Page 108 of What Lies in the Woods

Cass stood, panting slightly between her teeth, the only sign that anything was wrong. Her shoulders straightened. “There’s no way aroundthis, Cody. She’s never going to keep quiet. But if we hide the body, it’ll look like she took off.”

Cody flinched. I just turned her words over in my mind, marveling at the way she skipped so neatly over that transition. No mention of killing me. From alive to a body, like it was a process they could have nothing to do with.

“People will look for her,” he said.

“Some,” she allowed. “But Marcus Barnes called me right before you did. She left his place completely wrecked and acting erratic. Covered in dirt. People will believe that she took off.”

“Marcus Barnes? What does he know?” He looked at me. “What did you tell him?”

“It wasn’t about that,” Cass said. “She found out…” She hesitated, like it was painful for her to say. “Liv was the one who stabbed her when we were kids. Had some kind of psychotic break and attacked her.”

I thought of all the time Cass had spent with me, after the attack. At the hospital and after. How she’d taken care of being our voice, telling the story again and again to anyone who asked. Taking control of the narrative. And of us.

“What?” Cody said, clearly shocked. I felt a petty surge of pleasure that I wasn’t the only one getting blindsided. “That’s what Liv meant when she said you lied about Stahl.”

“It makes sense that Naomi would be freaked out and take off after finding that out,” Cass said, sounding satisfied.

“We can’t just kill her,” Cody said, voice strained. “I can’t—”

“You know we have to. It’s that, or you go to prison, and that baby of yours is in college before you get to see her except on the other side of Plexiglas.” She sighed. “You don’t have to actually do it. I don’t mind.” She held out her hand for the gun.

Cody stared at her. Looked at me. I was past pleading. I met his eyes and tried to keep myself from shaking. He dropped his eyes and handed off the gun. Cass checked it expertly to ensure it was loaded.

“There’s a tarp in the bag. We should lay it down so we don’t leave blood behind,” she said.

He turned away, mouth set and eyes downcast. He knelt to unzip the bag, and Cass turned her wrist this way and that, as if getting used to the weight of the gun.

“I really am sorry about this, Naomi,” she said, sounding tired.

“Fuck you,” I ground out. “You can’t even tell me the truth when I’m about to die.”

“What? Iamsorry. I would rather not have to kill you,” she said, irritated.

“Not about that. You lied about Liv. About that day.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. Cody had paused, looking up at us.

“Why did you say it was Stahl?” I asked.

She blinked. “To protect Liv, obviously. Prison would have killed her. You know that.”

I let out a sound like a growl, my fingers curled into claws in ineffectual anger. I could believe that Liv thought Persephone wanted her to do it. That she had believed she had to.

Seventeen times, she’d stabbed me. There had been so much blood. Marcus said it himself. And Liv hated blood. Had almost vomited at the sight of it, when I cut myself. Yes, Liv might have thought killing me was what the Goddesses demanded.

But she couldn’t have done it.

She wouldn’t have.

And only one person had ever been allowed to declare what it was Persephone demanded of us.

“How did Liv get the idea that killing me was the final ritual?”

A shrug. “She was crazy.”

I shook my head viciously. “She was never violent. Never.”

“Except for stabbing you seventeen times. Kind of a giant exception,” Cass said flatly.

---