My sister stared at Sloane’s wrists, still wrapped in chains. “Not Laurel,” the little girl said fiercely. “Laurel doesn’t play the game.”
My name is Nine. That was one of the first things my sister had ever said to me. At the time, the words had sent chills down my spine because the group we were looking for had nine members. Seven Masters. The Pythia. And the child of the Pythia and the Masters, the ninth member of their sadistic little circle.
Nine.
“Laurel doesn’t play the game,” I repeated. “Nine does.”
Laurel’s tiny fingers tightened around the chain on the swing. “Mommy knows,” she said fiercely.
“Knows what?” I asked, my heart beating in my throat. “What does Mommy know?”
“Everything.”
There was something off about the set of my half sister’s features. Her face was strangely devoid of emotion. She didn’t look like a child.
Not Laurel. Her words echoed in my head. Laurel doesn’t play the game.
I couldn’t do this to her. Whatever she was reliving, whatever she was playing, I couldn’t send my sister to that place.
“When I was little,” I said softly, “my mommy and I used to play a game. A guessing game.” My chest tightened as a lifetime of memories threatened to overwhelm me. “We’d watch people, and we’d guess. What they were like, what made them happy, what they wanted.”
Behavior. Personality. Environment. My mother had taught me well. Based on the other games my little sister had mentioned—the quiet game, the hiding game—I was betting my mom had taught Laurel some survival skills as well. What I wasn’t sure of was whether the game that “Nine” played was another of my mom’s creations, designed to mask the horrors of their situation—and the chains—from Laurel, or whether that one was a “game” of the Masters’ design.
Laurel reached out a tiny hand to touch my cheek. “You’re pretty,” she said. “Like Mommy.” She stared at and into me with unsettling intensity. “Is your blood pretty, too?”
The question trapped the air in my lungs.
“I want to see,” Laurel said. Her little fingers dug into my cheek, harder and harder. “The blood belongs to the Pythia. The blood belongs to Nine.”
“Look!” Sloane unwound her hands from the chains. She displayed her wrists for Laurel. “No more bracelets.”
There was a pause.
“No more game,” Laurel whispered. Her hand dropped to her side. She turned to me, her expression hopeful and childish and utterly unlike the one she’d worn a moment before. “Did I do good?” she asked.
You did so good, Cassie. I could hear my mom saying those words to me, a grin on her face when I’d correctly pegged the personalities of the family sitting next to us at a diner.
Sloane made an attempt at filling the silence. “There are seven wonders of the world, seven dwarfs, seven deadly sins, and seven different kinds of twins.”
“Seven!” Laurel tilted her head to the side. “I know seven.” She hummed something under her breath: a series of notes, varying rhythm, varying pitch. “That’s seven,” she told Sloane.
Sloane hummed the tune back to her. “Seven notes,” she confirmed. “Six of them unique.”
“Did I do good?” Laurel asked me a second time.
My heart constricted, and I wrapped my arms around her. You’re mine. My sister. My responsibility. No matter what they did to you—you’re mine.
“You know the number seven,” I murmured. “You did so good.” My voice caught in my throat. “But Laurel? You don’t have to play the game anymore. Not ever again. You don’t have to be Nine. You can just be Laurel, forever and ever.”
Laurel didn’t reply. Her gaze fixed on something over my right shoulder. I turned to see a little boy spinning his sister on the merry-go-round.
“The wheel is always turning,” Laurel murmured, her body going stiff. “Round and round…”
YOU
Soon.
Soon.
Soon.
Masters come, and Masters go, but the Pythia lives in the room.
My conversation with Laurel had told me two things. First, whatever sway or position my mother held over the Masters, she was still a captive. Her “bracelets” were proof enough of that. And second…
“The blood belongs to the Pythia.” I repeated my sister’s words out loud. “The blood belongs to Nine.”
