The drive back to Almsworth is extremely long and incredibly tense, and not only due to the unconscious serial killer zip-tied in the back seat of Indira’s Dorley-issue loaner car. Every bump and dip in the road goes straight through the suspension and into the small of Christine’s back - she’s gotten far too used to the Porsche in only two days - and she feels overdressed and self-conscious in Amber’s expensive clothes, even if kicking off the tortuous heels was the first thing she did upon subsiding gratefully into the car’s lumpy seat.

“Just tell me she hasn’t hurt you.” Indira says for what might be the fifth time, softly and with exaggerated caution.

“She never even touched me!” Christine says, mildly snappish without really knowing why. “Well, I mean, she did my hair and makeup. That’s all.”

“Okay,” Indira replies, still treating her like an unexploded bomb, or the traumatised victim of some unthinkable ordeal. It takes Christine a moment to remember that technically that’s exactly what she is, and she stays silent while the thought sloshes around the storm-tossed waters of her mind. The idea of finding a heavy enough stone and putting an end to Amber while she was unconscious did creep shamefully into Christine’s head, standing there on the approach road staring in disbelief at the killer’s limp body, but she knows she’d never be able to bring herself to do it. Consequently she’s stewing in guilt about even considering the murder of a defenseless woman, and feeling responsible for missing her one opportunity to prevent the same woman’s future atrocities, and all in all she just generally feels awful.

“And she didn’t try to do anything, you know, sexual, did she?” Indira inquires, still on eggshells. “You can tell me, Teenie. You don’t have to be afraid you’ll upset me. I’m here for you, okay?”

“No! No, nothing like that at all,” Christine says, feeling oddly compelled to defend Amber’s honour. “I’m not even sure she has anything you or I would understand as a sex drive,” she adds, considering the realisation as she goes.

“So she’s asexual?”

“Not the way humans are asexual,” Christine replies. “I kind of think whatever Amber’s sex drive is crosswired to, even hearing about it would put the rest of us in therapy for life.”

“Well, that’s terrifying!” Indira says, but her tone is light, and her refusal to give the situation the gravitas Christine feels it deserves finally makes her simmering, nervous frustration spill over.

“What were you thinking?” she demands. “Like, I know you were trying to save me, and I’m grateful, of course I am, but she’s… I mean… I have no idea how I’m going to talk her down from this, Dira. I’m seriously scared that the first thing she’s going to do when she wakes up is try to kill you, and I don’t see you getting the jump on her a second time.”

“She’s tied up, Christine! I’m not denying she’s dangerous, but she’s not magic, is she?” Indira objects. “Those are the same zip-ties they use on violent new intakes and washouts. She’s not getting out any time soon.”

“You didn’t see her private Dorley-slash-Saw torture basement, or the way she gutted the poor girl she turned into a monster there,” Christine says bitterly.

“Sawley,” Indira says, keeping an impressively straight face. “Actually, what did she call it?”

“I don’t think she called it anything. The basement of the abandoned abattoir on Enterprise Way, I guess? I didn’t really get the impression she talked about it to other people very often,” Christine says flatly, caught off-balance and almost forgetting why she was so heated.

“The Sisters of the Basement of the Abandoned Abattoir on Enterprise Way. No, it just doesn’t roll off the tongue, you know? No wonder it didn’t last!” Indira giggles.

“You really, really need to take this seriously, Dira,” Christine admonishes her, frowning,

“I think I might still be coming down from the adrenaline!” Indira says, tone definitely manic. “And anyway, we’re going to be fine: when we get back, we’ll put her in one of the secure cells until Aunt Bea figures out what she wants to do with her. Not our problem any more.”

“Dira, the secure cells can’t hold her. She was breaking out of them before she was halfway through her first year,” Christine protests, making herself increasingly panicky. “Bea was so terrified to upset her that she let her literally get away with murder, because she was afraid that if she didn’t, Amber would kill us all! This - you chasing after us, the taser, all of this - can’t have been her idea. Did anyone even know you were coming here?”

“No! Because they were all too busy panicking and being useless!” Indira exclaims, finally reaching the end of her own patience. “Beatrice has run off to get help from some mysterious contact or other, Paige is having a complete breakdown because she woke up and you’d been kidnapped, Melissa is stamping around with a taser and that girlfriend of hers in tow but with no idea what to actually do, and Abby was still two hours out when I left. Someone had to do something. I’m sorry if that wasn’t the exact thing you wanted, but she could have been doing anything to you, Teenie. I don’t regret it in the slightest.”

“How did you even find us?” Christine asks, trying for a neutral subject in the face of Indira’s rebuke, which stings more than she’ll admit.

“You forgot to turn off your location on that new phone, Little Miss OpSec,” Indira says, a smile flashing across her face that does a lot to reassure Christine she isn’t seriously angry. “After that it was just a question of hanging around outside the hotel until a tacky pink Porsche came out. It’s not exactly an easy car to miss, is it? I was right behind you until the roadworks on the M4, then by the time I caught up again she’d taken you inside that… that house of horrors, and I was stuck waiting around outside all day. It looks like a wreck, but she’s got that place locked down surprisingly tightly.”

“You realise there’s no way you could have gotten the drop on her without her letting you, right?” Christine says, her voice hollow in her ears.

“You’re still buying into this… myth she’s made around herself, Christine,” Indira replies. “She’s a human being like the rest of us. Flesh and blood. She’s not infallible! We’re going to be okay.”

“I really, really hope so,” Christine mutters, and after that there doesn’t seem to be all that much to say.

***

Pulling up in front of Dorley Hall feels like coming home after months away, and simultaneously triggers a strange melancholy in Christine, as if part of her is disappointed the adventure’s over despite it having begun with kidnap and involved little that wasn’t terrifying or traumatic. It’s fully night by now, and while there are a few lights still on inside the Hall, everything seems eerily still and silent. The car’s tyres crunch gravel and the engine dies with a descending whine, and Christine finally gathers the mettle to glance into the back seat and reckon with the intensely fraught task of transporting Amber’s prone body inside and into the basement.

“Oh, lovely, we’re here,” Amber says brightly, awake and to all appearances fully recovered. She’s maneuvered herself into a sitting position somehow, illuminated in sickly yellow from the car’s inadequate overhead light, and if it weren’t for the plastic straps binding her demurely clasped hands and feet, she’d look for all the world as if she were out for a pleasant Sunday drive. “Darling, would you mind?” she says, indicating her wrists. “I could get myself out, naturally, but I can’t imagine a degloving would improve anyone’s day. It rarely does, in my experience.”

“Jesus!” Indira exclaims, fumbling with the taser while she desperately tries to get it armed and aimed at her ostensible captive.

