Page 25 of Bad Blood
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 Iwasn’tsure 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 toNine.”
“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 knowseven.” 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’tfine, 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.