“Knock, knock.” Lia had a habit of saying the words in lieu of actually knocking. She also didn’t bother to wait for a response before sauntering into the room I shared with Sloane. “A little birdie told me there was a seventy-two-point-three percent chance you needed a hug,” Lia said. She raked her gaze over my face. “I don’t do hugs.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Lie,” Lia replied immediately. “Care to try again?”
It was on the tip of my tongue to say that, after the debacle at Michael’s house, she probably wasn’t fine, either, but I had the good sense to know that pointing that out would not end well for me.
“You don’t do hugs,” I said instead. “What’s your official position on ice cream?”
Lia and I ended up on the roof, a carton of white chocolate raspberry between us.
“Do you want me to tell you that your mother is still the woman you remember?” Lia asked, leaning back against the window frame behind us.
If I asked her to, Lia would make that statement sound utterly believable. But I didn’t want her to lie to me. “Nightshade told us weeks ago that the Pythia leads the Masters in her child’s stead.” The words tasted bitter in my mouth. “But Laurel said they chain her wrists.”
Part queen regent, part captive. Powerless and powerful. How long could a person withstand that kind of dichotomy before she did something—anything—to reclaim agency and control?
“My little sister calls shackles bracelets.” I stared straight ahead, my grip on the spoon in my hands tightening. “She thinks it’s a game. The game.”
I fell silent.
“Well, I’m not bored yet.” Lia waved her spoon at me, an imperious gesture that I should continue.
I did.
“It was like Laurel was two different people,” I finished several minutes later. “A little girl and…someone else.”
Something else.
“She dug her fingers into the side of my cheek hard enough to hurt. She said she wanted to see my blood. And then, once Sloane took the swing chains off her wrists, it was like a switch had been flipped. Laurel was a little kid again. She asked me…” The words stuck in my throat. “She asked me if she did good, like—”
“Like she was supposed to be utterly creepy and borderline psychotic on cue?” Lia offered. “Maybe she was.”
Lia had grown up in a cult. She’d told me once that someone used to give her presents for being a good girl. Beside me, she untied her ponytail, allowing her hair to flow free as she stretched her legs out toward the edge of the roof. Change in appearance, change in posture. I recognized Lia’s method of shedding emotions she didn’t want to feel.
“Once upon a time…” Lia’s voice was light and airy, “There was a girl named Sadie. She had lines to learn. She had a role. And the better she played it…” Lia gave me a tight-lipped smile. “Well, that’s a story for another time.”
Lia didn’t part with pieces of her past easily, and when she did, there was no way of telling if what she’d said was true. But I had gathered bits and pieces here and there—like the fact that her real name was Sadie.
Lines to learn, a role to play. I wondered what else Sadie and Nine had in common. I knew better than to profile Lia, but I did it anyway. “Whatever happened back then,” I said softly, “it didn’t happen to you.”
Lia’s eyes shone with a glint of emotion, like I was catching a glimpse of darkened water at the bottom of a mile-deep well. “That’s what Sadie’s mother used to tell her. Just pretend it’s not you.” Lia’s smile was sharp-edged and fleeting. “Sadie was good at
pretending. She played the role. I was the one who learned how to play the game.”
For Lia, shedding her old identity was a way of reclaiming power. Her “game”—whatever it had entailed—probably bore little resemblance to the specifics of what my mother was going through now, what Laurel had been raised to view as normal. But there were enough similarities between the two situations to make me wonder if my mom had encouraged my little sister to draw a line between “Laurel” and “Nine.”
“And what about Sadie’s mother?” I asked Lia. Your mother, I amended silently. “Did she take her own advice? Did she create a part of herself that nothing and no one could touch?”
Lia must have known, on some level, that I wasn’t just asking about her mother. I was asking about mine. Was the woman who’d raised me the Pythia? Or was that a role she played? Had she segmented off a part of herself and buried it deep? If I found her, would there be anything left to save?
“You’re the profiler,” Lia said lightly “You tell—”
Lia cut off before finishing that sentence. I followed her gaze to the walkway leading up to our house—and to the girl striding across it like it was a catwalk and she was the star of the show.
