The front door led into a narrow hallway papered in a floral pink. A hat rack and umbrella stand stood nearby, and beyond them I glimpsed a small living room that seemed almost Victorian: ornate wooden furniture upholstered with thick, embroidered cushions. The lamp on a small corner table was hung with fringe. The effect was classy but threadbare, the kind of furniture you might see in the home of a ninety-year-old woman. Mary, of course, was much older. I supposed she’d had this furniture since it was first made, over a century ago.
I heard another crash, maybe upstairs, and pulled the combat knife from my pocket. I stayed as silent as I could, not wanting to alert Mary to a third enemy in her house. I was not a trained fighter, so if I was going to have any meaningful effect on this situation, surprise would be a far more effective weapon than the knife ever could. I unsnapped the sheath and revealed the black blade, holding it in front of me in an upside-down grip, point toward the floor. Another crash, and a grunt. Definitely upstairs, and somehow recognizably feminine. Kelly, or Mary? Where was Potash? I tried the first step, found that it didn’t squeak, and slowly shifted my weight to the second, then the third. The ceiling thumped, somewhere to my right, like something heavy had fallen—heavy but soft; not a piece of furniture, but a body. I moved to the fourth step and, hearing the faintest trace of a creak as I started to place my weight on it, quickly picked up my foot to stop the sound. I tried the other side of the step, slowly and carefully, and when it stayed silent I moved to the next. The thump upstairs was followed by a scrape, then a pause, then a sudden flurry of footsteps. I moved to the sixth stair. The seventh. I was halfway up.
A window shattered above and behind me, loud and bright, and after a moment of shock I raced back down and threw open the front door, cursing myself for leaving an exit unguarded—if Mary had jumped out a front window she could run for safety, on the wrong side of the building for Diana to stop her. I saw a foot, sprawled in the snow, and stepped out for a better look. Kelly was facedown on the white lawn, her left side covered with blood, her head bent at an impossible angle. Her spine must have been snapped nearly in half, though whether it was from the fall or the fight itself I didn’t know. She hadn’t screamed, during or even before the fall.
Mary Gardner was more deadly than we’d ever imagined, and now the whole neighborhood knew we were here—and yet I froze, staring at Kelly’s twisted body like I was in a trance. Her broken shape in the snow was curled beautifully, like a flower, her arms splayed out like the tendrils of a dark black fern. Black and gray, with drops of bright red blood melting deep pink pockets in the snow. Her hair billowed around her head like she was a mermaid in a pale white sea, frozen in a moment of single, perfect beauty. I took a step toward it, then a few more. I was halfway down the stairs from the porch before the sound of another crash echoed down from upstairs. Potash was still up there, and the fight was still going. I took another step forward. How many times had I imagined Kelly dead, and now here she was, right in front of me. The Withered disintegrated when they died; I hadn’t touched a body in months. I reached out to it—and saw the knife in my hand.
A knife. Mary Gardner was still upstairs. I looked up at the window, then back at the door.
Then back at the body, still as a photograph.
Another crash. Mary was killing Potash—I didn’t know how, but the process sounded brutal. My only advantage was that she didn’t know I was there. This was what I needed—to work alone, without anyone knowing where or who I was. Even if the neighbors knew about Kelly, Mary didn’t know about me; someone might call the police, but I had a few minutes to salvage this kill. To do it myself. I gripped my knife tighter and slipped back inside, quietly locking the door behind me. I took the stairs faster this time, knowing which spots to avoid. The walls of the second floor hallway were covered in the same pink wallpaper as the first, though it was brighter here, where the sun hadn’t reached it to fade out the color. The crash had come from … there. That was almost certainly the room Kelly had fallen out of. The door was open, though I couldn’t see anything from my vantage point, and whatever was inside the room couldn’t see me. I listened and heard heavy, labored breathing.
“You’ve ruined everything,” said a woman’s voice. She had the hushed, clipped tones of a person barely controlling her fury. “Do you think I can stay here now? What am I supposed to say when the police come? That the man who attacked me had pneumonia so bad he couldn’t even walk? Who’s going to believe that?”