“Really, there’s no need for that,” Amber says lightly, pursing her lips and blowing to shift an errant strand of blonde hair out of her face, then giving the girls a self-conscious, disarming smile. “I’m no threat, I promise you. Just be a sweetheart and cut me loose.”

“No bloody chance!” Indira scoffs, weapon levelled and clearly ready to fire at the slightest sign of threat.

Amber shakes her head sadly, an expression of regret passing briefly across her face. “What has the world come to when even Sisters can’t trust one another?” she says, before her eyes flick up to meet Christine’s horrified gaze. “Darling, care to weigh in?” she asks sweetly. “I feel like a little character reference might do a world of good here.”

“I think we have to, Dira,” Christine says, the futility of the whole thing coming into cold focus, feeling she’s somehow been defeated without realising there was a struggle. “She won’t hurt us.”

“An hour ago you were panicking that she was going to try to kill me!”

“Yeah. I was panicking,” Christine says. “Now I’ve calmed down, I know she won’t. I mean, I’m pretty sure. You won’t, right, Amber?”

“Darling, perish the thought!” Amber gasps, laying it on thick. “I would never, ever hurt a Sister. I swear.”

“I literally just watched you kill Annabelle,” Christine points out.

“One, not really a Sister, and two, she was seconds away from lunging at you with the jagged bit of metal she had behind her back,” Amber replies, sounding infuriatingly reasonable. “Really, what I did was protect a Sister. Which is exactly what you did, too, Indira, even if your understanding of the situation was a little off, through no fault of your own. So I completely understand; it’s admirable, actually! I wouldn’t dream of holding a grudge.”

“You’re not seriously considering this,” Indira says, looking across at Christine.

“What other choice is there? You heard her: she can get out herself if she really wants to. And don’t forget, we still need these murders solved before anyone else gets killed. If it really was one of the Sisters of the, er, Abandoned Abattoir…”

“On Enterprise Way,” Amber volunteers helpfully, from the back seat, raising the question of how long she’s been listening in.

“…on Enterprise Way, then Amber is the only person with a real chance of finding her.”

“She’s gotten inside your head, Teenie! She kidnapped you from your bed, and she’s been love-bombing you and giving you gifts and dressing you in expensive clothes for two days, but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s a killer!”

“Amazingly, I actually am aware of that,” Christine says. “Like it or not, maybe what we need right now is a killer.”

Indira shakes her head in disbelief, but she doesn’t intervene as Christine reaches between the front seats and - with a couple of false starts and some undignified sawing - uses the knife she picked up in Amber’s house of horrors to cut the bonds tying the woman’s wrists and ankles.

“Ah! Much better. Thankyou, my love,” Amber says, rubbing at her wrists before opening her door and sliding out of the car, an eerily smooth movement for someone who’s been unable to move hands or feet for hours. She reaches back in to collect her handbag, which Christine is immensely grateful to her panicked past self for shoving in the car along with the unconscious Amber; she doesn’t like to imagine Amber’s reaction to learning it had been left on the road. Christine slips back into her shoes and follows suit, but Indira’s quicker, and while Amber’s still blithely running through a series of stretches - touching her toes, swinging her body from side to side - Christine’s Sister is poised in a ready stance with the taser aimed squarely at Amber’s chest.

“Oh, now, as I said, that’s hardly necessary,” Amber says lightly. “I told you, I don’t hold grudges. And I know just how important you are to dear Christine. I’m a huge fan of your mother’s work, actually,” she adds with a broad smile, as Indira reluctantly begins to lower the weapon. “Admirable stuff. And she keeps herself so accessible to her supporters: practically no security at all! Anyone can just walk up and… well.”

“Is that supposed to be a threat?” Indira snaps, eyes widening in instant anger. Before Christine can make it around the car and intervene, to her horror she watches her sister step closer to the amused-looking murderer and press the taser up beneath her chin, an act Amber makes no move whatsoever to prevent. “I don’t care about your reputation or how terrified of you everybody is: if you go anywhere near any member of my family, I will find you and I will end you. Do you understand?” Indira snarls.

To Christine’s relief, Amber erupts in peals of delighted laughter rather than reacting in any of the hundred other ways she’s been unable to prevent herself picturing, and though she does effortlessly bat the taser away, it’s to pull a wrong-footed Indira into a brief and extremely one-sided hug. “Brava, darling! What conviction!” she says, to all appearances genuinely enthused. “I like this one,” she adds to Christine, who is still trying her best not to faint.

Indira shoves Amber away, clearly meeting more resistance than she expected in the act. “Just stay away from my mum,” she snaps, scowling.

“Listen, we’re all tired,” Christine says, trying desperately to defuse the two women. “We should get inside, maybe grab something to eat. I really need to find Paige; she’s probably losing it worrying about me.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” Indira replies, putting the taser back in her bag. Rather stiffly she walks around the car, leaving Christine and Amber to follow a few steps behind. At the door, almost as an afterthought Indira turns, standing on the top step and blocking the entrance with her body in a way that could almost pass for accidental. “So I suppose you’ll be back on the road, then, Amber,” she says, too sweetly. “Wouldn’t want the trail to get cold, would we?”

Amber stifles a laugh, hand on jutting hip. “I can’t exactly go anywhere when you left my car sitting on an access road somewhere outside Birmingham, darling.”

Indira considers this for a moment, then wordlessly tosses a single key on a plastic fob to Amber, whose hand snatches it out of the air with the speed and suddenness of a striking cobra. “There. Beatrice won’t mind. In fact, I suspect she’ll think it’s the best use of resources since we started buying those stupid sharks in bulk.”

“So eager to get rid of me!” Amber laughs, mock-offended. “Sadly, I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly leave yet. You see, this is precisely where dear Christine and I need to be; the next step in our investigation. Which, lest we forget, is being undertaken in the interest of preventing any more tragedies befalling our beloved Sisters.”

This takes a moment to sink in with Christine. “Wait, you’re saying the second abattoir girl is here? At Dorley?” she says eventually, aghast.

“Exactly!” Amber replies, grinning, clearly enjoying the revelation enormously. “Your face right now, darling. You can see why I was so tickled when I saw the map. Couldn’t have planned it better, really.”

“But that’s… I mean, what? How? And for how long? Even if she’s a bit more, you know, normal than Annabelle, I don’t see how someone could just like, show up and go unnoticed! I’m supposed to be in charge of security, for god’s sake!” Christine exclaims.

Amber shrugs. “There are all those terribly tedious people on the upper floors. She might have passed herself off as a student and be living up there. I suppose she might actually be a student, although if you’d met Jessica you’d understand why I think that’s a little unlikely.”

“Oh no. She’s weird, isn’t she?” Christine groans.

“She’s a unique and beautiful flower,” Amber says, primly.

