Lily was going somewhere. And she didn’t want anyone to know.
Jack had a decision to make, and fast. She could trail Lily to her secret destination, spy on her, then demand answers, or she could borrow the file marked Andrew Kane. Lily was so talented at keeping secrets. If Jack confronted her without evidence, Lily might lie right to her face. Or she might lash out. Carefully, Jack reached into Lily’s window, her fingers fumbling for the bedside table. Within seconds, she’d liberated the Andrew Kane file and was stuffing it into her backpack, where the copied files were hidden.
Then she climbed over the balcony. Her fingers wrapped deftly around the ivy, guiding her body toward the ground. She’d almost touched down in the dirt when a voice stopped her in her tracks, but it didn’t belong to Lily.
It belonged to Raven’s mother.
Arianna Holloway laughed brightly, her voice ringing out through the rose garden. Jack’s foot slid off a jagged stone and she fell. The ground came at her hard. She tumbled through the dirt, managing to protect her face from the rosebushes. Scratches laced her hands, but her bones were intact.
She pushed to her knees.
The laugh came again. This time, Jack realized the sound was coming from inside the house, drifting out to the garden through an open window on the first floor. Well, she’d visited Raven in his third-floor bedroom. She’d snuck into Lily’s room on the second floor. Why not complete the tour and visit a ghost on the main floor of Holloway Manor?
She slid one leg over the windowsill, then climbed into the house.
Arianna’s voice grew louder as Jack crept through the ebony-tiled kitchen, nearing the living room. Pictures littered the black-carpeted floor. Pictures of Stefan and Evelyn’s wedding, their honeymoon, their visits to the Apple Blossom Festival. Each year, Evelyn had offered to chair the event, and Jack could remember her standing at a podium, her cropped blond hair adorned with apple blossoms. She wore white in almost all the photos.
Would they dress her in white for the funeral?
Arianna had worn black. Her long dark hair had blended with her velvet dress, and Raven had insisted on placing red roses in her hands. Those roses had always brought her joy, he’d explained, though of course, the greatest joy of her life had been her son. Jack could see it in her warm brown eyes—not just in memory, but in the present moment, because Arianna was in front of her once more. Over on the TV screen, Raven’s mother sat at the breakfast table with her son and her husband, laughing over mushroom and zucchini omelets.
Raven’s favorite.
For a moment, Jack was mesmerized. Arianna had on a black shirt and jeans, and her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She looked more casual than Evelyn had ever looked in her white designer dresses and loud, clacking heels. When Arianna tousled her young son’s hair, Jack’s heart squeezed. When she lifted a zucchini to her husband’s lips, Jack heard the soft sound of a sob.
It had come from the sofa.
She probably should’ve known he was there, considering pictures had been splayed out across the living room floor like a puzzle he was desperately trying to solve. But she hadn’t been able to see him. His head was clutched in his hands, dark curls poking through his fingers. His shoulders jerked up and down as he wept. Jack backed away slowly, leaving Stefan Holloway to his grief, but his head snapped up as she neared the living room’s french doors.
“Poppy,” he said, his eyes narrowed as if he were looking at a long-forgotten memory.
“I was just leaving. I mean, I was just visiting Raven when I heard…” She fumbled for the perfect thing to say. The helpful thing, which would drag him out of the darkness. But Jack had spent the morning clutching Raven to her chest, when she wasn’t climbing in and out of windows, and her arms were shaking with exhaustion.
She couldn’t carry anyone else.
Still, she strode over to the plush white sofa when Stefan beckoned her closer. She sat, stiffly, on the corner. He’d paused the old family video, and Arianna seemed frozen in time, smiling and happy. Jack wanted to stare at her forever. She didn’t even ask why Stefan was watching videos of his first wife when he’d only just lost his second. Loss seemed to beget loss in this family, tragedy circling itself like a snake that never tired of devouring its own tail.
Stefan must’ve been thinking the same thing. He wiped the tears from his tired eyes, still staring at the image on the screen. “Sometimes I think this family is cursed. If anything ever happens to me—”
“It won’t.”
