LILY’S EYES SNAP OPEN. SHE tries to draw in a breath but can’t. A hand is at her throat, squeezing. She tries to prise away the gloved fingers, but they are too strong. The figure looms over her. They’re hooded, and it’s too dark to see their face.
Kicking, rolling, Lily tries to get free, but the figure stays still. Unnaturally so. The hand tightens round Lily’s neck. She thinks of Mum, the marks around her neck; she thinks of her Bean, unable to breathe if Lily can’t.
Lily pushes her hands up into the figure’s face. It feels like there’s nothing there. Or like silk that has just passed through her fingers.
Darkness is coming, narrowing Lily’s vision. She hears her own last breath.
And then her throat is released.
Lily rolls off the bed, onto the floor, taking deep breaths. Cradling her tummy.
There’s a scuffle in the room, two figures now, fighting. Her books are knocked from the shelves. Scrabbling for the light, she pulls at the lead and the lamp falls to the floor. By the time she manages to switch it on, both figures have disappeared.
She looks out into the hallway, but no one is there, either. She’d love to put it down to the worst of dreams, but the soreness of her throat, and the red marks around her neck, let her know she can’t.
Someone, though, had protected her.
*
Tom comes to his door quickly when she knocks a few minutes later. He unlocks the bolt and opens up. He blinks in the hallway light, yawning as he tries to stick his arms through the sleeves of his dressing gown and keeps missing. The blood has partly dried on his head into a nasty wet scab.
She tells him what happened, and he wakes up as if she’s chucked ice in his face. ‘You were right. Soon as it’s light and we’ve eaten, we’re leaving by foot, taking Rachel and Holly with us, and Gray, if he can tear himself away from his sister’s butcher’s apron strings. Safety in numbers, that’s what we need.’
‘You think it was Sara who attacked me?’
‘Who else? I heard the way she spoke to you yesterday. Saw the way she looked at you.’
‘She hates me,’ Lily says.
‘She hates herself more,’ Tom replies. ‘But you’re her scapegoat. Her coming here must be bringing all of her stuff to the surface as much as ours. And I’m not having you be the sacrificial lamb to her psychosis.’
‘The thing I want to know,’ Lily says, ‘is, who saved me?’
‘That’s a good point,’ Tom says, eyes widening. ‘You didn’t recognise them?’
‘All I could see was dark shadows.’ She doesn’t tell him about the strange sensation of touching her attacker’s face. Nor does she tell him that there’s one person she really hopes was looking out for her. Her mum.
*
‘I can’t serve you “breakfast”,’ Mrs Castle says, indicating with her eyes and glaring verbal quote marks that she means the clues, ‘until Misses Rachel and Holly get down here. Those are my instructions for today.’
‘Not even some toast?’ Tom says, with one of his puppy grins. ‘I’m wounded, I need sustenance.’
Mrs Castle turns away, but Lily can still see her slight smile. ‘Especially not toast.’
Sara is sitting opposite Lily, tapping her fingers. Her ear is cocked towards the door, waiting for Rachel and Holly to walk down the staircase.
‘Is no one going to ask me how I am?’ Tom says. ‘Or maybe how Lily is, given how she was nearly made into an Endgame ghost, too?’
‘What do you mean?’ Gray says. He looks from Lily to Tom. Either he is a very good actor, taking after his uncle Edward, or he has no idea about Lily being attacked.
Lily tries to kick Tom under the table to get him to shut up, but her legs can’t quite reach.
‘Someone tried to strangle Lily last night,’ Tom says.
‘Did they manage?’ Sara asks, as dry as leftover turkey. ‘It’s hard to tell.’
‘Someone was watching over me, luckily,’ Lily replies. ‘Otherwise, they would have done.’ She pulls her silk scarf to one side, showing the hand marks around her neck.
‘Well, aren’t you lucky to have a guardian angel,’ Sara replies. She looks at Tom. ‘Who’s yours?’
‘Lily, obviously. She found me, stopped it from being murder. In the snow, as cold as it was? If I’d been left there, I would’ve died. So, Lily is my angel.’
‘And wouldn’t she look lovely on top of your tree,’ Sara replies. She stands, then, and stalks into the hallway where she bangs the gong. ‘Get up, you two!’ she shouts up the stairs. ‘We may not be able to find the key inside the maze. But we need to find the next one.’ She waits for a few seconds. Then she shouts again: ‘WAKE UP, RACHEL!’
Her voice is impressive, glancing off wood and glass and walls to echo round the house.
But there’s no sound coming from upstairs.
Lily feels like she’s dropped a stitch. What if they’ve been attacked? What if the killer had tried to murder her and Tom, and went for Rachel and Holly instead?
Fear scissors through her as she gets up and goes up the stairs, then the next flight.
Tom is running up the stairs now, too. Sara’s still standing at the bottom. ‘Tell the lazy arses that they’re wasting my time.’
Lily doesn’t even knock on their door, just barges in. She is so expecting to see them lying on their bed or the floor, pupils fixed, that she almost sees them.
But they’re not there.
There is nothing of theirs in the room, no suitcase, the wardrobe empty. The only thing left is a note on the bed.
Dear Lily,
We had to go. I know that Tom was attacked, and I can’t let that happen to Holly. Beatrice needs us and we have to put her first. We’ve taken all we need to go on foot. We’ll be OK. And if we’re not, then at least this was our doing, not someone else’s. Good luck. We’ll hold off from raising the alarm until the 5th. Hopefully, you’ll have won the house. You deserve it more than anyone. Your mum would want you to stay. And Liliana.
Be brave. Be smart. And be careful.
Hope to see you after all this. We can make that new start.
Rachel xx
Tom reads the note after Lily. ‘See? Told you we should go.’ He starts pacing. ‘We should have gone straight to them and left together.’
‘Do you think that one of them stopped me from being strangled?’ she asks. She tries to think back to the shape of her angel, but none of it is clear.
‘Maybe,’ Tom says.
‘And you think Sara is doing all this, right?’ Lily says.
Tom nods.
‘And she wants the house.’
Another nod.
‘Well, I’m not going to let her have it.’