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There was one thing about Lilah Nightingale that nobody could deny: when she wanted to research something, she researched it thoroughly.

That was why when she stood in front of the secret door, one hour and seventeen minutes later, she felt no doubt at all. Her heart rate was slightly accelerated, but it wasn’t because of what she was about to do, or why she was about to do it, or how.

She felt exactly as she had when she selected the numbers for that final lottery ticket that she’d bought. She always used the same numbers, had for years, a combination of her birthday, her dad’s birthday, and her mother’s—but that morning at her local newsstand’s just down the street from the bungalow in Sidcup, making the same polite inquiries about the owner Jay’s family, there was something in the air that was just right . A feeling that everything fitted together like a puzzle, that some convergence of the air and land and light was exactly how it had been waiting to be. It was the same feeling she got when she walked into Cuthbert & Bindings bookshop, and when she arranged the book club stacks perfectly at the library.

In short: she was doing not only the right thing, but the only thing that it was possible for her, in a world of infinite possibilities, to do.

“Zachary, honey?” she said through the door. “I’m back. The others aren’t with me. Are you awake?”

“Lilah!” She heard his voice from a distance, and then closer. “Darling! Have you come to set me free?”

“Yes, I have,” she said. Unlike when she’d spoken with him before, her voice didn’t tremble at all. “But before I do, I need to ask you something important.”

She opened the hatch. He was standing close to it, though not as close as he had last time, and his face was turned a little to the side. He’d seen the trick she played with the phone last time, and he didn’t want her to do it again.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I had to check your phone. I hated to do it, I know it’s rude, but I had to. I needed to know if everything that Marina and Opal have told me is true.”

“It’s not,” said Zachary, fervently. “I can explain everything. Those bitches are lying. They’ve got some sort of vendetta. They’ve set me up and then stuck me in this place, God knows why. I think they might be after your money. If I could get out, I could sort this.”

“Yes, I believe that you have an explanation for everything.”

“You and I still have a chance. We can start over, forget all this happened. Start planning our wedding properly! And darling, I’m not a superstitious man...I’d be honored if you’d let me come dress shopping with you. What do you think?”

“I don’t care much about dresses,” said Lilah, almost dreamily. “What I do care about is this. Come a little closer, Zachary. I need to ask you that question.”

He came closer. The Peppa Pig Band-Aid had come loose on one side and was hanging free. He wasn’t wearing glasses, she noticed. That was another lie.

“Anything,” he said. “I’m an open book, darling. Anything you want to know, just ask me.”

“Did you pay a man to kill my father?”

He opened his mouth to reply, but Lilah saw the answer in his face before he could speak a word. It was something different than she had seen there before, something darker, uncoated with sugar, something avaricious and cunning, coiling, and hungry for control.

The truth.

With steady hands she raised one of the pair of eighteenth-century antique dueling pistols, cocked and loaded, packed and primed with shot and powder, every working part carefully oiled. She held the pistol with both her hands, arms outstretched, aiming through the hatch.

She tightened her finger on the engraved silver trigger and discharged the pistol directly into the middle of his face.

Lilah had never fired a gun of any kind before, not even a water pistol, and did not expect the enormous noise, or the sparks, or the way the gun kicked her arms backwards and upwards, or the burning sensation of powder on her hands, or the strong scent of sulfur.

But she didn’t really notice any of these things, or not much, because her senses were overwhelmed by the sight of Zachary’s head exploding in what felt like slow motion. Flesh scattered, blood spattered, an eye seemed to dissolve. Peppa Pig was no more.

A piece of his scalp lifted right off his skull, hair attached, and waved an obscene goodbye.

Lilah had time to see all of this in the never-ending second before Zachary’s body collapsed backwards, leaving a red mist in the air where his head had used to be.

She sat on the floor. And waited for her friends...because what were friends, after all, but people who would understand when you murdered someone?