“But if it does…” He clutched her hands. His grip was fierce, and Jack wanted to pull away, but she didn’t. She sat there, wincing, as he whispered, “You have to look after my son. You could move into this house, and you could make sure—”
“That isn’t going to happen.” Jack pushed off the couch, sliding her hands from his grip. “Look, what happened to Evelyn is terrible, and I don’t understand it. But you cannot leave Raven alone. You can’t let anything happen to you and…” Here she caught his gaze, holding it as fiercely as he’d gripped her hands. “You can’t send him away again.”
Raven’s father nodded, rubbing at the dark stubble on his chin. He hadn’t showered. Hadn’t shaved. And while Jack felt for him, she was not about to stand there and watch him push Raven away. “You’re the only family he has left. He needs you.”
“I know. But I don’t know how—”
“Then figure it out.” Jack shook her head, her fists tightening in anger. She shouldn’t be mad at him. He hadn’t asked for any of this. But she was so sick of parents abandoning their children, and maybe she’d never be able to say these things to her mother, but she could say them to someone who would listen.
She strode around the couch, crouching in front of Raven’s dad. “I know it would be easier to just check out completely. Blame some witch for cursing your family and never get off this couch. But pretty soon, your son’s going to come down those stairs, and he’s going to need to know that he still has a father.”
“How—”
“Get off the couch. Take a shower. And make him breakfast.” Raven’s father opened his mouth, as if to protest, but she cut him off. “You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be present, all right? You have to be here.”
He nodded, slowly, wrapping his fingers around the edge of the sofa. In one swift movement, he’d pushed to his feet. He wobbled a little, as if he’d been hunched over on those cushions for hours, and Jack caught his arm, steadying him.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice hoarse.
“Don’t thank me yet. I’m going to come check on you to make sure you’ve done what I said.” When Dr. Holloway chuckled, Jack smiled a little too. “I’ll bring you vegetables from the garden you helped me plant,” she added, as he hobbled toward the stairs. “You can make him an omelet, like you did when he was a kid.”
Then she left. She didn’t climb out the window like a trespasser, but rather went out the front door like a proper visitor. Jack had not felt like a proper visitor in a long time. Not since the first Mrs. Holloway was laid to rest in the ground and the second made a home for herself within these stone walls. But things were different now. Raven’s father had not only invited her into his home, he’d said she could live there if anything ever happened to him. And though Jack had no intention of moving into Holloway Manor, she felt truly welcome for the first time in years.
As if she belonged.
Her heart swelled as she looped around the back of the house, nearing the place where she’d hidden her bike. But as she climbed onto the seat, her stomach tightened in fear. She wished she could return to Raven’s room. Wished she could crawl into his bed and sink into the fairy tale they’d invented when they were young, about a knight who rescued a prince from a villainous witch.
But Belle was not really a witch. She was a seventeen-year-old girl locked in a detention center, alone and afraid. If Jack kept avoiding her, she’d be no different from Stefan Holloway, hunched over on the couc
h.
Avoiding reality.
And so, instead of turning east, toward the little green house where her brothers slept, Jack turned north, pedaling up the hill. It took half an hour to reach her destination. The tightness in her stomach worsened as she parked her bike outside the large square facility, painted the ugliest shade of orange and surrounded by a barbwire fence. A person could rot in this place. There was no garden to tend to and no room full of books, like the library Belle’s father had built for her.
She could be in this place if she didn’t play things very carefully.
Still, she asked the attendant to buzz her in. Parked her bike outside the door. There was a desk ahead of her, where a woman with dark skin and burgundy ringlets waited to greet her. Off to the right, Jack saw a wall of glass separating her from the visitors area, where family members came to meet their incarcerated loved ones. Soon, she’d be sitting at one of those little square tables, stuffed into a hard plastic chair, and Belle would be sitting across from her.
