Lies

slipped her.
    “They could have killed us,” Diana said.
    Penny nodded. “Too scared,” she said.
    Or maybe they just aren’t killers, Diana thought. Maybe they just weren’t the kind of people who could take advantage of a sleeping foe. Maybe Sanjit wasn’t the kind of kid who could cut a sleeping person’s throat.
    “They’re running,” Diana said. “They’re trying to get away.”
    “Never hide on this island,” Penny said. “Not for long. We’ll find them. Cut me loose.”
    Penny was right, of course. Even drugged Diana knew it was true. Caine would find them eventually. And he was the kind who killed.
    Her true love. He was not the beast Drake was, but something worse. Caine wouldn’t kill them in some psychotic rage. He’d kill them in cold blood. Diana staggered out of the room, moving like a drunk, slamming into a doorway, absorbing the pain, moving on. Windows. Big windows in a room so huge it made the furniture arranged here and there in separate pods look like dollhouse toys.
    “Hey, untie me!” Penny demanded.
    She spotted Sanjit immediately. He was in profile against a red sky, standing at the edge of the cliff. There was a little girl with him. Not Virtue, some girl Diana had not seen before.
    That’s what Sanjit had been hiding: there were other kids here on the island.
    Sanjit looped a rope around the girl in a sort of web. He hugged her. Leaned down to speak to her face-to-face.
    No, not the killing kind, Sanjit.
    Then he began to lower the clearly terrified girl out of sight. Over the cliff.
    There was a shout from the other room. Bug. He yelled, “Ah ah ah ah! Get them off me!”
    Bug was awake. Penny had used her power to give Bug a nice shot of fear adrenalin.
    As Diana watched, Sanjit himself climbed over the side. He faced the house as he did so. Did he see Diana standing there, watching?
    Diana heard Penny coming into the room, at least as wobbly as Diana herself.
    “You stupid witch,” Penny snarled. “Why didn’t you untie me?”
    “Bug seems to have taken care of that,” Diana answered.
    She had to cut Penny off before she saw what was happening. Before she saw Sanjit.
    Diana picked up a vase from a side table. Very pretty crystal. Heavy.
    “This is nice,” Diana said to Penny.
    Penny looked at her like she was crazy. Then Penny’s eyes focused beyond Diana. Out of the window.
    “Hey!” Penny said. “They’re trying—”
    Diana swung the vase and caught Penny on the side of the head. She didn’t wait to see the effect but staggered, vase still in hand, to the kitchen.
    Caine was still asleep. But he wouldn’t be for long, maybe, not long enough. Penny’s power of hallucination could wake the dead. She would send terrors into Caine’s dreams and wake him as she had Bug.
    Diana raised the vase over her head. It occurred to her in a moment of wry clarity that while Sanjit might not be thekind of person who would brain someone in their sleep, she apparently was.
    But before she could smash the vase down on her true love’s head, Diana’s flesh erupted. Gaping red mouths appeared on her arms, gnashing with serrated shark’s teeth. The mouths were eating her alive.
    Diana screamed.
    In some corner of her mind she knew it was Penny. She knew it wasn’t real, because she saw the mouths but did not feel them, not really, but she screamed and screamed and her fingers let go of the vase. From far off came the sound of shattered crystal.
    The red mouths were crawling up her arms, eating her skin, baring muscle and sinew, eating their way to her shoulders.
    And then they stopped.
    Penny stood there, snarling. Blood streamed from the side of her head. “Don’t mess with me, Diana,” Penny said. “I could send you screaming off that cliff yourself.”
    “Let them go,” Diana whispered. “They’re just nice kids. They’re just nice kids.”
    “Not like us, you mean,” Penny said. “You’re a stupid idiot, Diana.”
    “Let them go. Don’t wake Caine up. You know what he’ll do.”
    Penny shook her head, disbelieving. “I can’t believe he likes you, not me. You’re not even pretty. Not anymore.”
    Diana laughed. “That’s what you want? Him?”
    Penny’s eyes gave it all away. She looked longingly, lovingly at Caine, still passed out. “He’s all there is,” she said.
    Penny reached with a trembling hand and gently stroked Caine’s hair. “Sorry to have to do this, sweetheart,” Penny said.
    Caine woke shouting.

THIRTY-NINE
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