“So let me get this right,” says Indira, face like a thundercloud. “Now you’re telling me there’s been some kind of deranged killer living under our roof for god knows how long, and nobody’s noticed?”

“It’s hardly as if it’s the first time, is it, darling?” Amber says happily. “You might almost say it’s in danger of becoming a Dorley tradition.”

***

The front door opens with an almost grudging series of beeps and clunks, admitting all three women to a Dorley Hall which seems to Christine newly eerie, full of deep, pitch-black shadows and ambiguous silhouettes, any of which could be Amber’s wayward daughter, blade in hand and poised ready to strike. The entrance hall lights come on with a soft buzz, dispelling the dark, if not her fears; she instinctively huddles closer to Amber and finds herself unsettled by how much safer she feels. Even in this state she manages to be a little embarrassed when she lets out a yelp of fear at the appearance of a figure in the dark ahead, only to be confronted with the singularly unthreatening sight of Faye.

“Christine! You’re okay! I heard you’d been kidnapped by a murderer or something, but like… clearly not,” Faye laughs awkwardly. “Honestly not even the weirdest rumour that’s gone around the girls lately,” she adds.

“Hey, Faye, listen, we’re…” Christine begins, desperately trying to figure out how to gently dissuade her from sticking around or asking any questions.

“Well, hello, you beautiful thing!” Amber exclaims brightly, turning that unsettlingly intense grey gaze on the wholly unprepared Faye, who actually appears to shrink slightly from the sheer force of it. “Oh, darling, you’re not long up in the daylight and fresh air, are you? But by the look of things, you’re doing simply wonderfully. Well done you! It really is the best time; I made so many wonderful memories in my second year. Treasure these moments, sweetheart, and remember the outside locks can be bypassed with two bits of tinfoil and a paperclip if you’re clever about it.”

“Oh. Oh! Thank god, you’re from here. I thought I was going to have to try to act normal. Hi, I’m Faye,” Faye says, visibly relaxing to the exact same degree as Christine and Indira tense up.

“Amber. A pleasure to meet you, genuinely,” Amber replies, beaming fit to light up a stadium.

“Amber! Wait, that was the name Mia and the others… the, er, the one who… I mean, the serial killer…” Faye says, starting strong but tailing off in time with her falling face. Meanwhile, Amber looks almost flattered.

“Hahaha, those girls! What ridiculous thing will they make up next, right?” Christine laughs desperately, forcing the world’s least convincing grin.

“Amber’s a graduate from a few years back. She’s just dropping by briefly. Very briefly. So briefly you could blink and just miss it completely,” Indira says firmly.

“Oh, now, that’s-“ Amber begins, before Faye - having gathered that everyone’s incredibly tense but with no idea how to escape, and thus panicking - cuts her off.

“You look amazing, by the way, Christine! I love your hair and makeup, and that outfit’s gorgeous,” she blurts. “If that’s what getting kidnapped looks like, haha, sign me up!”

Amber enthusiastically raises a finger and opens her mouth to reply, but Indira gets there first with the world’s flattest “No.”

“Anyway, it’s, uh, late, so we really should get on,” Christine manages to say. Faye nods far too quickly and gratefully seizes the opportunity to get away, practically running off toward the second-year dorms with barely a goodbye.

“Nice girl. Bit strange, but then who isn’t?” Amber opines.

“Look, I really do need to find Paige,” Christine says, as the three of them reach the intersection between corridors, the internal pressure of guilt and worry having reached a level where she can’t ignore it any more.

“I’ll come with you,” Indira says, to her surprise.

“You’re okay to wait for a little bit?” Christine asks Amber, well aware of how ridiculous that sounds. “I’ll be quick, and then we can head to the security room and take a look at the top-floor residents. See if any of them ring a bell. That all right?”

Amber sighs theatrically. “I suppose I shall have to make my own amusement for a while.”

“Please don’t,” Indira says, flatly.

Outside the kitchen and halfway down the corridor, Indira strides a couple of paces ahead of Christine, turns to block her progress, and regards her with a severe look. “Teenie, what are you doing?” she demands, while Christine frowns in genuine confusion, backed against the wall and caught off-guard.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re acting like you actually want to help her with this stupid investigation of hers! Talking like you’re a team! Let’s not forget, she kidnapped you!”

“Yeah, okay, I mean, fair, but it’s not as if she’s done me any harm, is it?” Christine says, instinctively defensive despite herself. “Whatever else she is, she keeps her word.”

“She drugged you and drove you to Leeds. Leeds, Christine. And then she dragged you down into the deranged murder-maze she built to turn innocent boys into evil girls, where a lunatic who either owned or was a haunted Victorian doll - your words! - literally tried to melt you with acid. Before Amber stabbed her. That’s pretty far from no harm in my book!”

“There’s a potential killer inside Dorley’s walls, Dira!” Christine exclaims, unable to believe she’s again having to justify her desire to protect her Sisters, and more than a little sensitive about the way she’s been drawn into Amber’s orbit regardless of morality and good sense.

“And it doesn’t need to be your job to catch her! I’m terrified you’re going to get hurt if you keep doing this!” Indira pleads with her.

“I’m terrified you’re going to if I don’t!” Christine almost shouts back. “You, or Paige, or Abby, or any of the other people I love! Or everyone, for that matter! If Amber wants me, or needs me, or whatever, that’s fine as long as it keeps you all safe.”

“We both know perfectly well that’s an excuse, Teenie, and not a good one! She’d be fine without you, and it’s clear to anyone who’s not gotten seduced by a mass murderer that she’s got some sinister plan in mind for you!”

“I’m not stupid, Dira!” Christine says, still a little too loudly. “And I’m not oblivious! Yeah, she probably is up to something, and I doubt it’’s anything nice. But I’m not just going along with whatever she says! And she actually is trying to save our Sisters before we’re all exposed, which nobody else seems to be doing! I mean, where’s Aunt Bea right now, hm? Not solving the murders!”

“She’s away trying to save you! From Amber!” Indira snaps, incredulous.

“But she didn’t, did she? You had to take it into your own hands! Which is just what Amber’s doing! …uh, and thankyou. By the way. For saving me. I don’t think I ever said,” Christine says, subsiding in embarrassment as the last few hours’ events rise through the fog of exhaustion and fear.

“I’d tase a serial killer for you any time,” Indira says, giving Christine a wan smile. “In fact, we can go back to the kitchen and I’ll tase her again right now if you like!” she adds, breaking into a very welcome grin.

“Trust me, Dira. I know what I’m doing,” Christine tells her, wishing she felt half as confident as she sounds, and less than certain she even sounds all that confident in the first place.

“I really hope you do,” Indira says, and she could hardly look less reassured.