Jack approached the front desk, breathing in and out slowly. The woman looked up, blowing a strand of burgundy hair out of her face. “I need to see your identification and check your bag.” Her eyes narrowed. “Are you under eighteen? You have to be at least—”
“I…” Jack’s gaze flicked to the wall of glass, and the figures beyond it. She should’ve instantly recognized the blond girl sitting at one of the tables. But the girl’s back was turned to her, and her pale hair blended with her coat. Her coat blended with the white plastic chair. For a minute, Jack told herself it wasn’t Lily Holloway sitting at the detention center, nervously pulling a thread on her coat.
Lily despised Belle. Belle despised Lily. The two had been at odds since Lily had started sneaking into Raven’s bedroom—when she wasn’t spying on him in the orchard. Belle had never trusted her, and after Lily had discovered the Recipe for the Perfect Murder and hidden it somewhere on the Holloway estate, that distrust had darkened to hatred.
Presently, Belle entered the visitors area. Her dark, lustrous waves were pulled back in a stringy ponytail, and her fierce eyes were rimmed with circles instead of kohl. She looked tired. She looked scared. As she slid into the chair opposite Lily, Lily grabbed her hands and yanked her forward before a guard could intervene. A gasp slipped from Belle’s lips. Then a smile lanced across her face as Lily pulled her in for a kiss.
10
Belle Époque
It took about three months. Three months of missing Raven. Three months of replaying the scene in the rose garden over and over again. By the time spring had bled into summer, and all the roses in town were in full bloom, Belle knew exactly how to repay Jack and Raven for betraying her.
She just needed one thing.
The August before her freshman year, she paid a visit to the Rose Hollow Wellness Facility while her father was at a charity auction. She scribbled her name in the visitors log at the front desk. And then she sat in a rickety wooden chair, bracing herself for the reunion with Lily.
The last time they’d seen each other, Lily had been a wild, poisonous blossom, but as she shuffled into the wood-paneled foyer, it was obvious that blossom had wilted. Her long, lithe arms clanked against her sides, as delicate as glass. Belle could see the outline of her rib cage beneath her paper-thin shirt. There was a common area off to the right, where patients lounged about in street clothes, but Lily clearly hadn’t earned that privilege yet.
She ambled forward in a uniform that looked a lot like scrubs. White collared shirt. White pants. She wore tattered slippers, and Belle wondered if it was because shoelaces could be used to wrap around a person’s neck. Your own or someone else’s. She’d never been particularly fond of Lily Holloway, but in that moment, she wanted to throw the smaller girl over her shoulder and bolt out of there like a villain in a silent movie.
“Is there somewhere we can go?” Belle’s eyes darted toward the boy at the front desk, who was watching them through his long violet bangs. He had a kind enough face, but you never could tell who people were by looking at them. As Lily had once said, the wickedest monsters knew not to leave footprints.
Lily eyed Belle a minute, her blond hair shorn into a haphazard pixie cut. She looked like a child who’d taken a pair of scissors to her locks when her mother’s back was turned. Finally, she waved Belle through the common area, down a short hallway, and out the back door. They stepped into a courtyard with a fountain in the center. Roses wove around the back gate, curving up to wrought-iron finials, but they were pink, rather than the red roses in Raven’s garden.
It didn’t break Belle’s heart to look at them.
Lily, on the other hand, seemed distrustful of the roses, and it gave Belle an idea. She sat down on the lip of the fountain, trailing her fingers through the water. “You know what this pond needs? Water lilies.”
Lily’s head snapped up, and there was a spark in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. “Lilies? What are you planning?”
“Nothing. I’m done planning. That’s why I’m here. I was hoping you’d give me the Recipe for the Perfect Murder, so we could put this thing to bed.”
Lily sat down close to Belle, keeping her voice low. At present, they were the only two people in the cloudy courtyard, but Belle could see an attendant lingering by the back window, watching them.
They had to be careful of what they said.
“What if I don’t want to put things to bed?” Lily asked, her eyes watching the misshapen wooden building. “You just decided it was over, but it isn’t over for me. I’m still living it.”
