“If you do go, she’ll kill him! And she’ll kill you, too.”
“I can’t let him down. I have to try to rescue him.”
“That’s what she wants!” Arthur exclaims, shoving a hand through his hair. “Viv, Ben might not have even written that email. You have to think carefully about this.”
I am thinking carefully about it. I’m thinking that Mother is no longer an ocean away but just a few miles, in the cottage that I thought was my refuge. I’m thinking that she isn’t even my mother at all, but a stranger—a criminal—who stole me from a house of love and kept me captive in a house of hate. I’m thinking that the boy who never did anything wrong except fall in love with me is about to be killed. I’m thinking that if I don’t do something right this instant, I’m going to despise myself for the rest of my life.
“I have to,” I tell Arthur. My voice comes out firm and unyielding.
“You care about him.” The look in his eyes is guarded, but I can hear a break in his voice. Pain. I don’t quite understand it, and I don’t have time to try.
“So what if I do? Are you going to help me or not?” I don’t need his approval, and he knows that, but I have to admit that I might need his help.
Arthur stares into my eyes, the way he does when he wants to see inside my head. He must find my determination, my sincerity. Finally, he nods. “Let’s go.”
Rose brings out a tray loaded with cheese and crackers, but the smile falls off her face when she sees us heading out the door.
“I’m so sorry, but we have to go,” I tell her in a rush. “We’ll be back soon, I promise.” I hope, I amend in my head. She nods, confused, and I follow Arthur out of the house.
The wind whips around us, freezing my cheeks and turning Arthur’s a ruddy red, as we run to his car in the bus station parking lot. The cracked leather passenger seat is cold, and Arthur’s heater isn’t enough to combat the chill. I clench my hands into fists and stare out the window as we speed out of Loworth and onto the narrow road of the moors.
The clouds over us darken as we approach the stone facades of the Madigan campus, which is still as proud and imposing as ever. Arthur screeches to a stop outside the gate, and we both fling ourselves out of the car, running out onto the moors.
The rain starts when we are only just out of sight of the school. It’s only mist at first, but then the drops grow bigger, pelt down harder. By the time we’re halfway to the cottage, the rain is coming at us sideways. It feels like running through an assault of tiny knives, but I don’t slow down. All I can see is Ben’s face, open and trusting as he told me he loved me.
I should have told him the truth. If I’d told him about Mother’s plans and how dangerous she was, he would have stayed in hiding. How did she even find him? I’m sure Helper had everything to do with it. And if he’s with Mother at the cottage now, our situation will get a whole lot worse.
I stumble on a clump of dead heather, and I hit the ground palms-first, the jolt traveling up my arms. Arthur pulls me up and onward. We can’t stop. Not now that we’re so close.
I have no plan. I don’t know what to do when we reach the cottage. I can only hope that I can somehow distract everyone enough for Ben to get away.
We slow when the smudged outline of the cottage appears through the rain and the darkness. There’s a light inside: a fire. The light from its flames dances through the window.
For a second, the reality of what’s happening hits me, and I nearly double over in pain. The place where I let myself escape from everything, the place where I put up my sketches, the place where a boy told me he loved me, as if I deserved that love, has turned into something terrifying. I don’t want to get any closer.
But I force one foot in front of the other, and Arthur and I creep forward. We say nothing, both of us too busy trying to hear anything that will rise above the whistling wind and give us a clue as to what we are about to come up against. But I can make out nothing.
We crouch to the ground to stay out of sight of the windows, and I hold my breath as we slither like snakes up to the structure, the heather scratching holes in my clothes. I don’t feel anything. Everything in me is focused on that cottage.
Suddenly, there’s a shout, and someone pulls me up by the back of my sweater. “Got one!” a voice yells. Arthur hits my captor in the stomach, hard enough to make him buckle forward and let go of me, and I scramble away. Helper. He holds his middle and looks up at Arthur. His mouth drops open. “Boy,” he whispers. Arthur doesn’t answer. He just springs up and attacks him again. Behind me, the door opens with a swift creak, and then there’s a strange metal sound. A sound I should have been expecting.
I turn slowly and find that the woman who raised me is pointing a gun right at my head.
CHAPTER 37
All I can see is the shiny black metal of the gun. Everything else goes blurry, but the gun is still in sharp focus.
“I knew you’d come for this worthless boy,” Mother says, her voice mocking. Cutting.
Behind me, everything has fallen silent except for the thud of the rain on the muddy ground.
Mother jerks the gun, gesturing me forward, and I can finally look up at her face. Her lips are twisted into a cruel smile, making the heart-shaped mole on her cheek more prominent. She is familiar and unfamiliar all at once. “Come inside. Look how well we’ve treated your boyfriend.”
I feel Arthur step up behind me, the warmth of his body radiating along my back. Like he’s trying to send me strength.
Mother points the gun at him, shaking her head with a cold smile on her face. “Just Vivian,” she declares. “Though I am glad to see you, Boy. Your father has been having a devil of a time trying to find you. It was much easier to find Ben. His friends were all too happy to speculate about where he might have gone. You’re lucky you’ve never had any friends.”
“Go to hell,” Arthur spits.