“Celine Delacroix.” Lia’s tone was only slightly less concerning than the twisted little smile that crossed her face as she stood. “This should be good.”
“Can’t a girl come to visit her childhood best friend on his birthday?”
Lia and I made it downstairs in time to hear Celine explaining her presence to Michael. Sloane stood just behind him, a stubbornly protective expression on her face. I wondered if she was feeling protective of Michael—or of Lia.
“You followed us.” Michael didn’t sound entirely surprised.
“Followed,” Celine repeated. “Bribed some people to keep tabs on you. Same difference.” Without missing a beat, she turned to Sloane. “You must be one of Michael’s friends. I’m Celine.”
“You faked your own kidnapping.” In Sloane’s world, that passed for a greeting. “It is my understanding that is highly abnormal behavior.”
Celine shrugged. “Did I fake a ransom note? Call in a phony tip to the police?”
“You’re saying that you didn’t do anything illegal.” Dean entered the room and inserted himself into the conversation before Lia could.
“I’m saying that if someone wants to trash their own art studio and skip off to one of their vacation homes for a week, it’s hardly their fault if someone assumes there’s been foul play.”
“And I’m saying,” Sloane countered, “I’m saying…” She trailed off, uncertain of a proper comeback. “I’m saying that the average miniature donkey lives between twenty-five and thirty-five years!”
Celine grinned, the expression less practiced than any I’d seen cross her face. “I like her,” she told Michael decisively. “She says what she’s thinking. Our social circle could use more of that, don’t you think?”
Your social circle, I corrected silently. It’s not Michael’s. Not anymore.
“In the interest of saying what we’re thinking,” Lia interjected, “if you’re really here to celebrate Michael’s birthday, perhaps we should get this party under way?”
Michael had the good sense to look alarmed.
“I’m thinking a game might be in order,” Lia continued.
“A game?” Celine arched an eyebrow. “What kind of game?”
Lia looked at Michael, then smiled wickedly. “How about Never Have I Ever?”
I wasn’t sure how Michael had intended to spend his birthday, but I suspected it wasn’t sitting beside the pool in our backyard with Lia on one side and Celine on the other.
“The rules are simple,” Lia said, dipping her toes into the pool. Even heated, it had to be chilly. “Everyone starts with ten fingers up. Each time someone names something you’ve done before, a finger comes down.” She let that sink in, then started the game off with a bang. “Never have I ever been kidnapped, threatened, or shot by an UNSUB.”
I saw the subtext there: whatever world Celine and Michael had shared, this was Lia’s way of telling the other girl that she didn’t know a thing about him now.
I lowered a finger. Dean and Michael followed suit.
Celine remained remarkably unruffled. “Never have I ever used the word UNSUB like that’s a perfectly normal thing for a teenager to say.”
Dean, Michael, Lia, and I all lowered fingers. Lia cleared her throat to get Sloane’s attention.
“I don’t say anything like it’s perfectly normal,” Sloane clarified. “Ninety-eight percent of the time I’m not normal at all.” She paused. “Never have I ever not known the first hundred digits of pi.”
Michael groaned. Every player but Sloane lowered a finger. I was down to seven, and we’d only been through three rounds.
“Your turn,” Celine told me. “Make it a good one.”
I glanced over at Lia. “Never have I ever lived in a bathroom at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”
Lia smirked, then slowly lowered the middle finger on her left hand.
“Seriously?” Celine asked.
Lia met the other girl’s gaze, a dangerous glint in her eyes. “Seriously.”
Dean must have sensed that the look in Lia’s eyes didn’t bode well—for Celine, for Michael, for Lia—because he chose that moment to enter the game. “Never have I ever,” he said slowly, “made out with Michael Townsend.”
“Someday, big guy,” Michael told him with a wink. “If you’re very, very good.”
I stared at Dean, then lowered a finger. Why would you say something like that? I wondered, but as Lia lowered a finger, I realized exactly why Dean had chosen that statement.