“What is your mother doing to you?” Belle whispered, her chest tightening at the thought of finally getting an answer to this question. She’d been wondering for months, searching Lily for signs of abuse. Bruises. Cuts. But like with Raven, she’d found nothing. “Why can’t we go to the police?”
“The police are useless! They sent Raven to the other side of the country instead of actually helping him. They took my stepbrother away. Your boyfriend.”
Belle’s lips twitched, and she curled her fingers over the lip of the pond. The police hadn’t taken her boyfriend away. Jack had. Jack was going to pay for that. But first Belle needed to destroy the Recipe for the Perfect Murder, so no one could link her back to the crime. She’d written it in her own handwriting. She’d never be so foolish again.
“You’re right,” she murmured, close to Lily’s ear. “You told us a hundred times your mother doesn’t leave evidence, and that’s why we can’t go to the police. But maybe you could break out of here.”
“And then what?” Lily ran a hand through her shorn hair, and Belle wondered if she’d chopped it off before she’d come here. And why. “There’s a girl in the facility who looks a bit like me, and she’ll be eighteen in a couple of months. She said I could have her ID if I wanted to run, but I don’t know where I’d go. And I can’t stay here forever.” The way she’d said it… it was like she wanted to be locked in this place, far away from Holloway Manor. From her mother. From the man who’d promised to adopt her but hadn’t had time to sign the papers before she was sent to this facility.
“Lily.” Belle touched her hand, and Lily jumped as if she’d been struck. Her cheeks flushed pink. Tears welled in her eyes. “What about your dad?” Belle asked, drawing back her hand. “Your biological—”
“No, he’d never want me. He left my mom because of me.”
“Did she tell you that?”
Lily nodded, her eyes downcast. “She told me he left when I was three years old. They were so in love before she had me, but I was too much for him.”
“She could’ve been lying. God, Lily, for all we know she absconded with you in the night, whisking you away to some faraway state while your dad was sleeping.”
Lily’s lips twitched, and after a minute, she smiled. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe he didn’t abandon me. But my mom didn’t abscond with me either. I was born at the Rose Hollow Medical Center. My mom has pictures of me
as a newborn, and you can see signs from the hospital in a couple of them.”
“Raven’s dad works at that hospital,” Belle said, an idea forming in her mind. “If he gave me a reference, maybe I could get a job as a filing assistant. I could track down your birth certificate and see if your dad’s name is on it.”
“You would do that for me?”
“Why not?” Belle shrugged as if it were no big deal. “You’re going to give me the Recipe for the Perfect Murder. Right? That way, your mom can never find it. It has my name on it, and if she ever put two and two together…” Belle bit her lip, trying to look panicked. Trying to look scared. “You’ll keep her from hurting me, and I’ll keep her from hurting you. Once we have your dad’s name, it’ll be easy to look him up online.”
“Unless his name is Joe Smith or John Johnson.”
“Think positive,” Belle said, bopping Lily’s nose with her finger. Again Lily flinched, and Belle tucked her hands into her lap. “I’ll need a little time to get hired as a filing assistant, and a little more to gain access to the restricted sections of the hospital.”
Lily nodded, gesturing to the space around her. The courtyard. The building. The wrought-iron gate tipped with sharp, twisting finials just waiting to impale anyone who tried to escape. “I’ve got all the time in the world.”
* * *
Three months later, Belle returned to the Rose Hollow Wellness Facility with a gleam in her eye and a birth certificate in her purse. “Well, I was wrong about one thing: Dr. Holloway wouldn’t give me a reference. He said I’m too young to be considered for a filing position, and ‘playing doctor’ with Raven doesn’t pass for hospital experience. I don’t think he likes me.” Belle pouted, crossing her arms over her chest. “Too bad for him, the hospital was looking for volunteers.”
“They were?” Hope in Lily’s voice. Hope on her face, too, as her cheeks flushed pink. “Did you find my dad’s name?”
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