Morgan’s eyes shot open. Her heart raced. She hadn’t planned on falling asleep, here in the den of wolves, and yet—she patted her body—she’d woken in one piece. She didn’t recall going to her room. She’d been drunk on wine; she remembered stumbling down the hall, her socks slipping on the hardwood floor and Bennett catching her. His rough, stubbled cheek against her neck as he laughed. She’d smelled the bourbon on his breath, felt the heat. He hadn’t kissed her, had he?
She touched her fingertips to her lips, as though she’d be able to feel the imprint of his mouth there. No. The last person to kiss her had still been Hudson. What she wouldn’t give to roll over and find him lying beside her. Maybe he’d notice her looking at him and he’d wrap his arms around her and she’d feel safe, for once in her life.
That was a new feeling—wanting someone.
Outside, a light snow fell. It was prettier here than it was at home. In Loomis, it actually looked like snow, whereas in Black Harbor, she’d always thought the flakes looked like ash. She turned toward the window, smoothed the comforter over the vast, virginal expanse of bed, expecting to feel the chill of the morning air woven into the blanket’s fibers.
She jerked her hand away as though she’d touched a hot burner.
The bed was warm.
Reaching toward the nightstand, she grabbed her glasses and put them on. The world was still bathed in a pearlescent early-morning glow. The view out her window revealed bars of birch, black-and-white striations that hinted at a divide between her and all that lay beyond these walls. Her heart racing, she stared at the other half of the bed where, faintly, she could make out the impression of a body.
Someone had lain next to her. Perhaps only a moment ago.
And they’d left something behind. A string tied around a notecard folded in half. She knew before looking up what the string was attached to. Fighting back a whimper, Morgan tilted her head. Above her floated a red balloon.
Every muscle tensed. The culprit could still be in the room. She hugged her knees to her chest and held her breath, listening for the sounds of someone else breathing, of fingernails on the hardwood floor. What if they were under the bed? Morgan clenched her jaw, battling every childhood nightmare of a hand shooting out and grabbing her ankle.
But no one else was here. She could feel it.
Swallowing back her fear, she reached for the notecard and opened it. Inside was a limerick, written in black pen.
Li’l lamb, li’l lamb, who can you be?
We’re made of the same stuff, can’t you see?
You are his ruin,
And I—his undoing,
Both lured by the call of a skeleton key.
She read the fourth line again. And I—his undoing … Were they talking about Clive? Had whoever left this note for her done away with him?
Goose bumps erupted on her arms as she realized the person could still be near, perhaps just down the hall. Sucking in a deep breath, Morgan launched herself off the mattress and leapt toward the door. To her relief, it swung open. She shut it behind her and held the knob.
She half expected the knob to turn from the other side, but it didn’t. Her throat burning, every nerve ending in her body electrified, Morgan hurried on cat’s feet down the corridor.
The doors to the other bedrooms were closed, not even cracked.
It was dead quiet in the house. She was both glad and unnerved for that. The kitchen didn’t smell like roasted coffee beans and there was no fresh fruit on the island. She passed through the living room where, just hours ago, they’d played Never Have I Ever, and stared out the towering picture windows. In the light, now, she could see the expanse of the frozen lake. It was a grey-and-white world out there, with a smattering of evergreens. Birch trees, although probably stunning in the fall, looked like bones jutting out of the snow.
The silence was so absolute it was suffocating.
The west wing opened up to her like an invitation. She vaguely remembered Bennett’s tour from last night. The study and the sauna were both down this way, and Eleanor and Don stayed in the last room on the left. Perhaps one of them had crept down to her room and left the limerick. Laid down beside her.
Before she realized it, Morgan was halfway down the wing, edging closer to a thin blade of light that shone on the floor. Across from the study, a bedroom door was ajar. She heard a shuffling sound from inside. Someone sliding something across the floor.
Tucking herself into the shallow alcove of the study, Morgan gripped the edge of the wall and stretched her neck to see into the sliver of the adjacent room. A man was up and getting undressed. She just saw his back at first, as he pulled off a woolen sweater over a pale blue dress shirt.
She had no idea who it could be. Everyone was accounted for in the opposite wing, unless, perhaps, Blake had not slept upstairs in the loft with Cora. Trouble in paradise?
But this man was too broad at the shoulders, too compact in the torso. That ruled out David, too.
Bennett?
Morgan squinted and leaned a tiny bit closer, careful not to lose her balance and fall on her face as she rubbernecked.
He pulled the sweater completely over his head, and a tuft of white hair popped up.
Christopher.
He must have arrived sometime in the middle of the night, or even within the hour. His muscles sagged beneath his white undershirt. He patted his hair down and leaned over a bureau to consider the old man in the mirror.
Morgan held her breath. She watched as he prodded and pinched at the crepey skin around his eyes as though willing it to firm. Then he turned his head and dragged a finger down the side of his neck. She suspected he’d cut himself shaving, but then she saw it: the pinkened, puckered skin and the word “Ruined” seared into his flesh.
Have you been naughty or nice?
She heard his voice clear as a bell, now. Remembered it like a wound that wouldn’t heal. He’d asked it of her in The Ruins, and again at Eleanor’s party, when she’d sat on his lap and wished for a Butterfinger. Of course she hadn’t seen the mark, then. It was covered by his Santa Claus hair and beard. And later, when she’d gone to see him at Exos Labs, he’d worn a turtleneck.
Outside, the winter wrapped wraithlike arms around her. The ground was so cold, it felt as though she were standing on nails. Morgan squeezed her knees together, jammed her hands into her armpits. In the drive, she noticed Christopher’s blue truck, its windshield the only one not frosted over. He must have arrived only twenty minutes ago or so. She imagined him entering the house, slipping off his shoes, and slithering onto her bed to lie beside her. It reminded her of a story she’d watched on the news where a woman let her pet snake sleep with her. She thought it was cuddling, but it was really just sizing her up to eat her.
Her memory flashed back to the video in The Ruins and the conversation she’d had with Nik and Hudson about the buttonhole-sized camera. The answer was clear. Christopher had known who she was the whole time—his brother’s secret daughter—and he’d planned to do one of two things with the video: expose her for the ruinous thing she was, or rewatch the video to satiate his lascivious appetite later.
Morgan half turned, her eyes scanning the expanse of snow and ice and skeletal trees. Running wouldn’t get her far. She’d freeze before she made it to the main road. Although it had been dark when they arrived last night, she hadn’t seen another residence for miles before Bennett turned onto their sequestered property. She wondered if the Reynoldses owned the entire town. She was on their turf now, without another soul in sight.
“Morgan!”
A voice calling her name ripped her from her frightening reverie. Through the fog of her own breath, she saw Bennett standing in the open doorway. He was shirtless, wearing flannel pajama pants and slippers. She was in his arms before her brain had a chance to decide between fight or flight.
“What are you doing out here?” His hands encapsulated hers.
Her teeth chattered. “I— I must have been sleepwalking.”
“Come on.” He started pulling her toward the house. “You’ll catch your death out here.”
But he was wrong, Morgan knew as she was hauled helplessly to the Reynoldses’ front door out of which she’d burst just a moment ago. Her death awaited inside, and he’d been waiting for her for a long, long time.