Page 114 of The Unknown

In that elongated hush, I know that it’s over.

Violet lowers the ice pick and backs away from Ronan. She got what she wanted and can now stop pretending to be Daisy. I suspect this was her plan all along, and that she didn’t tell me because she feared I’d mess it up. She wanted an authentic performance from me—and I gave her exactly that.

“He confessed,” I say. “Happy now, Violet?”

“I already told you,” she says, frustrated. “My name is Daisy.”

Then she lunges forward, sinking the ice pick into Ronan’s stomach.

I scream.

If not out loud, then in my head.

A siren’s wail of shock that can’t quite eclipse the noise Ronan makes.A pained, confused grunt. Like he can’t understand what’s happening, even as Violet tugs the pick from his gut and shoves it in again.

And again.

And again.

When she lets go, the ice pick remains in Ronan’s stomach, jutting like a meat thermometer as he slips from his chair.

He hits the floor with the same kind of sound I’ve been hearing in my cottage. A muted thwump. It’s followed by a series of ragged breaths, each one softer than the last until they cease entirely.

All goes quiet after that. An unsettling silence during which I drop to Ronan’s side, trying to avoid the blood now pooling on the hardwood floor but failing because there is no way to avoid it. There’s so much of it. A torrent gushing from his multiple stab wounds. Sliding through the blood on my hands and knees, I check for a pulse.

There isn’t one.

Ronan is dead.

A gasp rises from the table. Violet snapping out of her trance. I can tell from the look in her eyes. Gone is the dark gaze of Daisy Rue. In its place is the confused expression of someone freshly out of a coma, trying to make sense of a world in which time stopped for them while inexorably ticking forward for everyone else.

Violet’s eyes widen as she takes in the empty chair.

Then the floor.

Then Ronan’s body, still pushing out blood even though his heart has stopped.

Finally Violet looks at her hands, also bloody. They gleam in the candlelight, sticky and wet and bright.

It takes her another moment to comprehend what’s happened—and her role in all of it. When she does, Violet, like me, reacts the only way instinct will allow.

She screams.

Thirty-Two

“What did I do?” Violet says as we stand at the kitchen sink, me trying to steady her dazed, swaying form while I pump water over her hands. “Marin, what the fuck did I do?”

I say nothing. Even if I want to talk about it, I can’t. Right now, I’m running on autopilot. The only thing keeping me from breaking down in shock is knowing I need to stop Violet from doing the same.

The screaming that began in the parlor continued as I guided Violet past Ronan’s body, down the hallway, and into the kitchen. By then, she’d calmed into a state of quiet, stunned shock. Now I force her hands into the stream of water, trying to rinse them of blood. The sight of all that red swirling down the drain makes Violet whimper.

She asks again, her voice plaintive. “What did I do?”

One could argue that she didn’t do anything.

That it was Daisy who’d been in control then. It’s such an impossible notion that no one would believe it unless they saw it happen. Violet’s a great actress, yes. Possiblythegreatest. But what I just witnessed seems utterly impossible to fake.

Violet wasn’t just pretending to be Daisy.