Page 129 of I'll Be Waiting

That’s what Patrice said.

Shared blood.

Someone who knew Roddy and also shares blood with Patrice.

“You’re Patrice’s aunt,” I say. “Lori.”

She turns away from Anton’s ghost, now nearly invisible as he tries to mouth something.

“Finally figured it out,” she says.

I try not to look at those pruning shears. Instead, I focus on my escape routes. The one to my left is tempting, in a Thelma-and-Louise kinda way. Grab Lori and pull her over the cliff before she can hurt anyone else. But I doubt I’d survive the fall, and I kinda want to survive.

I need to get my bearings. We’re not in the spot where I usually look out, and with the damned midges, I can’t see anything. I wouldn’t even have noticed the cliff edge without Anton’s warning.

I need to catch my breath, too. My heart pounds, adrenaline slamming through me, and I need to push the panic aside and focus.

Keep her away from Jin. Get to the car. Call for help.

“Patrice said you got in,” I say. “Her defenses were lowered, and you got in.”

Lori’s face twists. “I made a mistake. Once you’re in, you can’t get out. I was trapped inside her for twenty fucking years, and when we finally get out, what does she do? Drags us intothissniveling brat.”

The cliff edge is uneven. I need to remember that. I can’t run along it or I won’t see where it curves in.

Keep her talking while I think.

“Was it the book?” I say. “Patrice found a book of witchcraft. She said she read the incantation from ‘her’ book. Your book.”

“Oh my god.” Lori’s eyes round. “That must be it. The evil book is responsible—” She breaks off with another sneer. “You want a simple answer so badly, don’t you, girl? It was the book. It was the wine. It was the drugs. Patrice let me in because she wanted me in.She killed that girl because she wanted to. But then she had to blame someone else. Blame you. Blame me.”

“Samantha and Roddy. You—”

“That was an accident.”

I strangle out something like a laugh. “You sliced Samantha open—”

“Roddy had been messing around with me. Promised he’d dump that simpering cow. Then at the bonfire, he tells me he changed his mind. When I demand an explanation, he stomps into the forest, and she goes after him. So I followed. I caught up with Sam, and she said Roddy told her everything and she forgave him.”

That sneer, twisting her entire face now. “She forgavehim.She didn’t forgive me. He started it, but somehow it was my fault. We fought. I shoved her, and her head hit a tree. Then Roddy comes running. Accuses me of killing her. He’s waving his hunting knife around—who carries a hunting knife to a bonfire? I took it to stop him.”

“Youslithisthroat.”

Lori shrugs. “Which stopped him. That’s when I remembered the old stories we’d tell around the bonfire, about a couple who died in that forest back in the fifties. Killed by a guy with a hook for his hand. The guy had his throat slit. The girl was found in a tree with her guts hanging out.”

“So you staged their bodies.”

“It was a bugger getting her in that tree, I tell you. I couldn’t drag her very high. Then I slit her open like Dad taught me to do with deer. Turned out she hadn’t actually been dead but…” She shrugs. “She was after that.”

I set my jaw against my outrage. Shewantsthat outrage. She feeds on it.

She’s right that I want answers. What made Lori brutally murder her best friend and her secret boyfriend? What let her possess her niece? What made her niece slice openherbest friend?

Patrice died of an infection, and that is bitterly ironic in its truth. Infected by her aunt, Lori. Had Lori herself been infected by someone farther back in the line, a shadowy threat woven into endless Russian dolls, some ancestor into Lori, Lori into Patrice, Patrice into Shania?

A book of witchcraftistoo simplistic an answer, and it’s more effect than cause. Something dark lived inside Lori, and she fed it with more darkness, shoveling it in until it exploded.

That same dark thread wove through Patrice, drawing her to the book, luring her to the forest even as she thought she was in control, staging a fake haunting with Cody.

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