Page 18

Jess woke up to the sensation of wet grass running across her cheek. It felt like she was being dragged across the forest floor by her feet.

Oh, God, had she been kidnapped by a Sasquatch? She was not in fighting form to face off against a Sasquatch. She blinked up at the sky, and everything was sort of shimmery and fuzzy. She was pretty sure she was still super high.

“Hey!” she yelled. “ Hey! Let go of me, you big-footed motherfucker!”

And that was as far as she got before she drifted back into the darkness.

When Jess came to again, her head hurt like hell and someone was spilling water into her mouth.

“Poison,” Jess spluttered and rolled to spit the foul stuff onto the ground. The taste of it was enough to make her gag, which brought more nasty liquid up her throat and onto the grass. Ugh, it tasted like she was French-kissing death.

“Good guess.” A soft voice, one that had always sounded so reasonable and normal, filtered through the darkness. “Jeremy Treadaway was an experiment. And Chad? I wanted to hurt him. But you? Well, I was getting frustrated with the mushrooms. So many variables. And Jess, you didn’t do anything to me, really. And I like you, so I gave you something entirely experimental. Think of it as a sort of potpourri of synthesized botanical intoxicants—a little bit of this, a little bit of that, enough to make you loopy and incapacitated but not kill you. Honestly, I thought it would be a lot harder to pull you around at your size, but you’re pretty easy to drag.”

“Kiki, what the fuck? You can’t just go around poisoning people. Use your words! Also, fuck you, I’m statuesque!”

“Ugh, I had no idea you would be so annoying when you were this high.” Kiki was cradling Jess in her arms, holding a metal Hydro Flask over her face. It tasted like it was piped straight from the gutter.

“Well, if you don’t like high Jess, you only have yourself to blame,” Jess said, fighting the hands holding the bottle to her lips.

Kiki had killed Chad. Jess’s addled brain was finally catching up to the situation, and she could feel the warning signs lining up in her head like penguins on a glacier.

It had been more comfortable suspecting Sev or even Diana than it was to think that the person she’d slept three feet away from had hurt Chad. But everything made sense now. In her head, she could see the gray plastic case she’d spotted in Kiki’s purse that first day—it was a sample case from Helix BioResearch Lab. A sample case containing…probably poison stuff.

Wait, no…

What possible reason could Kiki have to hurt Chad? Other than his general personality.

Kiki and Chad barely knew each other. But Sev…there was a history between those men, animosity. Generational animosity. Sev made more sense as a murderer. And Jess thought she and Kiki were becoming friends.

“Well, not friends, but definitely not ‘poisoning each other’ candidates,” Jess muttered.

“Drink the tea, Jess,” Kiki commanded her. “The water was just the appetizer, this is…let’s call it ‘dessert.’?”

“No,” Jess growled, even as she found herself unable to move her legs when her brain was clearly commanding them to help her stand up and run away.

“Look, I know the good little ‘final girl’ in you wants to fight, but trust me, the end is inevitable,” Kiki said. And while Jess recognized that her senses were not exactly reliable at the moment, she thought Kiki looked genuinely remorseful. Or she could be smiling. Jess couldn’t really tell. Damn, she was tired. And there was a lump under her side. Ow. It was probably a rock. “You’re going to die. The only choice you have is how much elegance I allow you when you’re found.”

“Not a lot of elegance in smacking me over the head with a rock, Kiki,” Jess grumbled.

“Well, you haven’t been around very much since you started taking up with the Osbournes. It’s limited my options. And it wasn’t a rock, it was my water bottle…You hit your head on a rock when you landed.”

“Bitch,” Jess huffed.

“Now, Jess, there’s no reason to be rude.”

“Oh sure, let me up for a second and I’ll apologize,” Jess said. Kiki frowned at her and then pulled her up into a sitting position. When she let go, Jess flopped over on her side. The sudden change in head altitude made her throw up everything she’d ingested in…quite some time. And a lot of it splashed into her hair. Ew.

Kiki sighed. “Well, that’s frustrating.”

