It only got worse after that.
They found more remains. A leg poking out from under a collapsed wall. Indisputably Warix’s, wearing the glossy, satiny track pants and the other galaxy shoe.
Farther around the back of the cottage, they found more—a broad swath of blood, spreading out from beneath the largest pile of rubble. Plum shivered. How close were they to ending up just like Warix? How could the gamer just be killed like that? And . . . where was Dude?
The night had advanced, steadily and mercifully robbing color from their eyes.
Marlowe’s face was smudged with tears and dirt. Sofia had a graze on her shoulder, a slight trickle of blood showing through her torn pink tank top.
Plum ripped a piece from the hem of her oversized white T-shirt and dabbed at her friend’s shoulder.
From the flickering glare of the few remaining rubble fires, Plum could distinctly see more . . . tissue. Gore-smeared, indistinguishable as human.
And a ruined pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses.
Bile rose in her throat again.
“Dude,” Marlowe said.
They shuffled forward together in a shell-shocked daze.
“Dude,” Jude agreed mournfully.
“Look.” Sofia was pointing to an overturned wheelbarrow.
A piece of paper fluttered from its back.
They stumbled to it. Plum took it and read.
It’s over for Warix now.
Isn’t that sad?
No, not really,
it isn’t that bad.
One minute here, now he’s died in the night.
But influencers all want to blow up, am I right?
“That’s not nice,” Jude murmured flatly.
“Our killer’s not nice,” Plum agreed.
“Didn’t we agree to call them ‘the killer’?” Marlowe murmured.
“Where’s Dude’s poem?” Sofia looked around. “There should be another one, right?”
“I don’t think the killer meant to kill both of them,” Plum said slowly. “Remember how Dude ran back in? He should have been outside . . .”
“Just like with Brittlyn,” Marlowe said, and Plum didn’t have to ask to know what she meant.
She was thinking about how Dude hadn’t hesitated to perform mouth-to-mouth while the rest of them were worrying about poison.
“He was . . . brave,” Sofia said.
Plum felt a rush of guilt and self-reprimand. Here she’d thought Dude might be the killer, all because his story hadn’t made sense. She was wrong. He’d risked his life again for one of them—and this time he didn’t make it out alive.
They turned back around, facing the smoldering ruin.
There was nothing else to be done.
They were in no state to dig through the thousands of pounds of rubble, to do what? Locate mangled, crushed, severed bodies? To do what with them then?
Carry them to a walk-in fridge?
There was a sudden, loud cluck. Sofia let out a little gasp.
“Oh, thank goodness!” Sofia bent, reaching into the base of a bush. She pulled out the shell-shocked chicken.
Henrietta immediately tucked her beak under Sofia’s forearm.
Plum slowly turned their group away from the ruined cottage, back toward the villa. They started shuffling up the path.
They had to find Cici, Shelley, Peach, and Jalen.
They had to tell them what happened.
Come to think of it . . . shouldn’t they be outside by now? Shouldn’t they have come running at the noise?
A deepening feeling of unease settled on Plum’s shoulders, almost like a constricting cloak, tightening around her ribs, across her shoulders, behind her neck.
Without talking, they stumbled forward faster.