***

The two girls walk the rest of the way to Vicky’s room - where Paige has been staying while in a state of extreme distress brought on by her girlfriend’s unscheduled excursion - in silence, and Indira remains outside to give the pair of them some privacy. There’s the sound of voices from within, first loud, then soft, and Indira makes a conscious effort not to pick up a word. When Christine emerges half an hour later it’s with her face puffy and streaked with fresh tears, but she’s smiling.

“You two are okay, then?” Indira asks, with a mixture of relief and concern.

“Yeah, we’re good,” Christine says, visibly slightly astonished that she’s able to say that.

“And the thing with Amber? Whatever it is that’s gone wrong in your head that makes you believe you have to do this with her?”

“She understands why I’ve got to,” Christine says, carefully.

“Oh, great, then she can explain it to me,” Indira says, but it’s clear this is the last sputter of fuel in the empty tank of her opposition.

“You’ll keep an eye on her for me, though, right?” Christine asks.

“Of course I will,” Indira says, and there’s time for a quick hug to reaffirm everything they are to each other despite it all, before Christine’s hurrying back down to the kitchen, hoping desperately that Amber hasn’t killed anyone in her absence.

***

Amber, sitting primly at the kitchen table and lackadaisically scrolling her phone, is practically the picture of a well-behaved serial killer, although she has acquired a mug reading “A Man Needs A Heart Like A Girl Needs Her Testicles: Desperately, But Don’t Let That Stop You” from somewhere and is delicately sipping tea from it.

“Everything’s all right with the lovely Paige, I trust?” she asks, as Christine rounds the door and does a minor double-take at the sheer implausible normalcy of the scene.

“Mm-hm. Thanks for waiting,” Christine says, in the spirit of harmonious coexistence with the killer. “So, shall we head down to the basement?”

“Darling, nothing but good has ever come of someone asking that,” Amber says, a broad smile lighting up her face.

The pair are met at the foot of the stairs down by two security staff, at heightened alert on Beatrice’s parting orders and twitchy from seeing someone they don’t recognise on the basement entrance camera. Christine notices with alarm the smile that creeps across Amber’s features at the sight of them, and recalls all too clearly how the PMC guards were her playthings of choice during her own interment in the basement. The position of relative authority she’s still having to remind herself she holds lets Christine send them on a break for half an hour with a minimum of pushback - albeit not zero - and she has to tell herself she’s probably saving their lives in order to be firm enough that they eventually relent. With that done, the trip through the basement is uneventful; it’s late enough that the residents are in bed, and Christine’s worry that one of them will be on their way to or from the bathroom proves unfounded, which is a relief. Amber is unusually quiet, although whether that’s from a flood of old memories or whether she’s planning something, Christine can’t say. Reaching the security room, Amber settles into one of the seats in front of the surveillance desk with all the ease and familiarity of a long-awaited homecoming, which Christine figures makes sense given that she’s probably spent more time in there than Christine herself.

“So, let’s have a little look at our suspects, shall we?” she says brightly, letting Christine enter her credentials with an indulgently averted eye, then smoothly taking over and navigating through systems she can’t possibly have encountered before as easily if she’d written them herself. “No. No. Not her,” she mutters, scrolling through surveillance photos of the oblivious upper-floor residents at a pace Christine can’t begin to keep up with. “No, no… oh, she really should do something about those ears, don’t you think, darling? I wonder if Beatrice could be persuaded to book her in for a touch of surgery, just as a mercy to the poor girl. Hm, no, no, no… and that’s all of them. Well. That’s a bit of a let-down.”

“So this means she’s not here after all?” Christine says, daring to entertain a sliver of, if not hope, then at least the dream that hope might be a thing that exists in the world.

“Well, the tracker is pinging from this location,” Amber says, levelly. “They don’t lie, as a matter of course.”

“And there’s no way she could have, I don’t know, removed it?” Christine asks, unable to stop picturing a hunk of scooped-out flesh mouldering in some drawer somewhere, awaiting an unsuspecting second-year rummaging around looking for the can opener.

“Not unless she’s found a way to live without her C7 vertebra, darling,” Amber laughs. “And if she has, she’ll be extremely easy to catch. No, this is very odd.”

“So what do you want to do?” Christine asks, tired and out of ideas of her own.

“Oh, I don’t know: perhaps a little stroll around the old pile? Kicking over a few rocks and seeing what scurries out?” Amber says, but it’s clear she isn’t really paying attention; instead she’s clicked through to the camera feeds from the current captives’ rooms, where she’s skimming through archived footage dating from the earliest days to the present with the predatory focus of a cat. “My, my, what a lovely crop we have this year,” she says appreciatively, scrubbing through video of Will banging on the walls of his cell and screaming for help.

“Uh, yeah. They’re… great,” Christine manages.

“Purely out of curiosity, what’s your reason for looping the footage from this one particular debutante-to-be’s room?” Amber asks, frowning delicately. “None of the sponsors have been taking liberties, I hope?”

“No! Of course not! They’d never- wait, what do you mean, looping?” Christine demands, completely wrong-footed.

“I don’t mean to question your professionalism, darling. It’s very well done. Almost imperceptible, really; I used to do much the same thing with my room when I was in the mood for a night on the town. I’d just hate to think anyone was coercing you into covering for their indiscretions, that’s all.”

“I genuinely don’t know what you’re talking about,” Christine says helplessly, feeling surprisingly embarrassed to be so oblivious to anomalous activity on the system she’s nominally in charge of.

“How strange. It happens on the feed from almost every new intake’s room, but only once or twice, as far as I can tell, and early in their stay - look here, you can just make out the cut where the footage has been spliced. Always late at night, between perhaps one and three a.m. But there’s only one where it continues: two, three times a week, right up to the present. See? This is from last Tuesday night.”

“What in the actual fuck?” Christie exclaims in horror, heedlessly taking over control of the surveillance desk, which Amber cedes without complaint. “Why would someone be tampering with the room feeds? What the hell are they covering up? And even more than that, why would they be solely focused on…”

***

“Aaron.” Christine says. “Aaron. AARON!”

“Mwhuh… whah? No, I can’t have another omelette, there’s no room in my shoes,” Aaron mumbles, struggling to turn over and face the intruders thanks to the way he’s tangled himself in his sheets. He’s bedheaded and bleary-eyed, squinting at the unwelcome light from the corridor, and Christine feels like a heel for waking him, but she can’t disagree with Amber’s amused insistence that the situation needs to be addressed immediately. At least, she notes with relief, he isn’t alone; Steph is coming to alongside him, and as she recognises Christine she leaps to her feet and runs over to wrap her in a warm, slightly unsteady embrace.

“You’re okay! God, I was terrified when I heard what happened! Paige is- you’ve seen Paige, right? She knows you’re back?”

