The knife falls from Jewel’s fingers. She pitches forward and Neva catches her. They both sink to the floor. Neva holds Jewel as a patch of blood widens on her back. Michael’s aim was true, the bullet had penetrated her back and had buried itself in her heart. She wasn’t dead yet, but she was dying.
Neva turns Jewel around, looking down into her familiar face. Then Michael comes closer.
‘I couldn’t find the killer because she was right under my nose,’ Michael says. ‘Elsa. I should have recognized she was your sister but she was wearing a wig and contacts. My god, she was insane and yet she played the part of Elsa to perfection. She was so… controlled.’
‘I remember her now. Brown bob. She was talking to me at the hotel when Solomon Granger accused me of—’
‘Jesus! He meant her! Not you,’ Michael says.
Neva’s mind flicks back to that moment as a flash of perfect memory clarifies the situation behind her eyes.
‘It’s her,’ Granger said. ‘Angie! I thought you were dead!’
Neva looked at Granger, shocked.
‘You killed her! She killed my Angela!’ Solomon said, looking directly at Elsa.
‘I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill Angela Carter or steal Granger’s child. She did. For her mother,’ Neva said. ‘For a while I doubted my own sanity. I thought that I had done these things under another personality, one I knew nothing about. It’s the sort of mind-fuck that these people do to the kids.’
There is a sense of euphoria as Neva realizes she is not guilty. Such a small thing, in the scheme of all of the deaths she has delivered. But she hadn’t wanted Carter’s blood on her hands.
Michael looks around the room and nods. ‘This is fucked up.’
‘Tell me about it. You’re not the only one with a weird family. She killed Janine.’ Neva glances over at the mobile phone. Discarded among the photographs and blood on the floor. She lets the grief and loss come out for one brief moment. A tear slips down her cheek. She looks up at Michael and lets him see the raw emotion inside her. No more hiding. No more pretending. She can feel and she wants to, even when it hurts this much.
‘I’m sorry,’ Michael says.
They look at each other for a beat.
‘We have to get out of here,’ Michael says, as if attempting to break the spell.
‘I can’t,’ Neva says. ‘This is where I belong. I have to take over from Annalise. I’m the only heir.’
‘Neva? You don’t have to do anything. You’re free. You can just walk away from this shit,’ Michael says.
Neva strokes Jewel’s hair as the last breath hisses from the girl’s lips. She wipes away the stray tear. Then she pushes Jewel’s body away. She stands up.
‘She was fragile. Mother’s methods drove her insane. She was right to send me to the house and not Fleur,’ Neva says. ‘I wish I could leave. But it’s far more complicated than that. It’s time we both faced the truth, Michael.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Michael says.
‘If you don’t take over the Network, and I don’t take on the Almunazama, then someone else will.’
‘Neva…?’
‘She told me. She told me everything. Every visit she made at the house, she brought me back to being Fae and my duty was instilled in me. Mother wanted an alliance of the two most powerful cabals in the world. We can do that, Michael. And our children will bring it all together.’