Page 11

I take her in as she touches the wounds, winces, tries uselessly to staunch the flow of blood. She’s wearing the boys’ version of the Winthrop Academy uniform with tailored slacks, and a gold cross necklace dangles from her throat. She doesn’t talk much in class, not that I remember, and people don’t usually transfer midsemester unless they’re like me: unless they’ve run out of options elsewhere and their parents have enough money to convince Winthrop to let them in right now, pretty please, just enough to finish out the school year.

She’d seemed—normal. Nothing that would be a precursor to this.

“That hurt?” I ask, without an ounce of concern.

She says, “Don’t move.”

I don’t move. She creeps toward the toilet paper dispenser, refusing to take her eyes off me, and snatches handfuls of paper to jam against her jaw. She hisses and her eyes water, smearing the messy raccoon eyeliner she’s got going on. The toilet paper is too little, too late, though. It’s sticking to her hair and obliterating the collar of her button-down. She shivers, clicking her teeth, moving like an animal.

Through frustrated tears of pain, she says, “I just want to talk.”

Hell of a way to start talking. “Put the knife away.”

“No. You’ll—you’ll hurt me again.”

She’s not wrong. I was eyeing the lock, or trying to figure out if I could squirm under the stall door, but she’s already proven she’s got some strength to her. I don’t have a shot at escape that doesn’t involve another fight.

“That’s not going to heal well,” I say. “You might need stitches. It’ll suck.”

The paper’s soaked through already. She dumps it in the toilet and grabs more, the roll rattling as it turns. The water in the bowl goes pink.

Felicity says, “Morgan Slaughter.”

“That’s my name.”

“Your father was the DC Ripper.”

I can’t summon the energy to be surprised—not with that sinking, sick feeling in my stomach. Of course that’s what this is about. “And the Beast of 495, and the Charlottesville Strangler.” That’s why everyone calls him Graham Nathaniel Slaughter these days, easier to consolidate the nicknames into the same three words. “Yes, congratulations, you and the rest of the world know who my dad is. What do you want?”

“You were talking to your friend.” Felicity’s eyes dart to the stall door. “About the last girl. Right? The girl that got him caught. You’re trying to figure out who she is.”

I don’t like the way she says it. Jane Doe didn’t get Dad caught or put him in prison; she was dead. I did. I talked to the cops. I stood in front of the courtroom. Dad is trapped on the other side of the Box because I put him there.

Felicity says, “I want to help.”

That … is not the motive I was expecting. Especially not when I’m on the business end of a blade.

I spit, “Help?“

“Yeah.” Her voice gets quick and frantic. “I’ve been working on a true crime podcast—not one of those hack ones, not like the Gore Goonies or anything, a real one. And I was going to launch it with a big episode on Graham Nathaniel Slaughter, but I read about the documentary, that article on Deadline, and I was like, oh shit. They’re going to overshadow me for sure. What do I have to do to set mine apart?”

I resist the urge to press my hands into my eyes. I thought she was going to—I don’t know—exact some kind of cosmic revenge, a whole sins-of-the-father thing. Not this.

“But I realized,” she babbles, “you’re in my school. And here you are, talking about how you’re actually trying to find the last piece of the puzzle.”

She pulls the wad of paper from her face for a second to survey the damage. Now that I’m paying attention, I can see the dangling pieces of the earlobe where the ring ripped free.

She says, “So if you’re going to figure out who she is, find her name, make it right? Since your friend won’t help, I’ll do it with you. For my show.”

What? No. She doesn’t get to sneak around, put a knife in my face, and say this.

“Okay,” I say slowly, because the blade is still only a few inches from my cheek. “You want me to help you.” Above me, Felicity sniffs. Her mascara is running. She must be reaching the end of her adrenaline. The pain of what I did must really, really be hitting now. “And what if I say no?”

Felicity steels herself. Straightens up. Tries to look taller than she really is.

She says, “You lied during the trial.”

She says, “You helped kill Jane Doe, right? And how many of the others? Five? Ten?”