Page 37 of Bad Blood
“We chose you,” Dean countered, “because at least one among us believed that someday you might come to like it. The power. The blood. Some of us want you to embrace what you are. Some of us would rather you fight it—fight us.”
This group followed very specific rules. After their ninth kill, they were done—permanently. “What you do to me is the closest any of you can come to reliving the glory. You drag a knife across my skin or watch it blister under a flame. You hold my head under water or make me watch as you push a metal rod through my flesh. You close your fingers around my neck. You beat me.” I thought of Nightshade. “You force your most painful poison down my throat. And every time you hurt me, every time youpurifyme, I learn more about you. Seven different monsters, seven different motivations.”
My mother had always excelled at manipulating people. She’d made her living as a “psychic,” telling people what they wanted to hear.
“Some of us,” Dean said after a moment’s thought, “are easier to manipulate than others.”
I thought again of Nightshade. My mother hadn’t ordered his death when he’d been captured. The Masters had almost certainly presented the matter for her judgment, but she’d held out—and at least some subset of them had let her.
“Nightshade was a newly minted member of this group when they took my mother,” I said slowly, trying to think of facts—any facts—that might shed light on their dynamic. “He completed his ninth kill two months before she was taken.” I forced myself back into my mother’s point of view. “He was competitive. He was daring. He wanted to break me. But I made him want something else more. I made him want me.”
“What he wanted was immaterial.” Dean closed his eyes, his lashes casting shadows on his face. “The Pythia will never belong to one man.”
“But one of you must have identified me as a potential Pythia,” I said. I thought again about how new to the fold Nightshade had been when my mother was taken. “One of you chose me, and it wasn’t Nightshade.”
I waited for another insight, but nothing came, and thatnothingate away at me like a black hole sucking every other emotion in. I couldn’t remember who might have been watching my mother. I couldn’t remember anything that might have told us how—and by whom—she’d been chosen.
Dean lay down beside me, his head on my pillow. “I know, Cassie.I know.”
I thought of Daniel Redding, sitting across from me and gloating about the way he’d inserted himself between Dean and me—every time our hands brushed, every gentle touch.
I don’t need gentle right now. I let myself turn toward Dean, let my breath catch raggedly in my throat.I don’t want it.
I reached for Dean, pulling him roughly toward me. His hands buried themselves in my hair.Not gentle. Not light. My back arched as his grip on my ponytail tightened. One second I was beside him, and the next I was on top of him. My lips captured his—rough and hard and warm andreal.
I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking. I couldn’t save Laurel. I couldn’t save my mother.
But I could live—even when I didn’t want to, even when it hurt. I couldfeel.
Idreamed, as I had so many times before, that I was walking down the hallway toward my mother’s dressing room. I could see myself reaching for the door.
Don’t go in. Don’t turn on the light.
No matter how many times I had this dream, I was never able to stop myself. I was never able to do anything but what I’d done that night.Grapple for the light switch. Feel the blood on my fingers.
I flipped the switch and heard a faint rustling, like leaves in the wind. The room remained pitch-black. The sound got louder.Closer. And that was when I realized it wasn’t rustling leaves. It was the sound of chains being dragged over a tile floor.
“That’s not how you play the game.”
The room was flooded with light, and I whirled to see Laurel standing behind me. She was holding a lollipop, the kind she’d been staring at the first time I’d seen her. “Thisis how you play the game.”
Hands slammed me back into the wall. Shackles appeared on my wrists. Chains slithered across the floor like snakes.
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see—
“You can do better than that.”
It took me a moment to realize that the chains were gone. Laurel was gone. The dressing room was gone. I was sitting in a car. My mother was sitting in the front seat.
“Mom.” The word was strangled by my throat.
“Dance it off,” my mom told me. That had been one of her go-to phrases. Every time we’d left a town, every time I’d skinned a knee.Dance it off.
“Mom,” I said urgently, suddenly sure that if I could just get her to turn around and look at me, she would see that I wasn’t a little girl anymore. She would see, and she would remember.
“I know,” my mom called back over the music. “You liked the town and the house and our little front yard. But home isn’t a place, Cassie.”
Suddenly, we weren’t in the car anymore. We were standing on the side of the road, and she was dancing.
