Page 109 of What Lies in the Woods

“Why would she have decided that Persephone needed a sacrifice?You were the one who told us what Persephone wanted. You made the rules. It was always you.”

Her fingers tightened around the grip of the gun. Her face was bloodless, but her gaze was steady.

My lips peeled back from my teeth. “You made her do it. You told her a story and made her believe it. But I can’t figure out why. Why did you want to hurt me?”

“Because she wasmyfriend,” Cass snarled. “You were both supposed to bemyfriends, but you kept trying to go off on your own. You don’t think I noticed? Any time I left the two of you alone together, it was all whispers and holding hands and laughing at your private jokes. I thought if I waited, you’d forget about your stupid little crush and it would go back to the way it wassupposedto be. But you didn’t. You were going to be together and leave me behind.”

I gaped at her. “So you told her tokillme?” I asked, bewildered, my heart hammering wildly. If I was going to die, I wanted to know the truth. All of it.

“She said that she wanted to be my friend. That she wasn’t picking you over me. She had to prove it. I didn’t think she’d actually do it. I thought she’d chicken out and then I’d be able to hold it over her. I didn’t realize how nuts she was,” Cass said, but even now she was lying. I could see the hint of satisfaction in her eye. I could imagine her elation at realizing it had actually worked. Maybe she hadn’t expected Liv to follow through, but she’dwantedit.

“She stabbed me seventeen times?” I said. “Liv did that?” I couldn’t believe I’d ever thought it might be true. One more way I had failed her. Betrayed her.

Cass’s lips parted ever so slightly. “You think she was so gentle, so perfect? She did stab you, Naomi. She’s the one that stabbed you in the back, but she was too much of a fuckup to even get that right. She panicked. She dropped the knife and stood there screaming. Saying she was sorry, that she took it back. But what were we supposed to do?You were going to tell, and we’d be in trouble. I had to do something. I was just cleaning up her mess. I still am.”

I shook—not with the cold, not with fear, but with rage. Cass had seized on Liv’s delusions, her fragile state of mind. She’d manipulated her. Liv would have had to be terrified, to be utterly convinced that what Cass was saying was true—that hurting me was the only way to avert something far worse. And still she hadn’t been able to do it.

Cass had tried to make her a monster. She couldn’t—but she could make Liv believe herself to be one. And Liv had carried that, all this time.

“The thing is, Naomi, it worked,” Cass added, as if she didn’t quite believe it. “I saved us. I made it so we would always be tied together, we would always be friends—and Liv would never let anything happen between you that might take you two away from me. And we got to beheroes, Naomi. Do you think your life would have been anything but utterly mediocre, if I hadn’t done what I did? It all worked out. Forallof us.”

I thought of how brave she’d been, after. How she’d flourished, playing the spokesperson for the three of us, interviewed by serious journalists who spoke to her with deference and kindness. How she’d flung herself into the role of caretaker and protector, and everyone had bought it. Had worshipped her.

And part of me wondered if she was right. If I had never been attacked, had never turned into the miracle girl, where would I be? In Chester, probably. In a dead-end job, a drunk like my father.

But Liv would be alive.

“She was going to tell. She was going to ruin everything I worked so hard to make,” Cass said, as if imploring me to understand. As if she truly believed I might.

“I’ve got it,” Cody said brusquely, and Cass glanced toward him. He’d laid out the tarp. The handle of a hacksaw stuck out of the duffel. I looked away quickly, my stomach roiling at the thought of what that was meant for.

“All right. Enough talk. Stand up,” Cass said, gesturing with the gun. It was like something she’d seen in a movie. I pushed to my feet. She directed me over to the tarp. “Kneel down,” she ordered. Her voice shook now.

She wasn’t as tough as she wanted to think she was, I thought. This version of Cass was like all the others. Something that she’d decided on, constructed piece by piece. Friend, protector, mother, cold-blooded killer. A false front, and absolutely nothing behind it. I wondered if she even understood why she did the things she did, or if she was acting on pure instinct and filling in logic after the fact.

And she’d always been like that. The day we met, she hadn’t chosen us because she thought we were special. She’d chosen us because one glance was enough to tell her that we were so damaged we wouldn’t see the rot already festering inside her.

“I spent my whole life trying to heal from something that never happened,” I said. “You were my friend. Youstayedmy friend. You told me you cared about me. You made yourself part of my life after you’d done that to me. What were you thinking when you saw my scars and knew they were your fault? When I told you about my nightmares? When you promised me that Stahl wasn’t going to get me? Was it funny to you?”

“A little,” she said viciously. Her teeth flashed once. Her eyes were empty and cold, and something primal surged within me, an ancestral instinct birthed before we had words for the thing she was.

Ethan had seen it, I realized. Maybe not right away, but during the eulogy and when he spoke to her afterward, he’d seen that she was the same sort of creature he’d lived with his whole childhood. Maybe he’d only had an inkling. Enough to try to warn me, but I hadn’t listened.

“You destroyed her,” I said softly. “She was wonderful, and you destroyed her.”

“I said kneel down,” she repeated, and this time I obeyed, letting gravity overtake me.

She started to lift the gun but hesitated halfway. There was genuine fear in her eyes for what she was about to do—but I knew that fear wouldn’t save me. The tarp crunched under my knees. The rain had picked up, a steady hiss all around us. It plastered Cody’s hair to his scalp and ran into his eyes.

“Fuck,” she muttered. She wrapped another hand around the grip, taking a steadying breath. “Don’t look at me,” she said, but I stared straight at her.

“Wait,” Cody said. “Let’s think this through.”

“We have to kill her,” she said.

He shook his head impatiently. “I know, but you shouldn’t be the one to do it. I’ve already killed someone. If we do get caught, I’m already looking at a murder conviction. Better if it’s just one of us.”

“Fine,” she said. She seemed eager to hand off the gun. Relieved. “Just get it over with quickly, okay? I can’t stand this.”

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