But instead, Mark stepped out of the shadows. Mark? He’s not part of the plan. Maggie hadn’t even seen him since he’d gotten drunk and, well—
“You?” Maggie managed, her voice sounding overly loud in the eerie quiet of the deserted house. “Where’s Staunton?”
“Plans change.” Mark’s breath was hot and reeked of alcohol. Has he been drinking again? Maggie took a step back. “And he’s only a Met officer. I’m MI-Five.” Mark reached behind him to pull out a gun from the waist of his trousers. “You’re better off with me.”
Then, “This is some place you have. It’s all yours?”
“Yes,” Maggie said, in no mood for conversation. “Inheritance. Long story.”
“Still, it’s awfully big for an unmarried woman, alone.”
“I have flatmates.”
He saw how her eyes darted up the stairs and into the shadows. “I’ve already checked it out, cellar to attic. There’s no one here. And the Beast won’t get past the officers stationed outside—we’ll get him before he gets you.”
Maggie drew in a trembling breath. At the front door, Mark turned back at the last second, as if he were going to say something. Instead, he shook his head and opened the door, letting the light shine out, letting his voice carry, and making a big show of leaving.
Using her as bait in her own house was their backup plan if the Beast didn’t come to the hotel. If he followed her, which is what they all hoped, the Met police would get him before he even set foot inside.
And so, with any luck—if that was the word—the killer was watching Mark leave, too.
When he was gone, Maggie fumbled with the locks, which slid into place with loud, echoing clicks. She hooked the chain on the door. Now there was nothing to do but wait.
She wandered the rooms, flipping on lights, looking in closets and behind furniture. Why wasn’t the telephone ringing? Why wasn’t Durgin calling to tell her they’d arrested him, that she was safe now? She sat down on a wing chair in the library, waiting, tensed, listening to every creak and scrape the old house made, sounds like trolls under a bridge.
She decided to go upstairs, to her bedroom—she’d lock the door and feel safe there. With one last look around her empty library, she stood. She checked the lock on the back door and rechecked the front. Then she maneuvered up the steep steps in the darkness.
In her bedroom, Maggie pulled open the blackout curtains, and looked out into the night. The moon was glorious—full, bright, and almost blue against the night sky. Where were the surveillance officers? She knew they were probably hiding in the shrubbery, maybe even in one of the tall trees, but still. She couldn’t see them.
What if the Blackout Beast had killed them?
No, of course not. She shut the drapes. But even with the blackout curtains in place, the moon was dazzling enough to sneak slivers of light into the room through the cracks.
She sat on the bed and leaned back against the headboard, knowing it could be a long wait.
The officers were out there, circled around the house. The Beast couldn’t get past them. But in her heart of hearts, doubts lingered. After all, she’d publicly mocked him. A tremor shot through her body. Ring me, Maggie willed Durgin. Tell me you caught him. But the telephone remained silent.
Then the back of her neck prickled. A gloved hand clamped implacably over her mouth, holding a handkerchief doused with something strong and foul.
As Maggie struggled to turn to face her attacker, he climbed on top of her, hand with the cloth pressed against her mouth and nose. She knew he wanted to kill her, but first, she also knew, he would rape, torture, and mutilate her. Like Mary Jane Kelly, Jack the Ripper’s final victim, the one with the red hair. He would be satisfied with nothing less.
As she struggled under the cloth, unable to see, he spoke, his voice warm and resonant. “In case you’re wondering where your team is, they’re all dead.”
Oh, God. The men were dead. George Staunton was dead. Mark was dead. And back at Scotland Yard, Durgin didn’t even know. She was alone.
Her vision blurred as she slid off the bed, hitting her head on the parquet floor. The breath went out of her lungs with a gasp.
A jumble of pictures spun in her brain, stories girls had whispered—of attacks on unprotected women, throat cuttings, rapes, molestation. Her first terrified impulse was to hide in the closet, crawl under the bed, fly down the back stairs and run screaming into the relative safety of the blackout—anything to escape him. But then she remembered Brynn.
I’m still alive, she thought through the haze of drugs. I still have a chance to get him. For Brynn. For all of us.
Maggie’s breath came back to her, suddenly and painfully. I’m in the labyrinth, she realized. She forced her eyes open, then struggled to her feet, stumbling and staggering, her drugged mind playing tricks on her. Confusing images came and went—the man of crawling flies, the devils of Doré’s etchings, Brynn’s white face, her vacant eyes staring heavenward.
Maggie forced herself to climb down the wooden stairway. She had a sudden memory of the men at the swimming pond who’d shouted obscenities at her. What if they, too, were waiting for her? As she fought waves of dizziness and nausea, the stairs seemed to twist and turn. Were they moving? Like snakes and ladders? Who was there? Mark, mocking her, telling her to spread her legs like she had for Hugh? Hadn’t she just come up these stairs? Or was she going down?
She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember anything now. She was hopelessly bewildered, dizzy from whatever drug the Beast had given her.
She stopped and listened, sniffing at the air like a terrified doe. She didn’t hear anything. Surely he was coming after her? Was he on the stairs behind her right now? Blood roared in her ears. She caught herself on the stair railing, and then she fell.
At the foot of the staircase, she lay crumpled, panting harshly, pain exploding through her body. In her haze, she wasn’t sure if the monster’s claws on the hall table’s legs were real or imaginary. She crawled forward, and pulled herself up onto a chair, using every remaining scrap of strength she possessed. She heard footsteps, heavy on the stairs. She tried to stand, but couldn’t. Couldn’t move at all.
There, looming in front of her, was Max, who turned into the red-faced puppet Punch. Then the figure was the violinist in the park, playing Symphonie fantastique, devil horns on his head. And then Mark, reeking of alcohol. And then the Blackout Beast, his blade glittering as he savaged Brynn’s body.
“Come on!” she heard him bellow, shaking her back into consciousness. The man in the green sunglasses.
She looked up and realized who it was—Nicholas Reitter, the architect. May’s fiancé. She blinked, realizing too late. He was also the man in the park, the man with the green sunglasses. The one who’d always been there, in the background. The one she’d never consciously registered, but must have noted, all the same.
She could hear his breath rasping in the shadows, and then the safety on a gun being released. “Let’s have a game of Hide and Seek, shall we, Miss Hope? You’re it!”
Maggie forced herself up. She wavered as she made her way forward, to get to the front door.
“I’ll count down from ten and give you a head start? Ten. Nine. Eight…”
Maggie tripped and fell again. He has a gun. Excruciating pain shot through her right ankle, but she pushed herself up again, sticky, warm rivulets of blood running down her shin. Keep going.
Nicholas Reitter was the Blackout Beast.
She was going to die.
A small part of her wanted to laugh, if only because Nicholas was so short, so slender, his hair was so very mousy brown. This, this is the dread Beast? And then she did laugh, in a series of breathy exclamations, halfway between a snort and a scream.