“Sorry to complicate your evening,” Jess slurred.

“Jess,” Kiki sighed. She crouched, brushing Jess’s fouled hair out of her face. Her lip curled in disgust as she wiped her hands on her jeans. “I wanted to make this easy on you. I wanted you to see some pretty colors, and maybe stumble and drown in a puddle without a care in the world, like good old Jeremy. Your precious Dean could find you floating in the meditation hollow tomorrow. Very dramatic, poetic even . Very ‘Lady of Shalott.’?”

“No need. I’m good,” Jess said, waving her off. Oh, that was nice. She was able to control her arms. “Also, I don’t think you’re using that reference right.”

Throwing up had made her feel better than she expected. That bizarre heavy-floating sensation was starting to ebb away.

“Well, pardon me for not attending some elitist girls’ school where we specialized in mascara and poetry,” Kiki said, holding the bottle to Jess’s mouth while she cradled her head. “I went to a real college. Where they taught us stuff like how to secretly grow poisonous plants on your boss’s dime and doctor them up so some dumbass doesn’t even notice when they’re drinking them.”

“Well, yeah, that school was probably a much better fit for you.” Jess shook her head. “Wait. Is that what this is about? Wren Hill? Fuck Wren Hill. You’re Doctor Kiki, for God’s sake. You were much better off going to that college for supervillains you were talking about.”

“Trenton was looking at you, talking about how nice you are, how easy it is to talk to you,” Kiki said, seething.

“Yeah, because he wants me to solve all his problems and feel all his bad feelings for him, so he doesn’t have to be a grown-ass man. It’s not romantic. I’m a utility, like a wheelbarrow. He wants Diana.”

“Bullshit. Being with Diana is work ,” Kiki scoffed. “Men might find it intriguing at first, but it’s exhausting in the long term, and I think Trenton was starting to pick up on that. If you were around much longer, who knows what he would have done.”

“What the hell are you talking about? I’m not interested in Trenton!”

“Everybody’s interested in money , Jess. Pretending that you’re not is just a fucking lie! We’re the same, you and me!”

“Well, I’ve never murdered anybody, Kiki,” Jess countered. “So we’re not exactly the same.”

Ha .

“Oh, fuck you, Jess, you don’t know how hard it was for me, growing up. Do you know what it’s like to have people look at you with a little smirk on their face?”

Jess nodded. “Every damn day. That’s what Wren Hill was like for me, Kiki.”

Kiki stood, letting Jess’s head flop to the ground.

Ow .

“But it’s different when your family used to have something,” Kiki insisted. “When you used to be something. People look at you like you couldn’t hold on to it, like it’s your personal failure, your fault, when you didn’t have anything to do with losing it. They look at you like you’re less than because they were born into a family that happened to be a little luckier than yours. A little smarter.”

Jess propped herself on her hands and managed to push herself a whole three inches off the damp ground. It turned out it was her flashlight, not a rock, poking into her side. “Yeah, I don’t know about that, and you know what? I don’t care. Yeah, your family’s super dysfunctional and you’ve struggled a bit, but who the fuck cares? You’re a successful person. You have an advanced degree in a STEM field. You have a good job. You have an idea that could make you a lot of money. The whole non-murder-y truffle thing? That was your golden opportunity!”

This was good. The more she talked, the more she could focus. Words, words, words . Fuck, she was still high. But was she still talking?

Yep.

“You made that for yourself . And now it’s all over because you murdered people ,” Jess exclaimed, yelling the last two words. Maybe if someone heard her yelling, they would come looking for her. “And I’ve seen enough true-crime shows to know you’re not going to get away with it. So, fuck you, Kiki. I thought we were building a friendship. And you were just waiting around for the opportunity to murder me? Rude!”

Would people miss her if she was murdered? Nana Blanche and Mavis, for sure. Maybe Dean. She missed Dean. He was nice, and Jess wanted to see him again. So, she would just let Kiki rant. That’s what final girls did, right? Let the murderers rant, giving the police time to show up. But no one knew where Jess was. It’s not like she had time to leave a note before Kiki knocked her over the head.

