“Watch your tongue,” Linda snaps. “I will not tolerate such language in my home.”
“Oh my god. If you love your legacy so much, sacrifice yourself.”
Linda scoffs. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you! All of us, gone. Then no one would be in charge. My grandparents sacrificed so we wouldn’t have to! We earned our success. We earned our lives. We earned this world, and I’ll be damned if I let you take it from us.”
“Come on.” Ava stands and gestures to Mack and LeGrand. This is pointless. She half feels like she’s back on Facebook, arguing with her pervy grandpa. Maybe she is losing her mind, after all. Pain delirium has set in. “Let’s go. We’re done here.”
“My father will send someone?” LeGrand asks, his voice soft.
“Oh, yes,” Linda replies. “He’s good for at least one replacement. He mentioned her when we spoke about you. Alma? Almera? Something like that.”
LeGrand swings the rifle, the butt catching the side of Linda’s temple. Her head snaps to the side, skin broken and blood finally ruining her hair.
Linda gasps in pain, blinking, still alive. Still conscious. It’s the first and only time LeGrand has struck anyone. It feels like someone else did it. He can see evidence of it, feel his heart racing, but he didn’t choose to hit her. It was automatic.
“How do you know it works?” Ava demands.
“What do you mean?” Linda groans, closing her eyes and shaking her head.
“I mean, how do you know it’s this deal with a devil that keeps you all successful and shit? You’re white. You’re well-off. Pretty sure people like you have been gliding through life for generations. No mystical protections needed.”
“Don’t pretend like I’ve had an easy life! You have no idea what I’ve had to do, to face, to decide in order to take care of my family, my people, my heritage.”
Ava laughs. “We read your journal. We know exactly what you’ve done. God. I can’t. I can’t talk with her anymore. Come on.” Ava stands and holds a hand out to Mack.
“What happens if the monster isn’t fed?” Mack asks. “Will it get out?”
“It will be fed, no matter what. I already told you. Besides, the gate keeps it bound.”
“Will you promise that LeGrand’s sister isn’t touched?”
“Mack,” Ava warns.
Linda looks up at this, eyes narrowing shrewdly. “In exchange for?”
“We go back in,” Mack says. “That buys you a day, and then you only need one more person.” Mack has finally figured out why it felt wrong to leave the park. They weren’t running away. They were hiding, just in a different place. Mack would hide, and someone would die in her place, just like before. Just like Maddie. And this time she knows it.
Never again.
“Mack!” Ava grabs Mack’s shoulder, but Mack doesn’t stand, doesn’t move, doesn’t look away from Linda.
“Two more,” Linda corrects. “It won’t eat her.” She jerks her chin toward Ava, her tone indicating she thinks that’s an insulting thing to say. Lowly Ava, not good enough to be devoured by a monster.
“Okay,” Mack says. “Two more. But not Almera. She’s safe forever.”
“Stop.” Ava tugs on Mack’s arm, trying to get her up, trying to move her. “Stop.”
Linda is fixed on Mack, a shark on the scent of blood. She can turn this around. She’s still going to win. Of course she is. It’s her divine right to win. “I can guarantee that. But only if I’m alive.”
“You swear?” LeGrand asks. “I go in, and Almera stays safe. Really safe. You take her away from my father and put her in a good house. A place where they’ll take care of her.”
“I swear on the lives of my grandparents. On their sacrifice. I will see to it that your sister is safe and cared for, for the rest of her life.”
“You can’t be serious!” Ava lets go of Mack’s arm and paces, but the pain is too much. It’s all too much. She can’t catch her breath as her vision tunnels, and she leans heavily against the wall. “No. No.”
“I never had a choice.” Mack stares at the wood grain of the table, the tiny scratches Ava made. Wonders if they can be buffed right out, erasing the fact that they were ever here. “No. That’s not right. I had a choice, and I made it, and I let my sister die in my place. I took her spot, and for what? What have I ever done with my stolen life?”
At last, Mack looks up, but not at Ava. At her ghost of a reflection in the glass of the hutch. The glass over the Nicely family china, china that Mack could never touch, could never use, could never have. “This time I know what the stakes are, and I get to choose the sacrifice. And I’m not going to make the same mistake.” Mack glances over at LeGrand. She’s making this deal for him, too.
He nods. Whatever it takes for Almera.
“Okay,” she says. “We’ll go back in.”
“Fuck!” Ava screams, slamming her fist into the wall. “No! I won’t let you.”
LeGrand calmly points the rifle at her. “Ava. Get in the car and leave. Go. This isn’t your problem, not anymore.”
“You can’t—this isn’t—god, no. No.” Ava’s voice breaks, tears pooling in her dark eyes.
“You can go back in with them,” Linda offers. “Stay with them. Be their witness.” Linda smiles, and the red of her blood dripping down her cheek clashes with the pink of her lipstick, a garish mess of colors. “You’ll be perfectly safe, and you can make sure I keep my word. That’ll make LeGrand and Mack feel better, right? Ava will keep me accountable.”
LeGrand nods, quick, small movements. “Please,” he says, still pointing the rifle at Ava.
“You really think they’ll let me live, after?” Ava’s voice is strangled with the strain of holding back tears, with the terrible weight of despair.
Linda’s tone is back to the chipper one of the woman who greeted them on the bus a lifetime ago. She absolutely will not let Ava live, but there’s no reason not to play along. “We’ve done it before. Doreen, a maid. The second sacrifice season. Back when we still thought we could offer the beast lesser prey. It rejected her, of course, and we let her go. Because who would believe a—” Linda stumbles, making it clear she was about to use a different, more familiar-to-her-tongue word before she course-corrects. “A poor Black uneducated maid over us?”
“And who would believe me over you?” Ava laughs, shaking her head. “God, you’re right. You’re absolutely right. I can’t tell anyone about this.”
Linda settles on what she believes is a warm, motherly smile. Ava would try to tell. It wouldn’t get her anywhere, but it would bring more attention than is worth dealing with. She’ll be easy enough to kill once Mack and LeGrand are gone. “You’re welcome to leave. I won’t stop you. Or you can keep vigil with your friends and then leave after. It’s your choice.”
“Give her the money, too,” Mack says.
“What?” Ava and Linda both say at once.
“The prize money.”