I’m being driven to my death by a ghost. It sounds nuts, but it’s no more nuts than anything else that’s happened over the past few days. The chill of certainty floods my veins and all I can do is stare at my mother’s reflection in the rear-view mirror.
Not my mother. The Red Widow. Celene. When has she ever done anything remotely motherly?
Celene doesn’t acknowledge me. Her misty grey eyes are trained on the road. Her hair’s ash white and her bony hands throttle the steering wheel.
A thousand questions cram into my mouth and I can’t chew them into any order. I’m light headed and my vision swims. Must’ve hit my head when the SUV rolled. I stare at the car ceiling, marvelling at the flickering stars, then not marvelling, because I remember I’m screwed.
My mouth fills with saliva and I vomit all over the backseat.
‘Try to relax, Rumer.’
If she means to be comforting, she’s failing spectacularly.
‘Sure, why not?’ I slur. My tongue’s too big and my throat’s on fire. ‘Never heard of an unrelaxed murder victim.’
Her eyes flicker at me in the mirror, eyebrows pinching together. Is that surprise? Confusion? Her expressions are alien to me.
‘What you going to use? A knife? A gun? Bit of rope?’
‘Quiet,’ she says. ‘Save your strength.’
‘Yeah, gotta struggle when you kill me or it’s no fun, right?’
‘Nobody’s going to kill you.’
I hurl a laugh at her. Then my mouth floods with saliva again and I swallow hard, crushing the seat in my grip, desperate not to throw up again. I come close. I feel like a kid in one of those stupid TV shows. A sixteen-year-old who’s drunk too much cider in the park and now Mum’s driving me home, so cross that she can’t speak. I should feel something more than this maddening sense of unreality, but I’m trapped in the bad dream.
A thrumming ache ticks in the back of my skull, like somebody’s tapping against it.
Rap, rap, rap.
I try to focus on the road, counting the white strips as they disappear beneath us. It helps. I get to fifty before I realise we’re not on the motorway any more. At some point, we slipped off onto a side road and we’re the only car around. It’s so dark all I can see in the window is my reflection.
I’m not going to lie, I’ve looked better.
‘You’re dead,’ I murmur. ‘Why are you here?’
My thoughts tumble the way the SUV did. Is Mara still alive? He was unconscious in the SUV, or I assumed he was. The crash could have broken his neck. The others came back to get him, and Bolt must’ve been with them. He was in the first SUV. Have they taken him somewhere? The pit? Or is he strapped to a chair like Ellis was? Something tells me Mara’s dogs will make me look restrained when it comes to interrogation.
And I’m in the car with my mother.
I’m with her.
In her car.
Hysteria buzzes, static in my brain, and I try to shake it off, but it gets louder with every second. If I give in to it, I’ll start thinking about how I’m trapped in here, and how the most dangerous woman who ever lived is taking me somewhere remote so she can pop a cap in my head. Or maybe she’ll do it slowly. Tease out every strip of pain. Savour the sight of the life trickling out of me.
And there’s part of me that always knew it would end like this.
I had it coming.
It feels right that it’s Celene who’s going to end me.
She’s the one who started me.
The hysteria latches on with steel claws.
‘Why aren’t you dead?’ I slur. My voice sounds wrong. Un-me.
Maybe I can take her down with me. Make my death count for something. She could be the first person I kill on purpose, and it’d mean something. It’d mean nobody else ends up a victim.
Now. I need to do it now, while she’s distracted by the road.
I brace myself, deepen my breathing.
As I prepare to lunge forward, she catches me in the rear-view mirror.
‘Don’t do anything stupid, Rumer. I know you don’t believe me, but you’re safe.’
For the first time, she sounds convincing, even if what she’s saying is ridiculous. Safe with her? Was I born yesterday?
Weariness sucks the strength from my limbs. Weighs them down. The buzzing in my skull has spread, cramping my neck and shoulders so that I hunch in a ball on the back seat. Is this what concussion feels like? I curl up like a woodlouse and listen to the rain.
What feels like moments later, the jeep turns and the road feels different. Stones tic against the chassis and we’re on a dirt track. Trees muscle in around the car and the darkness is complete.
Then, ahead, glimmers of light appear. Orange flames.
We creak to a standstill. A chain-link gate rests in front of us and Celene opens her window as a stony-faced woman approaches. They exchange a few words I can’t hear, then the woman heaves the gate open and we drive into some kind of compound.
Wooden huts stand on stilts. Gas lamps flicker on porch steps raised off the ground. We drive by a guy who’s clutching a shovel, which isn’t creepy at all. He’s dressed like a janitor in a pressed white shirt. He blinks and raises a hand as he’s caught in the SUV’s headlights, and I catch a strange look between him and Celene.
Then we’re past him and I’m not comforted by the fact that there’s nobody else around. The place almost looks cosy, until I realise what it is. This is why my mother hasn’t been seen for over twenty years. Her cult upped sticks, relocated here.
I’m in the middle of nowhere with a load of devil worshippers, and that’s why Celene didn’t kill me on the spot, because what’s the one thing devil worshippers do?
They offer up human sacrifices.
Celene parks by two other grey jeeps and gets out. She pops my door and insects churn in my belly. I try to resist her, but she snaps at me and something about her tone turns me to jelly.
She drags me out of the car and I lean against her. I can’t help it. The ground’s spinning and I smell the rain in her hair.
‘Just do it,’ I murmur. ‘Just do it already. I don’t care any more.’
I’m not even sure what I mean.