“In this life, and in the last.”

24

The X-rays showed that four of my ribs were fractured. There wasn’t much the doctors could do for my ribs apart from pain relief, but a junior doctor was stitching the cut on my forehead by the time Cate arrived, her eyes wet and her face thin with worry.

She stood at the doorway, sniffling, looking me up and down. I knew what she was looking for this time: She wanted to make sure I was really who I said I was.

“It’s me, Cate,” I said as she stared at me. “It’s me.”

She pulled up a chair next to me and folded my free hand into hers, then bent to inhale the scent of my skin again, again, again.

“You were gone for two weeks,” she said finally.

“Two weeks?” It had felt like two days.

“I thought . . . I thought it had happened again.” Cate swallowed hard, her throat tacky with grief. “That I’d lost you again.”

“I’m back. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Oh, I know. You are banned from ever leaving the house again. Homeschooling, university by correspondence, then some kind of freelance job that doesn’t require you to ever leave me again. Okay?”

I smiled a little. “Okay,” I said as I patted her head.

“What happened?” she asked. I took a deep breath in. Cate could tell I was about to start lying and pressed one of her fingers to my lips. “Please. Please tell me the truth. I want to know. I can handle it.”

Could she, though? Could any mother handle that terrible truth?

“All done here,” said the doctor. “Let me check on how your sisters are doing, but you’re all good to go.”

“Thank you,” Cate said as he left the room.

“I went back,” I said when it was just the two of us. “I have something for you.” I motioned to Vivi’s backpack, on a chair across the room. Cate brought it to me. I unzipped it and took out the three strips of fabric I’d cut from our childhood coats. No—not our childhood coats. Cate’s daughters’ childhood coats. One of red-and-black tartan. One of green tweed. One of Bordeaux-red faux fur. There were specks of blood on each of them, though I hoped my mother would mistake them for mold or dirt.

“You found them,” Cate said as she thumbed the fabric. And then she was on her knees, shaking, gasping for breath. “Where are they?”

“They’re there. In the place we went. They . . . They’re not . . . They were together when it happened,” I continued quietly. I sank beside her, tried to comfort her. “They didn’t feel any pain. They felt warm and safe. They thought they were coming home to you.” I didn’t know if anything I said was true, but I hoped it was. My mother was sucking sharp, painful breaths into her lungs.

My mother, I thought again, rolling the words around in my head. Not my mother. Someone else’s mother. “I didn’t know,” I told her as she cried. “I promise. I didn’t know what we were or what she did.”

“I know, Iris,” she said. Then she reached up and stroked my hair. “I know.”

“How can you stand me?” I whispered. “How can you stand to have me in your house?”

“Because you’ve been my daughter for ten years. How could I not love you?”

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry about Grey. I’m so sorry I gave you so much grief when you kicked her out.”

“You’re like her, you know. My Iris. She was quiet and empathetic and whip smart.”

There was a soft knock at the door. Vivi was standing in the doorway, her arms and head bandaged. She spotted the strips of fabric Cate held in her hand, then went to wrap her arms around our mother where she’d collapsed on the floor.

“I’m sorry,” Vivi said as she stroked her hair. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

* * *

Grey Hollow sat in the room across the hall, surrounded by police. Vivi escorted our mother past the doorway so she wouldn’t have to see Grey, but I stopped and lingered. The light was caustic, and the air smelled thick and vile, of blood and honey and lies. Each of the half dozen people around her watched her with deep pools for eyes, drunk out of their minds on the flood of power that seeped from my sister.

A spider queen with her prey wrapped neatly in her web.

Grey leaned in to place her lips on the mouth of the lead detective, the one who’d spoken at the press conference. The man shuddered with pleasure, his bones barely able to hold up his jelly body.

“A stalker,” she told him. “A crazed man, in love with me and my sisters since we were children. The same one who kidnapped us in Edinburgh. He took me and held me captive for weeks. I escaped. Tyler Yang—” Her voice trembled, a string plucked by pain. For a moment her spell wavered, but Grey was stronger than her grief. Such a human emotion was not enough to undo her. She sniffled and sat up straighter, as did every other person in the room, mirroring the enchantress who kept them rapt. “Tyler Yang tried to save me. He was killed by the stalker. It’s a terrible tragedy.”

“A terrible tragedy,” one of the officers echoed, her fingertips trailing across my sister’s thigh.

“There’s no need to take statements from my sisters,” Grey said, and the officers around her agreed.

“Yes, no need to put them through that,” the lead detective said as he swept the back of his palm down Grey’s shin.

“A stalker,” one of them repeated.

“A crazed man. A monster,” said another.

“What a terrible tragedy,” said a third.

Grey looked up at me, as did all of the police under her spell, a sudden flood of wide irises all pinned to mine. I held my sisters gaze. The power that bound us sparked in my chest.