Page 113 of The Unknown

Or moving like it.

She leaps from her chair with the speed of someone decades younger. In a flash, she grabs the ice pick from the sideboard and holds it to Ronan’s neck.

“Violet, no!” I shout. When that doesn’t work, I change tactics. “Daisy, stop!”

She freezes. Ronan squirms. I rock back and forth on my heels, stunned and scared and numb with disbelief.

“Marin, help me!” Ronan barks, which sends Violet into motion again, tickling the ice pick’s tip across his neck.

“You’re not a killer, Daisy,” I say. An out-of-body experience. Is this really happening? “I read your diary. The things you did, they weren’t your fault. You didn’t know what you were doing.”

“Oh, I lied about that,” Violet says with a guilty lowering of her eyes. “I didn’t want Mrs. Semple to think I was bad, so I pretended I didn’t know what I was doing. But really I did.”

She smiles.

A wide, twisted grin made worse by the slime still at the corner of her mouth.

“Katrina was so mean,” she says. “And Jonquil, well, she knew too much. And Mrs. Minafer was such a bore. I knew exactly what I was doing when I took them out to the rock in the clearing. Mrs. Semple thought I didn’t, but I knew it was only a matter of time before she learned the truth. So I had to get rid of her, too. Just like I got rid of Daddy.”

The room tumbles. Like the entire universe is doing a backflip. I brace myself, waiting for the inevitable crash against the ceiling as I say, “Daisy, there’s no need to hurt him.”

“Isn’t there?” Violet’s head tilts from side to side, studying Ronan from every angle. All the while, the ice pick remains aimed at his Adam’s apple. “I still don’t know what he did. Are you going to tell me or not?”

She leans in, the ice pick following the motion, its tip sinking into the skin of Ronan’s neck.

“Marin, do something!” he yelps.

I’m trying to. But the room keeps spin-cycling, and Violet, who’s not acting like Violet at all, is holding a fucking ice pick, and honestly, I’m not sure Ronan deserves my help. Not until he owns up to his actions.

“Say what you did,” I tell him.

Ronan looks down his nose to check the position of the ice pick. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“Yes,” I say. “Now admit what you did.”

He thinks it over, red-faced and sweatier than he was a second ago. Hyperventilating, he pushes out the words. “I had sex with Elise Haines.”

Violet-as-Daisy eases up on the ice pick, pulling it a few inches from his neck.

“And?” I say.

“I recorded it.”

“Why?”

Ronan jolts, and I can tell he’s never thought about it. He just did it.Not only because he got off on it, but because he assumed he would get away with it. And he did, for a very long time.

“Because I didn’t think it would hurt anyone.”

“Daddy hurt me,” Violet says. “He hurt me all the time. That’s why I hurt him. Do I need to hurt you, too?”

She brings the tip of the ice pick back to his neck and Ronan yelps out a high-pitched “No!”

“That’s for me to decide,” Violet says.

“I recorded it, and Elise found it,” Ronan says, slowly at first. A grudging confession. But the words soon speed up, tumbling out of him. “She was never supposed to know. None of them were. It was my little secret, you know? Yes, I shared it with a couple buddies, but I didn’t think they’d do the same and that Elise would find out about it. I feel bad about that. I really do. But what happened after that isn’t my fault. How was I supposed to know she’d overreact and that it would send her off the fucking deep end? That part isnotmy fault.”

A long silence follows, the quiet so complete that I can hear the candle flames eating away at their wicks and the pounding of a heartbeat that I at first think is Ronan’s but soon realize is my own. Even the storm outside has gone silent.