Page 131 of The Witch’s Orchard

“Close,” she says. “Deena was bored with us.”

Deena starts to say something, but Jessica points the gun at her, eyebrows raised like she’s daring Deena to say something else. Deena shuts up.

Behind Jessica, a shaft of light widens. The door is opening. Is it a breeze? Is someone there? Does Jessica have an accomplice? My mind races.

She is beautiful, young, intelligent. She’s obviously had the run of this place well enough to figure out how to shoot a gun, how to drive a car. For how else could she have kidnapped Lucy? She must have been on the internet, gotten into Deena’s computer. Could she have connected withsomeone? And would someone help her with… whatever this plan is? Whatever she’s about to do?

“Deena didn’t want us anymore,” she says, eyes wide with mocking anger. “She’d been drugging us for years. I didn’t care. I liked the tea. I liked the dreams. But sometimes I didn’t drink mine. I poured it down the drain or gave it to Molly. Then, Deena would take her Ambien and go to sleep and I’d sneak out. Sometimes, I could get Molly to skip her tea and go with me.”

“Jessica—” Deena starts again.

Jessica closes the distance between herself and Deena, puts the gun to Deena’s forehead.

“I had a plan,” she growls. “I had aplan.I was going to take Molly and leave. I have your passport. It’s not expired yet and I look enough like you to pass, if I cut my hair, dress older. I was going to take her and leave. We could start over somewhere. Somewherenice.I’d been taking cash out of your purse for years. Ten dollars here. Twenty there. A hundred sometimes. All hidden in a little box under the porch.”

Jessica looks at me. Her eyes are glassy with tears, but she is seething, her cheeks red.

“Molly left and ruined everything! She betrayed me. She was going to give upeverything.You know we could see her old house through the telescope in the guest bedroom? We used to watch the lights of her parents’ house twinkling. She used to ask me if they would ever find a cure for our sickness. I told her yes, someday, and I meant it. I was going to give her some actual vitamins and tell her they were a new medicine and that now we had to go away together to get more of it. But then she ran away. I had to stop her. And Deena… she didn’t care about us anymore.”

She sneers at Deena. Hisses, “She was screwing that man. Right downstairs on the sofa. He was talking about leaving his wife.”

Her face changes, and she seems to transform, doing a fair impression of Cole Jacobs. “Oh Deena, your hands are so soft. I love the way they feel.”

And then she adjusts her posture and goes into Deena’s voice, “Oh Cole… I love the way you touch me. Oh… oh…”

She looks long at Deena, smirking. Then back to me.

“They were talking about going away, just the two of them. And then what would happen to us?”

“You could’ve left,” I say. “You could’ve gone back to your family.”

She laughs.

“Why would I want that? Ichoseto go with Deena. I got to live in a castle. Like Rapunzel. I didn’t have to go to school. I got fancy food and a new mother who didn’t cry all the time and no father who… No father at all.”

“Jessica—”

“Deena wasdevoted.” She looks again at Deena, and her pretty Cupid’s bow lips turn into a snarl. “At least sheused to be.Until that man came along. Until me and Molly didn’t look like little girls anymore.”

She sighs.

“Everyone getsold,” she snarls at Deena. “Even you.”

“My darling girl—” Deena starts, and then stops when the barrel of the gun swings toward her face, inches from her temple.

Behind her, the door opens all the way. My heart thuds. While Jessica has her attention focused solely on Deena, I watch.

Silently, Shiloh steps into the room in socked feet. She’s holding a .45 Colt at her hip. She takes in the scene. I put my hand on the pipe stuffed in the back of my jeans.

“It’s time now,” Jessica says. “This is the end.”

Jessica points the gun at me, cocks it.

Shiloh levels her gun, trains it on the back of Jessica’s head.

I shout, “Shoulder!”

Jessica whips around. Shiloh shoots. I pull the pipe from my jeans.