How would anybody find her?

And would she be eaten by a bear before they got to her body?

They never found Emma Lee.

“I saw it as soon as I landed in Nashville for this stupid fucking trip. Diana was wasting my opportunity so she could fuck around with that idiot Chad. I had to pretend I didn’t know, which is just so annoying . She’s had so many chances, wasted them all, and she was ruining mine! Chad was in my way ! It’s not wrong for me to want something for myself,” Kiki was saying. “It’s not wrong to want something of my own! She could do something for me for once—all she had to do was not cheat on Trenton!”

“So…you murdered Chad? Seems like a weird solution.”

“It was too easy, getting everybody here.” Kiki laughed, and she sounded more than a little bit crazy-pants. “I’ll bet if you asked Trenton, he’d tell you it was his idea to crash Diana’s retreat week. Nobody remembers talking to me when they’re looking for someone else more important. All it took was a couple of comments about the big, strong, handsome massage therapists on the spa’s website, and how awkward it was going to be, having a strange man rub you down when you’re not wearing anything but an itty-bitty towel. I knew Trenton wouldn’t be able to handle that, that he would make some excuse to ‘surprise’ her. I knew he would book himself into the villa right next to her. And he never goes anywhere without Chad.

“I knew the effects the mushrooms were supposed to have on someone roughly Chad’s size, but I needed a control sample,” she said. “I’m a scientist. I needed a test subject. Our first night, I slipped false morels into Treadaway’s late-night room service order before you even got back to the villa. I’d told Diana I had to call Aunt Birdie to check in, but it was an excuse to get the lay of the land, so I could sneak out later.”

“Did Birdie know anything about this?” Jess asked. “Is she your murder mentor or something?”

Kiki scoffed. “Birdie doesn’t know nearly as much as she thinks she does. If she did, she would have seen me for what I am—the real hope of the Helston family. This was all me, Jess. It was a risk, poisoning Jeremy. I mean, anybody could have seen me tampering with their food, but scientific advancement always comes at a cost. And the cart was just sitting there, like a gift. He and his wife spent so much time arguing, I could have mixed a pound of false morels into his stupid pasta and I don’t think they would have heard me.”

“How did you know Jeremy was going to eat the pasta and not Susan?”

“In my experience, women like Susan don’t eat late-night pasta. And obviously he didn’t know enough about the dish to notice I’d messed with it. I mean, they weren’t even the right color. False morel mushrooms, they have this nasty little carcinogen called gyromitrin that attacks the central nervous system. Given how quickly he was found, I deduced the nausea, the confusion, the dizziness, set in almost immediately. Ultimately, Jeremy didn’t die because of poisoning. He died because he tripped and drowned. He was probably so sick, he couldn’t have rolled over to lift his head out of the water if he wanted to. And yes, it was helpful, in terms of concealing his cause of death, but I realized false morels just weren’t predictable enough. Jeremy could have wandered around for days in that state. He could have secured medical treatment or even worse, lived. ”

“But Chad didn’t eat mushrooms in his pasta,” Jess said. “He just ate enough fancy cheeses to make it come out of his pores and smell like feet.”

Kiki sighed. “I know, it was a real pain in the ass. I heard him bitching about smelling mushrooms in Trenton’s omelet, so that wouldn’t work. The tippler’s bane was a last resort. I knew Chad was going to drink because that’s what he does. And he was gonna go to the thermal suite because that’s all he was talking about the night before. And because of Chad’s irrational hatred of mushrooms, I had to switch delivery systems, change my methods—boiling them in the kettle to extract and concentrate the poison—but I knew it would work.”

“You did know we had an electric kettle,” Jess said.

“Of course I did, but I couldn’t let one of you idiots use it after I boiled poisonous mushrooms in it, especially Diana,” Kiki scoffed. “I needed her happy and healthy and engaged to Trenton. So, I smashed the kettle and threw it in Zephyr’s garbage when I was done. Nobody noticed one more broken glass object in that mess. The woman never locked her doors. Bad karma, I guess. She was weirdly helpful this week, even if she didn’t realize it.”