Celine didn’t move.
“Never have I ever,” Michael said after a moment, “rashly assumed that my significant other was in love with a girl that I’d never met.”
Lia lowered a finger and rearranged the fingers on her left hand so that only the middle finger was sticking up. “Never have I ever used the phrase significant other,” she retorted.
“Technically,” Sloane pointed out, “you just did.”
Celine snorted. “Never have I ever had a thing for blondes,” she said. And then, her eyes on Sloane, she shot our statistician a dazzling smile and lowered her own finger—meaning that she did have a thing for blondes.
You’ve never made out with Michael, I realized, because Michael isn’t your type.
“Never have I ever not wanted a miniature donkey,” Sloane offered, completely oblivious to the fact that Celine was flirting with her.
It was my turn again. “Never have I ever faked my own disappearance because of something Thatcher Townsend said to me.”
Michael’s father had denied that he’d slept with Celine, gone to see her the day she disappeared, and threatened her. But, as Lia had pointed out, his denial could ring true if he was telling the truth about any one of the three.
Maybe he didn’t sleep with you, but went to see you anyway. Maybe he threatened you about something else.
Celine—brash and bold and fearless—lowered a finger.
“Never have I ever been threatened because of one of my father’s business dealings.” Dean took a shot next, but struck out.
Celine turned to Michael. “This is getting tedious,” she told him. Clearly, whatever Thatcher Townsend had said to her, she wasn’t in a sharing mood.
There was a moment of silence, and then Lia filled it. “Never have I ever let someone beat the crap out of me.”
That brought Michael’s attention from Celine to Lia. “You got me,” he said, gesturing toward his swollen lip. “Very insightful.”
Instead of replying, Lia dropped her left hand. It took me a moment to realize that, in doing so, she’d brought down her middle finger, too. With a start, I realized that was Lia’s way of telling Michael that she’d been exactly where he was.
There was another long stretch of silence, and then: “Never have I ever been p
ublicly acknowledged by my own father.” Celine’s voice was rough in her throat, like the exchange that had just passed between Michael and Lia had meant something to her, too.
Sloane stared at Celine. Since my father had acknowledged me, I lowered a finger. So did Dean. So did Michael. So did Lia.
But Sloane’s fingers stayed up. “Are you illegitimate, too?” she asked Celine. There was no judgment in her voice, no awareness that the question wasn’t the kind that people could politely ask.
Michael turned to look at Celine, searching her face for answers. “CeCe?”
If Celine was illegitimate, Michael clearly hadn’t known. I thought about the emotions that he’d read on his father’s face when Celine was missing. Furious. Affronted. Personally insulted.
Hungry.
A man like Thatcher Townsend hungered for things he couldn’t have. Things that someone had denied him. Things that are rightfully yours.
Suddenly, I saw the whole situation from a different perspective—why Thatcher might have gone to see Celine, why Celine might have responded the way she had, why she’d followed Michael back here, why Thatcher Townsend had involved himself in the investigation from the get-go.
She has her father’s temper, I thought, Elise Delacroix’s statement taking on new meaning in my mind. Not Remy Delacroix’s. Her father’s. Michael’s father’s.
Michael turned away from the secrets he saw laid bare on Celine’s face. “As the birthday king, it is within my rights to demand a rumpus of Where the Wild Things Are proportions. And as it happens,” he continued, masking his own emotions the way that only an emotion-reader could, “as the recipient of a recently released trust fund, I have a few ideas.”
Michael’s idea of a party involved an amusement park rented out for the evening for our amusement and our amusement alone.
“Do I want to know how much this cost?” Dean asked.
“Doubtful,” Michael replied. “Do I want to know why you have a phobia of integrating colors into your wardrobe? Almost certainly not!”
When I’d first met Michael, I’d found him difficult to profile. But now I understood. Reading emotions was never your only survival mechanism. He’d learned not to feel things, to turn everything into a joke, to shrug off revelations that shook his worldview to its core.