Anton is holding my hand as we run from room to room, banging into furniture in the dark as we race to find this ghost. Or get murdered. Whichever happens first.
“Can we stop for a snickety-snack?” Anton slurs, pulling on my arm like a drunken toddler.
I should be happy, feeling his fingers entwined with mine. This has been one of my fantasies for as long as I can remember. Only his palm is exceptionally moist, and when he talks, he sprays me with a fine mist of spittle. Some things, it would seem, are far better when they remain in your imagination.
“We have to get the remote control,” I say. “It’s the only way out of this house.”
“But this is boring,” he grumbles. “Also, why does it smell of gas in here?”
“That’s gas?” Eyes widening, I sniff at the air. The house does smell odd, but I didn’t know it was gas.
“One spark…” Anton makes the noise of an explosion, then laughs.
Great. Not only have my dreams asphyxiated in the fumes from Anton’s breath, but I’m now going to be incinerated in a huge fireball.
When the lights went out, there were a few minutes of confusion and bumped heads. When we got things together, we realized both Grayson and Erin had taken off already. Matthew and Beatrix got into a big argument about whose fault it was, leaving it up to me to find a way out of this mess. But Anton appears to have attached himself to me, and I’m spending more time babysitting than I am searching.
“Come on, focus. Where would she be?” I say as I drag Anton along. “She kidnapped you. You must know something.”
“Yeah, she’s upstairs, in my panic room,” Anton says. “She was the only other person who knew the code because I kept forgetting.”
I take a slow, calming breath of gas. “Do you remember how to get to this panic room?”
He snorts. “It’s in my bedroom, and I can find my bed with my eyes closed, butt naked and drunk.”
“Best to leave your clothes on for now.” I let him lead, even though I have misgivings.
Eventually, he finds the stairs. True to his word, he knows where he’s going. He throws open the door into a bedroom. A four-poster bed and various pieces of antique furniture stand illuminated by the moonlight seeping through the windows.
He charges across the room and throws himself onto the bed. Dust puffs up, but he doesn’t notice. He stretches out on his side and pats the duvet next to him, giving me what I suspect is meant to be a sexy smile but comes off like he’s trying to remove food from his teeth with his tongue.
“Care to join me?” he purrs.
I’ve dreamed of this so many times. But right now I’m a shaken snow globe. I wish I could curl up in the bed, the little spoon to Anton’s big spoon, and have him promise me that everything’s going to be OK. Only I don’t think Anton has cuddling in mind, and also, he’s revolting.
“I read all your stories,” he says. “OK, not all of them, but enough. I’m totally up for humping like guinea pigs. It sounds hot.”
“Ew, no,” I say. “A million times, no. Just tell me where the panic room is before we all die.”
“Oh, fine.” Sighing, he rolls off the bed and approaches a large bookshelf on one wall. He pats at the shelves until there’s a loud clicking noise, and the bookshelf swings open. Behind it, there’s a reinforced metal door that looks like a person-sized safe.
I push Anton aside and yank at the handle, but it’s locked. “What’s the code?”
“Pfft. Like I remember. Lenny would know.”
I frown. “Lenny? Never mind.” I hammer on the door with both fists. “Open up. We found you; now keep your promise and let us out of this house.”
The taunting voice crackles from a speaker above the keypad. “I’ve changed my mind,” she says. “You’re going to stay in here with me, and we’ll meet Rose together.”
“What? That is totally unacceptable!” I shout. “This house is filling up with gas.”
“Because I broke the pipe to the stove,” she says.
“Oh my god, that thing makes the best bread,” Anton says. “Do you have any bread?”
“She’s planning to burn us alive, you idiot,” I snap.
“What?” He squeezes past me and hammers on the door. “Lenny, open up right now. I’m serious.”
“Who’s Lenny?”
He pauses in his hammering and turns to me. “She was one of my techies. Helped with running my servers and stuff.”
“Helped you? I designed most of Shadow City,” Lenny shouts.
“Based on my ideas.” Anton rolls his eyes. “With my money.”
“A lot of good that money will do you now. You’ll burn the same as the rest of us.”
“Don’t you fucking dare,” he yells. “No one burns Anton Frazer.”
I put a hand on his shoulder and gesture firmly for him to sit on the bed. “Lenny?” I say gently through the door. “This is Charlotte. Can we talk? Please?”