Jess realized how often she’d separated from the rest of the group, working, spending time with the Osbournes. As Kiki’s roommate and lone friend on this trip, Jess was really the only one who would have noticed if Kiki slipped away from yoga or the treatment suite. Diana ignoring her “add-on cousin” had made it so much easier for Kiki to get away with her murderous sneaking.

Keep her talking. If Jess could keep her talking, maybe someone would find them. Jess’s fingers slipped into her pocket and closed around the flashlight. Maybe she could signal to someone if they passed by. She’d seen flashlights in the woods all week, clearly it was effective. Wait…That seemed important, too.

Dammit, she wished she could grab on to some of these thoughts.

“While I was there, I stole some vodka from Zephyr’s stash,” Kiki explained. “I doctored the vodka with the tippler’s bane extract. I told Chad I’d stolen it from the kitchen. He was just enough of a douche to enjoy the idea of taking something from the Osbournes, and he was just thrilled to have a full-size bottle—so much that he didn’t blink at the seal on the bottle being already broken.”

“I’m assuming my super poison was clear, so I didn’t even see it in my bottled water,” Jess grumbled, feeling very thirsty. She almost picked up the discarded bottle to wash the acrid taste out of her mouth, but that seemed…counterproductive.

“And, unlike this particularly gross brew, odorless and tasteless. I’m getting better, I think,” Kiki said, grinning cheekily.

“Why do I get the experimental gentle hippie super-poison treatment?”

Kiki leaned over and tucked Jess’s hair behind her ear and then seemed to remember that Jess had puked in said hair. “I don’t know, hon. I just don’t like the idea of hurting you. You’ve been so sweet to me since we got here. I like you. And I don’t make friends easily.”

“Kiki, I mean this, from the very bottom of my heart. Please…fuck right off.”

“You know, this feels good,” Kiki said, huffing out a laugh as if Jess hadn’t said anything. “I mean, nobody tells you how lonely it is, planning all this murder stuff out. I’ve wanted to talk to someone about it for days. This has been very therapeutic. Almost as therapeutic as the little thrill I got knowing Chad was pouring poison down his own throat.”

“But why?” Jess asked. “Other than…you know, he was being Chad.”

“I wanted to remove the distraction, shake Diana up so she would recognize how close she’d come to messing everything up for the family,” Kiki huffed. “And if losing his best friend drove Trenton into Diana’s arms, that would be even better . I didn’t realize that you would get in the way of that, that stupid fucking Trenton would come to you every time he wanted to be propped up. Not that I blame him, because Diana has all the emotional warmth of a damned potato, but why couldn’t you just stay out of the way? Why do you have to be so helpful ? I mean, honestly Jess, people are gonna suck you dry if you keep offering yourself up like that. Well, I mean, they would, but I’m going to take care of that for you, so no worries there.”

Jess could hear voices somewhere in the distance, see lights bobbing in the trees. Will-o’-the-wisps sparkling like lowborn stars. Jess smiled and wondered if they would have time to lure her anywhere before Kiki killed her. Wait, no, maybe it was bears. Did bears carry flashlights? That didn’t sound right. Bears didn’t have thumbs. Did bears have thumbs?

No. If bears had thumbs, they would be unstoppable.

Jess blinked into the darkness. Something about the way the lights were moving reminded her of something, but the panic and the drugs were too thick in her head to let her think.

“You’re just an employee, even if she has pulled you into her bridal party. No one is really going to be that upset that you died. Not even Trenton.” Jess glanced at Kiki, who had her back turned to her.

Given the way Kiki was rattling on, Jess wasn’t entirely sure that she was speaking to her. “And then, when everything calms down, and Trenton and Diana are married, and Trenton realizes that he’s given everybody in the family cushy jobs or gifts but me…I can pitch him my truffle idea. I don’t think it will be that hard to talk him into something. I mean, I talked him into coming up here. It’s going to be perfect. ”

Jess focused all her energy on a small series of tasks that on any other day wouldn’t have taken any thought at all. She closed her fingers around a nearby rock, digging it out of the loamy earth that clung to it. She flung her hand out. The rock landed against something with a satisfying thwack !

