Page 119 of Her Dark Lies

“Of course not. And I didn’t kill him. He fell.”

“Oh, keep telling yourself that, darling. I have it all on tape.” She continues as if I haven’t said a word. “No, it doesn’t matter. There won’t be any reason to watch you anymore. Speaking of watching—” she tips the gun back and forth, back and forth, as if hypnotizing me “—you’ve done your fair share of watchingme.”

How could she...no, she’s playing with me. “What do you mean?”

“Claire, Claire, Claire. Your search history is incredibly...focused. You seem to have a slight fixation on little old me.” She smiles winningly, looking even crazier. Bat. Shit. Crazy.

“How could you—”

“Have you not figured this out yet? I’ve been inside your head,darling. I’ve been inside your body with him, and I’ve seen how you obsess about me. What was it like, falling in love with a ghost?”

“You really are a narcissist. I hardly call trying to find out who my fiancé was married to falling in love. Jack despised you so much he didn’t bother uttering your name aloud. You were less than a ghost to him. You simply ceased to exist.”

She flinches, her mouth thinning to a hard seam. She looks old, and tired, and wretched at that moment. This is how I win, I realize. I make sure she understands her insignificance.

“Jack spoke of you to me once. Only once. He said you’d died. And that was it. He didn’t even care enough to tell me how. And I didn’t care enough to look until one of my friends pushed you on me. That was natural curiosity.”

“Hundreds of photos stored in your little private website is more than natural curiosity.”

“No. It wasn’t. I wanted to be sure I was nothing like you so he would never hate me like he hated you.”

She laughs, hard and sharp, and I can see I’ve wounded her. She wants me to love her. She wants me to be obsessed with her. Disdain for her cleverness is the key.

“I predict you—” she starts, but I cut her off.

“Hey, you can do the whole witch of Endor thing all you want. You don’t scare me anymore. You’re just a woman, and as clever as you are, as much as you think you know, you will never have him. He’s mine. His heart belongs to me.”

Lightning, and thunder close on its heels. Thunder so loud, so long, it takes me a moment to realize no, that wasn’t thunder at all.

The sky outside my window is an orange ball, and Morgan is laughing behind me.

“What the hell was that?”

The percussion of the explosion hits the terrace doors and shatters them, spraying glass into the room. Venus topples, the tapestry blown aside, revealing the tunnel. The concussion is enough to fling open the door to the hallway. My ears pop painfully. Tiny slivers of glass rip through the sleeves of my robe, pinpricks of blood blooming like so many freckles.

It takes me a moment to realize what’s happened. It’sThe Hebrides.The Hebridesis burning. The long whistle of a lone firework dies, and the sky lights up with brilliant colors.

“Aw, look at your surprise, all ruined,” Morgan says, eyes alight with happiness. I can almost see the reflection of the flames in her pupils. “Now you have no way to get off the island. Now you’re stuck with me.”

The sky outside is popping and crackling as hundreds of fireworks go off at the same time. It is cacophonous, but I hear someone screaming my name.

“Claire? Claire, where are you?” Shit. Shit! It’s Katie.

I scream as loudly as I can. “Don’t come in here. Get help!”

Morgan glances over her shoulder and starts to turn toward the door.

“Don’t you dare,” I yell at her, taking advantage of her momentary distraction to leap toward her, shoving her to the ground.

Then I dive toward the remnants of the tapestry, fling it aside, and barrel into the darkness.

69

The Deepest Dark

Morgan follows me into the tunnel, as I hoped she would. I can hear her behind me, cursing, calling my name. It’s a risk, running from her, drawing her down here, but I can’t let her hurt anyone else I love.

As I run through the tunnel, I realize it’s not dark. There’s some sort of ambient light, a trail of illumination. This is how she’s been moving in and out of the Villa, through this tunnel into my bedroom. Jack said these routes to the grottos were blocked off years ago, but he was wrong.