She doesn’t reply, but I figure she must be listening. I lean against the cold metal. “I didn’t know Rose, not really,” I say. “I never bothered to get to know the real her, but I wish I had. I was too busy being jealous of her.”
“Your loss. She was funny and smart. And kind,” Lenny says. “Everyone liked to think they knew her, but they saw what they wanted to see.”
“I know what that’s like.” I glance at Anton, lounging on the bed and picking his nose. Then I think of Erin. How I presumed that I knew her when, in reality, I never even gave her a chance. If I get out of this thing, I’d like to get to know her better. If she’ll let me.
“It’s not fair that Rose doesn’t get a chance to be who she wanted to be,” I say. “But you still can. Tell me about yourself.”
Lenny laughs bitterly. “There’s nothing left. After Rose died, I walked away from everything. I couldn’t bear to be anywhere that held memories of her. I was sick of the whole gross, shallow world. Even still, I couldn’t let her go. I knew there was more to her death than everyone said, so I started investigating.”
“You know a lot about us all.”
“But it wasn’t enough. I narrowed down the suspects. Asked questions. I even started hanging out at the shop where Rose’s ex worked, trying to find out if he did it.”
“Grayson?”
“He was G when Rose knew him, but she’d told me enough for me to track him down. He was so different from the boy Rose had described. According to her, he was needy and possessive—I was sure he’d be the killer at first. But when I talked to him, he was nice. He had none of the arrogance that you see working in Anton’s world.”
“Hey!” Anton says.
“Grayson was so cut up over Rose’s death and so sweet. Being with him made me feel closer to her. I couldn’t believe he’d had anything to do with it, so I focused on the other suspects. But no one would talk to me about that night. Even the people I’d once worked with wanted to leave it in the past. I had to find another way to get to the truth.”
“You didn’t have to hack into my damn game though,” Anton snaps.
Lenny ignores him. “Grayson gave me the idea. He decided to enter the game to get his revenge on Anton. He always blamed him for Rose’s death.”
Anton frowns. “Er, hold on. I didn’t kill Rose. Pretty sure I passed out drunk that night.”
“Shush,” I say. “Go on, Lenny. You set it up with a list of suspects. Me, Anton, Matthew, Beatrix, Amber, and Erin. And Grayson because you couldn’t be sure. Then you revealed everything you knew, bit by bit, in the hope that the killer would make a mistake and implicate themselves?”
“I thought someone would get scared and give something away. I didn’t mean for anyone to die though.”
“You must have known the killer might panic and try to cover their tracks.”
She goes quiet, and I worry I’ve lost her. “I just stopped caring,” she says. “I spent enough time researching you all to know that none of you are good people. I thought that Grayson might be, but…”
“Lenny?” I say.
“Emma sent me that photo, and I couldn’t ignore the truth anymore. But it’s so unfair. I really thought he was different. I wanted to believe that he was one of the good guys.”
“Fuck, I knew it. It’s always the ex-boyfriend,” Anton says, high-fiving himself.
Grayson? No way. He’s the one who killed Rose? And Jesse, and Emma, and Amber…and he tried to strangle me! I don’t want to believe that he’s a killer; he always seemed so kind—but now that I think about it…
“I should have guessed based on his jeans,” I say. “No one good ever wears jeans that tight.”
Anton guffaws loudly. “You’re funny,” he says.
Behind the door, Lenny gives a watery laugh. “You know, out of everyone, you’re the last one I thought I’d come to like,” she says.
“Me?” I say. “Does that mean you’re going to let us out?”
She goes quiet again. Then the door into the panic room clunks and swings open. Lenny steps out, wiping her eyes. I almost hug her in relief, but then I remember how much of a mess she’s made with this game of hers.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “It went too far, and I didn’t think there was a way back. I was being a coward.”
“It will be all right,” I tell her, taking the remote from her hand.
She shakes her head. “No, it’s not all right. Rose would hate what I’ve become in her name. I’m going to call the police and give myself up. Deal with the consequences.”
“Lenny, wait.” But she’s already walking out of the room. I fumble with the remote. It takes me a second to find the button that will switch on the lights.
“Oh, you know what?” Anton says, sitting up on the bed, suddenly wide-eyed and sober. “The wiring in the kitchen was never all that—”
He doesn’t get to finish. I’ve already pushed the button. The lights strobe on-off-on-off—
And the house explodes.