Kiki’s head whipped toward the noise. “What the?”

Jess pulled the flashlight out of her pocket and concentrated on moving her thumb over the power switch. The light flicked on and, at first, focused on the trunk of a nearby tree. She moved it so the light shone toward the dancing lights. She waved it around, just in case they didn’t see her. And suddenly, the distant voices seemed to get louder and the lights moved faster. Faster toward her. Oh, that was good.

Jess focused hard on turning the flashlight off and letting it drop to her side before Kiki turned around.

“Hey, Kiki, Kiki. Kiki. Hey, Kiki,” Jess said as Kiki turned to her. “I just want you to know that if you hadn’t left bodies all over the spa, and you hadn’t tried to poison me…I think we could have been good friends.”

Kiki sighed. “I know. That’s what makes this so difficult for me, Jess.”

“You’re still a nicer person than Aubrey.”

“That’s a real low bar, babe,” Kiki said, tilting her head to squint into the distance. “What’s that?”

“Well, I hope that’s four people with embarrassing flower names. We have our own club,” Jess said. “And I really hope that they brought a man named Blister. And his gun.”

“Shit,” Kiki hissed. “And you fucking tricked me into confessing like an idiot. What is it with you ?”

“You like talking about your work,” Jess told her. “And people like laying their emotional labor at my feet. It’s a gift and a curse.”

Growling, Kiki dropped to her knees next to Jess. She grabbed the water bottle by the neck and reached up as if to hit her with it, but Jess had the strength born of desperation and having no acute control of her arms. She flung her right arm up, holding the flashlight like a club, and smacked Kiki’s temple with it. Fortunately, the flashlight was one of those heavy, metal-type jobs, so it had a lot of impact when colliding with Kiki’s temple.

Jess slumped back down to the ground, giggling, as Kiki collapsed next to her. “Heavy metal.”

Blister was running toward her. She never thought she’d ever be so happy to see a guy named Blister. And he was carrying a gun. And he was holding it on Kiki, even though she was unconscious. Oh, good. That was definitely good.

“Oh, my head is going to hurt so bad when this is all over,” she groaned as Dean sprinted across the forest floor. He practically baseball slid next to her, pulling her into his lap as Sis, Jonquil, and Poppy caught up, breathing heavily. Owen was there, too, holding a medical bag. Where was Beth?

“Beth’s back at the house,” Jonquil told her. “We wanted someone near a landline, in case anybody else in your group got all murder-y.”

“Did I say that out loud?” Jess asked. “Aw, man, I’m still all drugged up.”

“Are you OK?” Dean asked, his face almost gray.

“I puked,” Jess confessed as Owen knelt next to Kiki. “A lot. In my hair. But Owen is here, hey, Owen! Hey, Owen, I don’t wanna tell you your business, but I’m gonna need my stomach pumped.”

Owen grinned at her and patted her head. “Whatever you want. Charcoal. Saline. The works.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” Jess said, snuggling into Dean’s shoulder. “Did I tell you I puked? You may not want to get too close to my face.”

“Yeah, you did, but I don’t care.” Dean chuckled, tucking his hands under her chin to pull her close. “That’s how we found you. We found a bloody rock next to a water bottle on the path, and followed a trail of drag marks through the woods.”

“Not as smart as you thought you were, were you, bitch ?” Jess hollered toward Kiki’s prone form. “Ow, my head. I’m sorry, apparently head injuries and drug potpourri make me use foul and misogynist language. And they make me super-duper sleepy.”

Dean’s face shuttered out of sight, and as she drifted off, she swore she could hear Dean say, “Don’t close your eyes, Jess.”

“Jess?” Owen called firmly as he shone a penlight into her eyes. “Look at me, Jess.”

She closed her eyes. She couldn’t help it. That fucking penlight hurt.