Mother says nothing, her smirk never wavering. “Come along, Vivian.”
I take a deep breath and step forward. She moves aside so I can get in the door. “If you try anything,” she tells Arthur, “I will shoot her. And I imagine after all these years of devoting your every breath to her, you don’t want that.” Arthur says nothing in response as she steps inside with me and closes the door.
Ben is tied to a chair over by the hearth, which houses a meager fire. A gag covers his mouth, and his eyes are wild. My stomach practically falls to the floor when I see him there, and blood rushes to my brain, making me dizzy. I did this to him. I’m the reason he’s in danger. And I hate myself for that.
I run to him, kneeling at his side. But I don’t touch him.
“Of course you were stupid enough to fall in love with him,” Mother says with a laugh.
“No,” I answer, turning to face her. I can’t look into Ben’s eyes. “I’m not in love with him. You’ve made me incapable of love.”
“I have protected you from it, you mean.” She gestures with her gun for me to move away from Ben, and I rise and shuffle over a few steps, keeping my eye on the weapon.
“Yes, love can dismantle, and all that bullshit,” I say, rolling my eyes to show my disdain. Fear claws at my insides.
She blinks at my harsh words. “Why did you come here, then, if you don’t love him?”
“Because I care about him. I can’t let you kill him.”
She looks at Ben, a crazed smile of triumph on her face. She truly is a lunatic. “I have told him all about you. I told him your mission, how you have manipulated him, how you crowed about victories on the phone to me. I suspect he hates you now.”
I look back at Ben and see in his eyes that she’s right. They’re filled with venom as they pierce into me. I have broken his heart, just as his father did to—Morgana. I have to start thinking of her as Morgana. She is not in any way my mother.
“So you have your revenge,”
I say, turning back to her. “You’ve hurt him the way you were hurt. You can let him go.”
She laughs, a laugh that is too high and too loud, as if I’ve told a particularly good joke. “You still think all of this is just about revenge for a broken heart?”
“No,” I answer. Anger battles the fear inside me, and right now, anger is winning. “It’s also about the programming codes for the avatar. The codes that you stole.”
Her eyes widen. “What did you just say?” Her voice quavers, and I see that I have shaken the calm control right out of her.
“I know everything. About Adam Travers. And Rose. My real mother.”
Her face, always pale, turns even whiter.
There is a sudden shout and sounds of a scuffle outside. I look out the window, horrified, hoping Arthur hasn’t been foolish enough to start a fight with his father.
The door bursts open, and a man I’ve only seen in old photographs is pitched into the room, struggling with Helper.
“Collingsworth,” Morgana breathes, confirming my suspicion. Her hand fumbles with the gun for a moment as her eyes go round. No one moves as they stare at each other. Collingsworth tries to take a step forward, Helper’s arms still holding him, and that seems to wake Morgana up. She points the gun at him and gestures for Helper to get out of her way.
He does, leaving the cottage and closing the door behind him. Despite the sudden change in situation, I want desperately to go outside and make sure Arthur’s all right. What is going on out there?
Collingsworth holds his hands up at his sides. He’s an older version of Ben, though his jaw isn’t quite as square and his hair has receded, leaving a shiny white dome on the top of his head. He has Ben’s hazel eyes, and they widen as they take in the barrel of the gun aimed right at him.
“Morgana,” he says with uncertainty. “I knew it would be you.”
She keeps the gun pointed at him, but her hands are shaking. She looks more rattled than I have ever seen her, her eyes wide and unblinking.
“What are you doing here, Will?” she asks.
“Never mind that. Morgana, just let my son go.” Collingsworth spares a glance at Ben, who’s taking in the scene with the most horrified eyes I’ve ever seen.
“How ugly you’ve gotten.” She glares at him, pointedly looking at his balding head.
“We’ve both grown older, Morgana.”
She winces. I know how much she hates her gray hair, which grows so quickly that, no matter how rigorously she dyes it, her roots begin showing within days.
But her confidence returns almost immediately. She hadn’t been planning on confronting her old enemy today, but she will take advantage of the opportunity now.
“You ruined my life,” she declares, her booming voice filling the cottage.
I take the smallest sidestep toward Ben, hoping to evade her attention. She turns the gun on me in one fluid movement and shakes her head.
Collingsworth flicks a glance toward me. But at the moment, I am unimportant.
Morgana turns back to him and continues. “You broke my heart, and you ran away with our money. My money!” He opens his mouth to protest, but she cuts him off. “It was my idea in the first place, so that all the little girls who grew up like I did could have a friend, someone to talk to, someone who wouldn’t judge them!” Her rage is rising, and she has to close her eyes to calm herself. “It was a brilliant idea, and it was all mine.”
It’s the first time I’ve ever heard Mother talk about her childhood, and I realize why the money is so important to her. She created the Ava. She created something personal, something beautiful, and it was ripped away from her.
“I was the only one with the connections to transform your character into a business,” Collingsworth says, his voice measured and reasonable. Like he’s making pleasant conversation over tea. I have to admire him for that.
“Of course,” Morgana says with a sneer. “All’s fair in love and war. Your precious little motto.”
