“I’m sorry, Jonathan.”
“What is this?” said Mags, voice hoarse and frightened.
“Good question,” said Stark. “What exactly is this, Jenny?”
Jenny Flynn gave a small shrug. She was pointing the pistol at them in a two -handed grip, arms held straight. Her hands were shaking. Tears coursed down her face.
“It’s a fucking mess, is what it is.”
Stark said nothing. The cut on his arm was deeper than he had imagined. He was losing blood. He felt disorientated. Was he imagining this? It seemed unreal. Another of his vivid and disturbing dreams? He thought not. The blood was real. The fear was real.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” she said. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Stark clasped his arm in an effort to staunch the wound. His head throbbed. He blinked, focused.
“Speak to me, Jenny.”
“I didn’t know he had taken your sister.” Her voice shook with the slightest tremor. “That was never meant to happen.”
“What was meant to happen? Indulge me, please.”
“It’s gone too far,” she muttered. “The man who took you…” She gestured to Mags. “The man who tied you to a bed, who intended to kill you and sculpt your face into the semblance of another… he’s my brother.”
Stark could feel Mags tense.
“You knew what he was doing,” she said.
“My name is Jenny Lamont. I had to change my name when I joined the firm. She wanted it that way, so as not to show favouritism. She didn’t want anyone to know I was her daughter. It was our secret.”
“Winnifred Marshall is your mother,” said Stark. “What other secrets have you been hiding?”
She gave a crooked smile. “Cynthia was shot by Archie Willow. She was beautiful. She was… perfection. My brother tried to recreate her in all those women. He took pictures of his finished work, and I would paint their portraits. But none of them were good enough. He couldn’t capture the essence of our sister’s beauty. So he had to keep trying, and in doing so, kept failing, and it kept on and on.”
“You’re fucking insane,” whispered Mags.
Jenny sighed. “When my brother saw you, he sent me your picture. You’re the closest yet, Margaret. But I swear, I had no idea you were Jonathan’s sister.”
“And if she wasn’t…” said Stark, “…that would be all right, yes? Another innocent, kidnapped, mutilated, murdered. All to satisfy some fucked-up mission your fucked-up family are on.”
Jenny responded in a tired voice. “You don’t understand. But it doesn’t matter what you think. It’s over. It was over, as soon as we discovered Bronson Chapel had a picture of my brother on his phone.”
Stark found he was now leaning on Mags. The world seemed to waver. He clenched his teeth, concentrated on getting through each second.
“Bronson Chapel?”
“My mother contacted me as soon as she found out. The instruction was simple. We – Gabriel and I – drove up to his stupid little boat house in the woods. He let me in.” She gave a sudden shrill laugh. “The puzzled look on his face when he saw me. He made me tea. So polite. I unlocked the front door. My brother entered, and shot him while we sipped Darjeeling. Not so polite.” She took a long shaky breath. “But the killing didn’t fucking stop,” she whispered. “Two men arrived. That was unexpected. We let them in, and killed them too.” She seemed to shiver. “So much blood.”
“It has to stop,” said Stark. He was weak, and growing weaker. A punctured artery, he suspected.
He staggered, his sister keeping him upright.
“He’s bleeding out!” she shrieked. “He needs to get to a fucking hospital!”
Stark detected movement behind him. He turned. There, at the bedroom door, a ghastly wound to his head, face bright with blood, stood Jenny’s brother. He swayed on his feet, one hand clutching the door handle. Dressed in his black cowl, he was a ghoul.
“Kill him,” he rasped. “Kill him, Jenny. Look what he did to me. Kill the fucker!”
Stark turned back to Jenny.
“Please,” he said, but his own voice sounded far away, as if it belonged to someone else, and the world was turning to mist and shadow, and things were melting to darkness.
“I’m sorry,” whispered Jenny, and despite his fading consciousness, Stark sensed her despair.
The kitchen echoed with the sound of the pistol firing. Once, twice, three times. To Stark, it sounded like three explosions. The room became a sudden sparkle of blood. He heard his sister scream. He was aware of the floor rising up, meeting his face. His last image was of a raven, in flight, black against blue.
And then he let go, and everything became nothing.