“First thing I did,” Christine confirms.

“Okay, good, that’s good. And what about what’s-her-name, this big scary killer? Amber? Did Aunt Bea do something, or Indira, or…?”

“Hello!” Amber calls out brightly, from behind Christine in the doorway. “Still here, I’m afraid! Lovely to meet you!”

“Oh, shit, the murderer!” Aaron blurts, seeming like he’s moving to defend Steph, but actually unmistakably half-hiding behind her. “Wait, fuck, is that offensive? Is there a politically correct way to say that, like, should I be saying person of stabbing experience or body-burying-American or - no, hang on, you’re not American, are you? Please don’t kill me for saying you’re American, I’ve barely gotten my head around wanting to live!”

“Oh, he’s adorable!” Amber says, peering excitedly around Christine’s attempted blockade in plausibly sincere excitement. “I simply can’t wait to see how you turn out, sweetheart. You’re going to be so pretty!”

“Why does everyone keep saying that?” Aaron mutters sulkily.

“Anyway, what exactly are you doing in Aaron’s - no, hang on, our - room at two in the morning?” Steph demands, talking around Christine like she’s an awkwardly-placed pillar.

“And you must be the girl who infiltrated Dorley Hall for her own nefarious ends!” Amber says warmly. “Fabulous work, darling, truly. Would that more women took the initiative the way you have.”

“Er, thanks,” Steph mumbles, now looking at Christine for assistance, who shrugs helplessly with her eyebrows, unsure how to help someone else withstand the sheer glittering force of Amber’s regard when she hasn’t remotely figured out how to herself.

“Listen, the reason we’re here - this is going to sound weird, Aaron,” she launches in, knowing full well how she sounds.

“Oh no, something weird’s going on in the secret feminisation basement?” Aaron says, shooting for sarcasm but falling tragically short. “No, really, what is it?” he asks, sounding more scared than anything else.

“I don’t really know how to ask this, but… has someone been coming into your room at night? Someone… bad?” Christine says gravely, and Aaron’s lack of an immediate reply to the contrary makes Steph’s eyebrows shoot up as she turns to look at her ashen-faced partner in horrified confusion. And that’s when, with a sharp, distant bang and a series of clicks, the room light, the corridor lights, and every other light in Dorley Hall goes out.

“She said she wasn’t real!” Aaron moans in the pitch-dark, as the sound of panicked voices and running feet filter down through the open door to the floor above. “She’d just stand at the end of the bed and stare at me! She said she was my sleep paralysis demon! And that I should close my eyes and forget about her! The one time I tried to tell Maria about it, she said I was dreaming, and the next night she was closer! And I thought well, it’s okay, she’s only in my brain, but then I was like, I do sort of need my brain, like, will my body die if my brain thinks I’ve been murdered by a terrifying girl in a white dress who just keeps turning up in my room? So maybe I shouldn’t piss her off? And now you’re telling me she’s real and she’s here and oh god, oh god, what’s happening?”

“Aaron, breathe!” Christine says. “Amber? Anything to contribute?”

“She did always love to stare,” Amber says wistfully.

“Who?” Steph demands.

“One of Amber’s… god, I don’t know, daughters? Sisters? Creations? Have we decided exactly what they are to you yet?” Christine says.

“Oh, whichever they like. I confess I’ve given up worrying too much about the distinction,” Amber says disinterestedly. “Anyway, yes, this certainly does sound like dear Jessica’s style. JESSICA, IS THAT YOU? YOU’RE BEING VERY NAUGHTY, AND I’D VERY MUCH APPRECIATE IF YOU SHOWED YOURSELF RIGHT NOW!” she yells into the ceiling and walls at large. “She always did have a way of getting into things,” she says, conversationally. “One time she found her way into the sluice channels under the old processing room, and it was almost a week before I managed to flush her out. I had to resort to tear gas, in the end. Such a fuss.”

“But what would she be doing here?” Christine asks, desperately.

“Who knows?” Amber says, with a delicate little shrug. “She always preferred a basement to lurk in. Can you imagine, she was the only one of the girls who actually liked the Punishment Hole? Terribly hard to motivate. And I was always finding her little trophies stashed here and there. Some of them more than a little gnawed on, between you and me. And that’s not even the worst of it-” she adds, conspiratorially. Mercifully for Steph and Aaron’s innocence, and what little remains of Christine’s, she’s interrupted at this point by the grumbling, boot-stamping arrival of the pair of security staff, hurrying back from their break bearing high-powered flashlights.

“Connection to the grid has been tampered with, as best I can tell,” the first, a tall man with a shaved head, says brusquely. “I’ve had Ms. Mui on the walkie; she’s upstairs on the phone to the power company, but they say it’s not on their end, and it doesn’t sound like they’re getting anyone out tonight.”

“But then why hasn’t the generator come on?” Christine asks, although she strongly suspects she knows exactly why.

“There’s some sort of damage in the backup room,” says the second guard, a shortish, solidly-built man with a face that strongly implies the presence of a bulldog somewhere in his family tree. “I’ve just been down and looked, and I’m no electrician, but even I can see there’s no quick fix for that.”

“Shit,” Christine breathes. “Look, there’s… there might be reason to believe the person who did this is… erm, could be moving around in the utility shafts. The dumbwaiters, the air vents, they’re not supposed to be connected, but it’d be easy enough to get from one to another, right? Be careful, is what I’m saying.”

“In the shafts, you say?” the first guard says, moving Steph and Aaron gently but firmly aside and hauling open the dumbwaiter hatch in the corner of the room, despite Christine’s faltering attempts to urge caution. She can’t avoid registering how quiet Amber has been since the pair of security staff arrived, and as the torchbeam passes over the woman’s face she sees a smile of anticipatory pleasure spreading across her features. The guard shines his torch around in the shaft, leaning his head and shoulders inside, and Christine calls out desperately to him to get back, but he clearly can’t hear her. She tenses, unsure what she’s expecting but certain it can’t be good, and thus is surprised to see the man finish his inspection and turn back to the others without incident.

“Well, I don’t know what’s-” he begins, but he’s interrupted by a sudden rattling, scuttling sound from somewhere above the room’s ceiling, like some huge animal running across a metal grate. In the wavering light of the other guard’s torch, all Christine sees is a pair of pale hands with long, spindly fingers reaching deceptively slowly out of the dumbwaiter. She feels like she’s trapped in slow-motion as she tries to scream a warning, moving through molasses as she reaches out to yank him away, but it’s at double speed that the hands clasp tight around the man’s horror-struck face, and yank him bodily back and up into the unlit void of the shaft as if he weighs nothing at all. There’s a scream more of surprise than anything, then another - this one a low, animal noise, conveying pain, terror, confusion - and, finally, something that’s at first difficult to place, but rapidly resolves into the unmistakable sound of mastication.

