Page 35 of The Lies We Conjure
I can barely envision the woman brushing her own teeth. She probably has a manservant for that. The next two days and change will be roughing it for her.
Wren’s eyes begin to sparkle, and she waggles her brows in a way I should’ve seen coming. “I’ve certainly pictured Evander going a hundred miles per hour in the Maserati parked out on the drive, with me in the passenger’s seat.”
Exasperated, I tug myself away from her grip and run my hands through my hair—a terrible and futile idea because it’s full of product carving out waves I don’t truly have.
“Look,” I half-sigh, walking to the end of the bathroom and pivoting on one teetering heel, “they won’t believe us when we tell them who we are because they were already suspicious of us thanks to Marsyas vanishing, the dead guy in the driveway—when they find him, and I’m sure they will eventually or Auden will toss us under the bus or… something—and our unlikely appearance at this particular party after, what, ten years away?”
God, I’m truly pacing now, multiple laps under my belt. “And, on the extremely off chance that they do believe us, we’re two regular people who now know all about their very secret, very important witch stuff. If they’re willing to kill their own, they’re not just going to let two party-crashing imposters walk away with a handshake promise not to tell.”
I’m prepared to go off on Wren if she so much as mentions Auden “liking” me one more time, but instead she draws from her vast experience marathoning sci-fi on Dad’s Netflix account. “Maybe they can magically zap our memories. You know, just clean our clocks, and leave us by the side of the road, then we’d be two hot schlubs with no recollection.”
“I don’t think they’re ‘do no harm’ kind of people.”
Wren’s shoes fall off to the immaculate honeycomb tile with a one-twoclunk-clunk. Her eyes lift to mine.
“Okay,” she says, and the word is a relief. The giddiness hasreceded, my worry hammered home and nailing over the thrill of tonight—the flirting, the magic, the surprise. You’d think seeing a man with his eyeballs literally ripped out would’ve done it, but Wren is nothing if not a pendulum swinging her way through the most exciting points in life. “So what do we do?”
And that’s when reality hits me too.
“There’s nothing we can do.”
“Rubes,”she whispers, “do you hear yourself? We’re stuck in a haunted-ass house with witches, a dead body, and probably severalnamedghosts. We need to start thinking out of the box or we’re dead meat.”
Gambling, I haul myself onto the counter too and hold up the hand I’m very lucky looks and feels normal right now, an exhibit in what I’m about to say. “If there’s a way out of here other than what Ursula announced… don’t you think the witches would be on that?”
Her brows touch. “No, because they’re all focused on the relics and power they’ll win. It’s robbed them of their sensibility. And even if they didn’t have that distracting them, those people aren’tus.” Wren finger-guns me. “We’re resourceful.”
I nearly laugh because “gullible” is more like it. I bite my lip but it doesn’t cut the sarcasm. “It’s our resourcefulness that got us into this mess, sis.”
Wren sighs. “Bought hook, line, and sinker for a couple thousand bucks, a few compliments, and the promise of a good time for an easy lie.’”
We sit in the heavy truth of it. The running water is growing warm now, the enclosed space stifling and condensation beginning to mist on the counters. Wren’s eyes narrow.
“Marsyas had to have expected us to sell her out. Right? Tell them who we are immediately and beg for mercy. And to what end? She still looks guilty—her whole family looks guilty.” Wren taps her bottom lip. “So what’s the play?”
“Does it matter?” I sigh. “Whatever she intended, it was for her own means. Now our job is to survive. That’s it. Not play the game, just to survive it and make it out. To Dad and Karen.”
To Dad and Karen, who are in Boulder for a weeklong art exhibition. It’s Saturday night in midsummer and with the Ren Fest over, no one’s even going to miss us until my shift at Agatha’s on Wednesday afternoon. By then, we’ll either be locked in here forever or free because we survived or we died. Fuck.
“How?” Wren asks, softly.
My sister knows how to act, but I know how to strategize—or, well, at leastplot,thanks to every dog-eared mystery I’ve ever read. “We learn everything they expect us to know and wield it like a shield. We’re going to have tobethem tosurvivethem.”
“Okay, but that’s just defense. Reactionary.” She claps for emphasis. “We need todosomething too. We need a sword to go with the shield.”
Wren’s right. A hundred percent right.
“They suspect us…” I start, my mind stumbling through the fog of our situation. Then, it clears, open and bright. “So we’re going to have to prove them wrong and find the killer. It’s either Marsyas—and we’ll have to show we had nothing to do with what she did—or it’s someone framing Marsyas. Either way, finding the truth will protect us from the witches’ suspicions and from the actual murderer—”
“Because we’ll tag their ass before they can off us.” Wren grins something feral. “Okay, where do we start?”
Our fencing metaphor has a good answer. “Before we wield that sword, we need to strap on the shield. Both the informational one—the basics about the families and the magic—andthe actual one.”
I present my wrist.
Wren’s face scrunches. “You think the dead bunnies are shields?”
“Auden said as much—they’re relics.” She blinks at me, and I throw my hands up like we were ordered to do at the fence before lowering my voice into something deeper. “Turn around with your hands up, andrelicsclear.”
