my captor realized I wasn’t talking to myself.
“I wondered how a person could survive something like that, but that’s the thing. She didn’t survive it.” The blade still against my neck, I pushed down the urge to swallow. “You did.”
She loosened her grip on my hair.
People look at you, and they see her. They love her. But you’re the strong one. You’re the one who matters. You’re the one who deserves to be seen.
“Were you born here?” I asked, watching her face for any clue that my words had hit their target. “Or have you been around for much, much longer?”
A bit more slack. It wasn’t enough. She had the knife. I didn’t.
“Do you have a name?” I asked.
No one has ever asked. No one has ever looked at you and seen.
The woman with my mother’s face smiled. She closed her eyes. And then, she let me go. “My name,” she said, her voice echoing loudly enough for the Masters to hear, “is Cassandra.”
I scrambled backward, a chill spreading over my arms.
“Lorelai didn’t even know I existed,” the woman—Cassandra—said. “She didn’t know that all of those times, when her father came into our room and she blacked out, it wasn’t a mercy. It wasn’t luck. It was me.” Cassandra circled me, her stride predatory. “When you came along, when she named you, I liked to think that it was a thank-you, even if she didn’t realize what she’d done.” Cassandra’s grip on the knife tightened. “And then you were there, and suddenly, Lorelai didn’t need me so much anymore. She was stronger, for you. And I was locked away.”
Step by careful step, I made my way toward the back wall, toward the weapons, profiling her with every step. You’re in control. You’re strong. You do what needs to be done—and you like it.
Whatever this splintered piece of my mother’s psyche had been before the Masters had gotten ahold of her, she was something else now.
You will kill me. I didn’t make the conscious choice to pick up the knife from my weapons cache, but one second it was on the ground, and the next, it was in my hand. I thought of my mother’s dressing room, splattered in blood. I thought of dancing on the side of the road in the snow, of my mom’s face aimed heavenward, her tongue catching snowflakes.
You will kill me. The knife was heavy in my hand as she approached. If I don’t kill you first.
My heartbeat slowed. My hand tightened around the blade. And then, without warning, I knew, the way I so often knew things about other people, that I couldn’t use the blade.
I couldn’t kill this monster without killing my mother, too.
Perhaps, Nightshade had told me, someday, that choice will be yours.
I let my hands fall to my sides. “I can’t hurt you. I won’t.”
I expected to see victory in my opponent’s eyes. Instead, I saw fear.
Why? I wondered. And then I realized. You fight. You survive. You protect Lorelai—but what if there’s nothing to protect her from?
“I’m not a threat.” I stopped moving, stopped fighting. “Home isn’t a place,” I said, my voice as hoarse as hers had been earlier. “It’s not having a bed to come home to, or a yard, or a Christmas tree at the holidays. Home is the people who love you.”
She held the knife out in front of her body as she closed the space between us, watching for any hint of movement in my hand.
I let my knife fall to the ground.
“Home is the people who love you,” I said again. “I had a home growing up, and I have one now. I have people who love me, people I love. I have a family, and they would die for me.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Just like I would die for you.”
Not for Cassandra. Not for the Pythia. Not even for Lorelai, whoever she was and had become.
For my mom. For the woman who’d taught me to dance it off. For the one who’d kissed every skinned knee and taught me to read people and told me, every single day, that I was loved.
“I will kill you,” Cassandra hissed. “I’ll like it.”
You want me to pick up the knife. You want me to fight.
“Forever and ever.” I closed my eyes. I waited.
Forever and ever.
Forever and ever.
“No matter what.”
I wasn’t the one who’d spoken those words. I opened my eyes.
The woman holding the knife was shaking. “Forever and ever, Cassie. No matter w
hat.”
My mother’s shaking hands explored my face. “Oh, baby,” she whispered. “You got so big.”
Something broke inside of me at the sound of my mother’s voice, the expressiveness of her features, the familiarity of her touch.
“And so beautiful.” Her voice broke. “Oh, baby. No.” She jerked back. “No, no, no…You’re not supposed to be here.”
“As touching as this reunion is…” Director Sterling stood. “The task remains unchanged.”
My mother tried to take a step back from me, but I wouldn’t let her. I lowered my voice—too low for the watching Masters to hear. “They can’t make us do this.”
Her gaze went hollow. “They can make you do anything.”
My eyes went to the scars on her arms, her chest—every inch of exposed skin, except for her face. Some were smooth. Some were puckered. Some were healing still.
In the stands, Malcolm Lowell stood. One by one, the Masters followed suit.
I bent to pick my knife up off the ground. We could fight—not all of them, and maybe not for long, but it was better than the alternative.
“I don’t want this,” my mom said. “For you.”
The scars. The pain. The role of the Pythia.
“My team will find us.” I channeled Lia and willed those words to sound true. “Wherever this place is, they won’t stop looking. They’ll figure out that the director is working against them. We just have to buy them time.”
My mom stared at me, and I realized that even though she was the person who’d raised me and loved me and made me what I was, I still couldn’t read her, not the way I could anyone else. I didn’t know what she was thinking. I didn’t know what she had been through—not really.
I didn’t know what it meant when she nodded.
What are you saying yes to?
The sound of a door opening and shutting alerted me to the return of Malcolm Lowell. I didn’t even know he left. When I saw what he’d gone to fetch, I stopped breathing.
Laurel.
She was born to take Malcolm’s place, to be the next Nine. And now, he had his hands on her shoulders. He shoved her toward Director Sterling, who grasped Laurel by the arm.