He knows her well enough to say nothing.
“I had to go back home to my mother empty-handed. Do you know how she treated me then? I was supposed to come home with a rich husband, the whole reason she sent me to this school, but instead, all I had to show for myself was a broken heart and a stolen baby. She thought I was being stupid, so stupid. Nothing I did for that woman was ever enough to drag her out of the poverty she’d sunk herself into with her furs and her diamonds and all the trappings of an aristocratic lifestyle we couldn’t afford after my father died. She threw me out of the house, the damned bitch. But not for long.
“I came back. And he helped me kill her,” she says, gesturing outside to Helper. “I couldn’t stab her to death or strangle her with my bare hands, the way I wanted to. We had to be sneaky. Cutting her brake lines was his brilliant idea.”
Collingsworth continues to stare at her calmly, no trace of surprise on his face. My stomach turns.
“I lost you and I lost Ava and I had nothing but that baby,” she says, pointing at me without looking at me. “So I made her into my own avatar. I taught her how to shift her personality to fit any target, and I set her on your son.”
Her own avatar? I feel my face turn deathly pale, and spots whirl in front of my eyes. Collingsworth looks at me, a long, penetrating look. “That was why you took her? To transform a living child into an Ava?”
Roaring fills my ears, and I can hardly hear her when she replies. “I made her the ultimate Ava. No one else could create an Ava so perfect. Which is why that money belongs to me.”
I know now what Arthur was trying to tell me all those times when he asked me if I knew what Mother had turned me into. I thought I was a weapon with skill and agency, but I’m something more insidious than that. I’m an avatar. A living, breathing avatar; a deadly shell of a human, controlled by someone else. He didn’t have the heart to tell me. He knew how much it would hurt.
Collingsworth raises his brow, which is now slick with a sweaty sheen, but his voice remains cool and collected. “I was the one who befriended Travers, who discovered how good a programmer he was. I was the one who mapped out the house.”
“And I was the one who actually went into the house when you were too much of a coward! I had to go in with him,” she gestures out the door to include Helper, “to steal the damn program! So that we could be partners, just the two of us, the way you promised.”
“It had to have been you. They would have recognized me if they saw me!” he cries, throwing his hands out to suggest innocence. “They hardly knew who you were!”
“And when Adam discovered me, I was the one who had to kill him! You told me he wouldn’t be there, but you lied. You knew he’d be there all along. Of course he would be—he’d never leave his beloved Rose and his beautiful baby. You wanted me to kill him so that you could walk away with the whole business. I earned that program with the blood on my hands.”
“You killed him?” I gasp before I can stop myself. I see the scene in my head: Morgana, the mousy girl from the yearbook picture, holding this gun in her hand, pressing it against the temple of a young man—my father—and pulling the trigger. My stomach turns again, and I think I’m going to be sick.
She doesn’t even glance my way. She’s too wrapped up in this showdown with her enemy. I take another sidestep, but no one pays me any attention.
“I’m sorry,” Collingsworth says, bowing his head. “I shouldn’t have taken the code. I was a foolish boy.”
“And what about my heart? Are you sorry you broke that? Are you sorry you got your damned slut of a girlfriend pregnant while you seduced me?”
I take another step.
Morgana grabs something off the wall, and it takes me a moment to realize what it is: the ripped old picture, the “Me and him” photograph that I found when I first came to the cottage. “We used to be happy,” she says, shaking the
photo at him. So it was her. She is “me,” and he is “him,” and this cottage has a more twisted history than I could ever have imagined.
“You used me!” she continues. “I loved you, and you used me! I killed for you, and you didn’t even care! His blood is on your hands, too!”
Another step.
“I know. I know, I’m despicable. That’s why I named the male avatar Adam, just so I could be reminded every day of what I did. I swear. But please, Morgana, don’t take this out on my son!”
Another.
Her face twists in a cold grimace of a smile. “I knew your son was the only thing you cared about. I knew he was the only way to get to you. I was just going to have Vivian marry him and clean out his trust. But watching you die will be even better revenge.”
Ben catches my eyes now, his gaze frantic. I creep closer to him and quickly clutch at the ropes binding his hands.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Morgana asks behind me. Her voice is the same cold and deadly one that I’ve known all my life.
I close my eyes and drop the rope, turning around slowly.
She raises the gun and points it at me, aiming for my heart, and no one makes a move. I know Collingsworth won’t help me, and Ben can’t.
I have no one to rely on but myself, as always. I straighten my shoulders and glare at her. “You won’t kill me,” I assert. It’s a bluff, of course. I thought she was capable of murder, and now I have proof of it.
She raises her eyebrows, almost amused. “You are not my daughter. You are the daughter of the golden couple. Of perfect, artistic Rose and the boy who would do anything for her. She had everything I would never have.”
“So you took me,” I whisper, “because you were jealous.”
“And now you’re useless to me. And you know too much.”
I’m not scared anymore. I’m mad. Rage builds inside me at this madwoman who stole the life I was supposed to have. Who raised me to hate and fear love. Who used me like a weapon and made me hurt everyone I ever cared about.
I Am Her Revenge Page 20