“Ugh, I never did quite manage to break her of that habit. Terribly unsanitary,” Amber murmurs, but her tone is distinctly amused.

“What the FUCK?” the other guard explodes, the rifle Christine hadn’t registered he was carrying drawn and pointed waveringly at the aperture into which his colleague just vanished. Steph is gasping in great, fearful sobs, and Aaron appears to be undergoing a non-verbal panic attack directly into her T-shirt, but they’re both huddled in the corner opposite the hatch and are therefore, Christine hopes, relatively safe. Amber is absent, she notices with consternation, but as she’s realising this the woman slips back into the room and elbows confidently past the remaining guard’s wildly trembling gun-barrel to stand before the dumbwaiter hatch. She’s acquired a broom from somewhere, presumably the nominally locked cleaning cupboard, and as Christine watches in slightly hysterical amusement, she starts poking it around in the dumbwaiter shaft, yelling “JESSICA, I’M GETTING QUITE CROSS NOW! STOP BEING A SILLY GIRL AND COME OUT!”

“Well, nobody can say I didn’t try,” Amber concludes after a minute or so spent this way, and returns to leaning nonchalantly against the wall, inspecting her nails as if she’s killing time before an appointment.

“You know what? Balls to this,” the guard says, quite sensibly backing away, gun still fixed on that dark hole as another flurry of clattering and shuffling resounds from above. “The room doors default to locked on a power outage, right?”

“Yeah, they fall back on the physical locks; you can open them with the main key,” Christine replies, feeling momentarily grateful for something practical to focus on.

“Okay. So we get the other inmates out, we get upstairs, and whatever’s in there can’t get the drop on us so easy,” the man says, his soldier’s instincts visibly taking over.

“You want to let them out?” Christine says, still enough of a Dorley girl to be horrified at the thought of boys not yet finished with their first year being allowed above ground.

“Not out; you’d best believe I’ll have this pointed at them the whole time,” he says, raising his gun a degree to indicate it. “But protecting the residents is part of the brief. The dumbwaiters and the air vents run to all the rooms; if whoever’s in there can get in here, they can get in any of them. We can’t just leave them, can we?”

“No, we can’t,” Christine admits, feeling slightly abashed. “Steph, you and Aaron go ahead; get upstairs and safe, and see if you can find any senior sponsors to help keep the boys in line. Okay?”

“Yeah, I can do that,” Steph sniffs, clutching the wild-eyed Aaron close.

“Great. Amber, I feel like you’re not going to actually help. Am I right?”

“Probably, darling, on balance,” Amber says, her smile cadaverous in the torchlight.

“Will you at least go with them?” Christine suggests, on some level surprised at herself for considering a self-proclaimed serial killer the best choice to protect her friends, but nonetheless determined to give them the best odds possible. “I doubt she could get past you if she tried, and I have this weird feeling you can see in the dark.”

“Aha, Christine, sweetheart, I love your little jokes,” Amber says. “Of course I’ll escort the lovely couple. It would be my pleasure.”

“And they’re, you know, safe. With you. Right?” Christine asks, hesitantly.

“Naturally! I shall guard them with my very life,” Amber replies, trying and failing to suppress a giggle. Christine turns to the confused-looking guard and motions for him to follow, then very hesitantly steps out into the darkened corridor, with only the wavering light from his torch to see by. Amber leads Steph and Aaron away like a mother hen guiding her chicks, while the man fumbles with the keyring at his belt, standing with Christine in front of Will’s door, where her mind races trying to figure out how the hell she’s going to explain the situation. She gets a reprieve, although she’s far from happy to receive it, when above the guard’s head she notices an air-vent is missing its cover, and that same pair of weirdly elongated hands are reaching delicately out toward their unsuspecting victim. This time she’s quick enough to shove the man a stumbling step or two, causing the clawed fingers to graze his ear and scrabble at his uniform shirt but fail to find purchase; the hands retract snake-quick, accompanied by a genuinely blood-chilling shriek of frustration from somewhere inside the vent, and for the briefest moment in the ensuing panic the guard’s torchbeam illuminates a bone-white face mostly covered by lank black hair, like something out of a horror movie or a particularly lurid nightmare. If that’s what she looks like, Christine can easily see how Jessica might have passed herself off as a product of Aaron’s overactive nighttime mind.

“HOLY FUCK! Nope! That’s it, I’m out, I’m done,” the guard blurts. He practically tears the keyring off his belt and shoves it at Christine. “Fuck the job, fuck the contract, fuck all of this. I wasn’t hired to get murdered by the kid from the fucking Ring, I’m-“

“The door to the upstairs is locked,” says a prematurely returned Steph, in a small, terrified voice that nonetheless startles the guard into silence.

“The door’s locked and she’s real and she’s in here with us and there’s no way out! There’s no way out!” Aaron moans, clutching Steph’s arm, wild-eyed and twitchy with panic.

“You! Whoever the fuck you are, you know something about this. You’d better start talking, right now,” the guard barks, shoving the barrel of the gun into Amber’s face where she’s standing smirking behind the couple. In response her expression shifts smoothly from detached amusement to a broad Cheshire Cat grin. Christine has the sudden impulse to shove the gun aside, whether to protect Amber or the guard himself, but she’s far from certain the man won’t fire, between his obvious terror at the ongoing shuffling and scraping from the vents and Amber’s refusal to be intimidated.

“Good eye, that man,” Amber says, tone light and patronising. “I could tell you everything you might possibly want to know about who that is. And it still wouldn’t do a thing to protect you.”

“What about the rest of us, Amber? And the other boys?” Christine demands.

“Well, you’re quite safe, I can promise you that. As for the others, I really can’t say, darling; it’s anyone’s guess how Jessica is likely to view our little works-in-progress down here. And dear Steph, of course, is another question entirely. But won’t it be marvellous fun finding out?”

“Oh, fuck you, Amber,” Christine snaps, the fear and tension finally having pushed her past the point of caution. “This isn’t a game! These are my friends! And, I mean, the boys, they’re the next generation of Dorley girls! You’re always saying you love your Sisters; isn’t standing there while Jessica kills them the same thing as doing it yourself?”

Amber lets out a heartfelt sigh. “Alright, darling. You’re right; I’m sorry,” she says, to Christine’s genuine surprise. “I got a little caught up in the excitement of seeing my sweet Jessica expressing herself. But you’re absolutely right: I can’t in all good conscience let her hurt any of our Sisters-to-be, let alone this lovely young couple. Thankfully I have a nice, quick way to resolve this silliness.”

In a single movement, almost too quick for Christine’s eye to follow, Amber steps inside the gun’s reach while twisting it aside, very likely breaking the guard’s wrist in the process if the sudden, anguished eruption of noise is any evidence. The man’s bellowing is short-lived, though, because Amber has slipped what appears to be a wire garrotte around his throat, and despite his frantic scrabbling with the one hand that isn’t both ruined and tangled up with his gun, he appears powerless to make the much smaller, slighter woman let go. Christine moves to block the view from the whimpering Aaron, and Steph seems to snap out of her state of shock enough to bundle him up and turn both of their faces away, but nothing can silence the desperate choking, bubbling noises the luckless guard makes for a horribly long time before he finally slumps heavily to the floor. Christine finds herself less affected than she might have imagined, considering what she’s seen and done over the last couple of days, but she’s still left on the verge of throwing up by the bulge-eyed terror on the poor man’s face and the soft, satisfied sound Amber makes, seemingly without realising it, as the last rattling wheeze escapes his lungs. By the time Christine has gotten control of her rising bile enough to demand Amber explain what the point of this was supposed to have been, she’s stopped short, her indrawn breath become a gasp of fear, as she watches a spiderlike shape unfurl itself jerkily from an air-con vent further down toward the security room.

“Mother! That one was mine!” Jessica complains. “And look, you’ve upset dear, sweet Aaron! He’s positively inconsolable!” Her voice is deeply unsettling: high, scratchy and uneven, wavering from quiet to loud sometimes within the same word. What can be seen of her in the beam of the torch Amber took from the fallen guard isn’t any better; caught in the harsh circle of light she looks weirdly elongated, a pale-white wraith twitching at the joints like a badly-strung puppet, so severely hunched forward that her long, black hair falls almost completely across her face. Thanks to this, it’s difficult for Christine to tell whether she shares Annabelle’s incongruous beauty, or whether the girl’s dirty white shift is covering a whole panoply of physical abnormalities that Christine’s mind is all too eager to fill in, but Amber seems genuinely delighted to see her.

“Apologies, darling, but everyone really did want you to stop being such a silly girl and come out,” Amber says, quite without contrition. “If you insist on spending all your time crawling around in the ductwork like a lunatic, you shouldn’t be surprised when life’s opportunities pass you by. Don’t you think?”

“I suppose so, Mother,” Jessica mumbles sulkily.

“What are you even doing here?” Amber asks, seeming genuinely interested.

“Watching. Listening. Seeing the pretty little flowers bloom. Keeping an eye on beautiful, precious Aaron, of course. When I get hungry, sometimes I make little trips into town. Those are nice.”

“No, darling, I understand that, even if I mildly wish I didn’t, but what I mean is: why here? How did you even find out about this place? You really weren’t supposed to.”

“Oh, Mumsie, it’s ever so funny a story! I was living with a simply lovely man - well, behind his walls, which is almost the same thing - and after the terribly tragic accident happened to his fiancé, he decided to move up to Almsworth and get a new start, with a job at the university. Obviously, I had to follow; we were meant to be together. We were in love. But I’d barely been here a week when I saw the strangest thing from the air-conditioning vents at the leisure centre - a boy, a very mean, nasty boy, drugged and bundled up and snatched away by the prettiest girls you ever did see! Just like Mumsie dearest did with us! Well, I completely lost interest in boring old Toby then and there, which was fortunate, because I was getting terribly hungry. Anyway, I followed along, and I couldn’t believe what I’d found! The place our own dear Mother was made! Well, of course I stayed; there were so many interesting people to watch, and secrets to learn, and things to touch! And then I discovered darling Aaron, and instantly I knew I had to protect every hair on his precious little head. So here I am!”

“Erm, what’s this about Aaron?” Christine asks, very gently, in what against her better judgment she’s beginning to think of as her talking-to-Amber’s-daughters-without-getting-stabbed voice. “Why, uh, him?”

“Oh, I don’t know. He’s just a funny little guy, isn’t he?” Jessica says, the corner of a crooked smile peeking out from beneath her lank veil of hair.

“How did you even get here, O daughter mine?” Amber asks, fascinated.

“I hitch-hiked most of the way,” Jessica says. Seemingly picking up on Christine’s opinion on the likelihood of anyone doing anything but accelerating, possibly straight toward her, upon seeing Jessica’s spiderlike form lurking by the side of the road, Amber’s creation tilts her head to stare at her with one saucer-wide eye, a singularly unsettling experience. “Hi! My car broke down a little way back and, wouldn’t you know it, my phone’s died! I’d be so, so grateful for a lift up to Almsworth, if you’re headed that way!” she says suddenly, in a perfect, clear, nonspecifically middle-class accent, straightening up and shaking her hair out of her face, her entire affect and posture shifting the exact way Christine has seen Amber’s do. To Christine’s further surprise, this reveals there’s nothing at all unusual about Jessica’s physical proportions: she’s skinny, but it really does seem the almost inhumanly elongated nature of her extremities is a trick of the eye borne of low light and the intensely weird way she moves. She’s still filthy, but apart from that Jessica could easily walk down any street and attract no more attention than the usual background hum of sexual harassment associated with being an attractive young woman in the UK. And then, just as abruptly, she drops the act, and Amber’s daughter is once again a twitching assemblage of sticklike limbs, her hair falling back over her downturned face and her hands clawed and ready to grasp and tear.

“Okayyy. Wow. So, uh, what now?” Steph asks, clearly dreading the answer and giving Jessica an extremely wide berth.

“Well, the reason we were, I mean, I guess kind of looking for you, Jessica, is, erm… listen, you haven’t been anywhere near Leeds in the past week or two, have you? Or Glasgow?” Christine asks, since Amber seems momentarily lost in appreciation for her creation’s ingenuity.

“No, never, nothing like that at all!” Jessica says. “There’s far too much going on here for me to even consider leaving. Why, if I averted my gaze for even a moment, who knows what might happen to dear little Aaron? The last time I let myself get distracted, when I was writing my radical reinterpretation of Plato’s allegories - it’s mostly on the walls of the ventilation system, and I think it’s very good, but you should really read it soon if you’re going to, because blood tends not to last - something awful happened,” she says, suddenly intense, her one visible eye glaring daggers in the general direction of her obsession and the girl he’s currently sheltering behind.

“Why is she looking at me?” Steph asks meekly, shrinking away, petrified. “What did I do?”

“I don’t like you,” Jessica murmurs, in a low, genuinely chilling tone.

“Okay, so I can’t be the only one who doesn’t feel great about leaving her alone tonight, in light of that,” Christine says, slightly manic, looking to Amber in the hope of some kind of help. “Maybe we can put her in one of the spare rooms for the night. And you could share with her, Amber? To, erm, keep an eye on her? Make sure she doesn’t… get into any trouble?” she suggests desperately.

“Oh, I can just go back in the vents, it’s no trouble at all,” Jessica suggests, a touch plaintive.

“No.”

“I’m really very comfortable in there, I-“

“No.”

“I could keep watch on everyone, and-“

“No.”

“I’m sorry, why are we talking about her staying over like that’s remotely a normal thing we’re all just accepting?” Aaron erupts out of nowhere, startling Christine, who’d half-forgotten he was even there amid all the murder and thinly-veiled threats. “We all - I feel like I’m going insane here - we all just listened to her kill and eat a guy, right? Everybody saw that? I mean, I can understand how you’d maybe have been thrown off by this other random woman - hello, by the way, hi, good to meet you, I’m Aaron and you’re literally a murderer - who just now strangled a different person in the middle of the corridor? The corridor at the secret kidnapping facility that’s turning us into girls? The secret kidnapping facility where there’s been a haunted bag of coat hangers rattling around in the vents for god knows how long, creeping out to stare at me specifically for reasons that I don’t like to think about, and also she just ate a guy? That’s who’s spending the night? Yay, fun, sleepover! Can’t wait!”

“It’s not as if I wasn’t here all along,” Jessica protests. “When you think about it, you’ve never actually spent a night at Dorley without me there, just inches away, so close I could just reach out and touch your perfect little head. So really, if we want things to be normal, I should-“

“Someone please stop her saying things,” Aaron pleads.

“Darling, all this lurking in the dark is very atmospheric, but it really is getting the tiniest bit wearing,” Amber tells her daughter, her smile a thin veneer very obviously barely covering her irritation. “Whatever you did to the backup generator, I trust it can be undone? Quickly? And the key to the basement door, too; hand it over, if you would.”

“Yes, Mother. Of course, Mother, right away,” Jessica mumbles hurriedly. She scuttles forward and places a key in Amber’s hand, then almost immediately she’s pulling herself back into the overhead conduit with those stick-thin arms, and clattering her hurried way off in what Christine can only hope is the direction of the machine room.

“Jessica and I would be happy to share a room for the night,” Amber continues, tone diplomatic.

“Alright, good, great. You two, take this and get out of here,” Christine says to Steph, identifying her as the slightly less obviously traumatised of the pair; she watches with relief as she accepts the key from Amber, bundles Aaron up and hurries away toward the stairs.

“Although, hmm, we should probably do something about this body before we turn in,” Amber muses. “Finding it lying around here won’t be spectacularly helpful for the new girls’ progress if one of them needs the toilet in the night. Believe me, I know. Thankfully, I happen to remember a handy little spot by the back stairs that absolutely nobody ever checks; the rubbish pickup is on Thursday mornings, and what are a couple more bags in the pile, hmm? Be a darling and get his feet for me, would you?”

“Me?” Christine quavers, disbelieving and yet, unfortunately, not wrong. “Help you? Carry… that?”

“I don’t see anyone else around who’s capable,” Amber replies, with a laugh in her voice. “Unless you’d like me to call Aaron and Steph back?”

“Jesus,” Christine breathes, certain she can feel another fragment of her soul cracking away like a calving iceberg as she hefts the dead man’s still-warm legs. She wonders momentarily at how relatively easy the broad, heavily muscled corpse is to lift, before realising how much of the weight Amber is taking, and shifts to fretting that she’s been drafted solely as part of some weird scheme to further inure her to death and horror, because it’s clear the murderer doesn’t actually need help. Thankfully, largely due to the fact Amber is doing most of the work, moving the body proves more awkward than actually difficult, and it’s hefted through the security room and unceremoniously dumped under the rear staircase before Christine really has the time to dwell.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Amber says once it’s done, shooting Christine a sidelong smirk.

“Hmm? What?” Christine murmurs, caught unawares.

“Oh, you just seemed upset about something, darling. Can’t imagine what,” Amber laughs lightly.

“I don’t know. I’m just thinking, like… I know it’s obvious, and I know you don’t care, but… this used to be a person, didn’t it? With thoughts and hopes and dreams and everything,” Christine ventures, shaking her head.

“That it most certainly did,” Amber agrees. “Admittedly, a person who eagerly jumped at the opportunity to perpetrate violence in exchange for a paycheque, lest we get too maudlin. I mean, yes, Dorley does wonderful, necessary work, but these people don’t know that. Meanwhile, I know for certain that the vast majority of their other assignments are hardly so benign. It’s basically the same as being a hitman, isn’t it: pay me enough and you get to tell me who to hurt.”

“And you’ve got a moral objection to that. You. The woman who put three pensioners in an industrial press and left the… cube… on the front steps of the National Crime Agency.”

“In my defence, those three kept some decidedly questionable company in their youth. Their shirts were a little brown in hue, if you catch my meaning,” Amber says, very seriously, before bursting out in a tinkling, airy laugh. “Alright, no, even I’m not quite that much of a hypocrite. I genuinely don’t care what this man was, or did; I just thought it might make you feel a little better to remember that the private security people aren’t exactly saints.”

To Christine’s genuine, horrified surprise, it almost does. Before she’s forced to come up with a response the lights flicker on at the telltale low intensity of the backup generator, and even from the stairwell she can hear the security systems rebooting. Amber lingers behind, rummaging in her bag for something Christine chooses not to stay and observe, instead hurrying back to the security room and beginning an extremely thorough wipe of any records the cameras and microphones might have collected, figuring that shifting the power cut slightly earlier in the timeline might serve to avoid all sorts of awkward questions later. With suspiciously convenient timing, Amber reappears just as Christine’s finishing up, and she’s holding in one hand what Christine belatedly wishes she didn’t realise was a ziploc bag full of bloody teeth.

“Purely out of curiosity, do you know if the main kitchen still has the electric carving knife they used to use for the Christmas turkey?” Amber asks innocently. She waits a moment for a response, but when Christine’s expression makes it abundantly clear that she isn’t getting one, she smoothly continues as if she had. “Oh, don’t worry, I’ll clean it afterwards,” she says, lightly chiding. “Nobody’s ever complained.”

Christine, struggling not to gag, silently swears never to eat another bite of Dorley turkey as long as she lives.

“You know what? I’ll get to it later. It really is probably time we turned in,” Amber says, stifling a slightly unconvincing yawn, as Christine finishes up and resets the system. It’s left as if it had only just come back from the power cut, the login prompt blinking a request for ID from a pair of guards who aren’t ever going to be able to give it. Simultaneously, Jessica slips bonelessly out of an air-con vent Christine hadn’t even realised was there, regaining her feet in a single jerky motion and tilting her hair-veiled face to regard the other two women in what Christine can only interpret as a quizzical expression.

“Hold on, wait, wait. Amber. Have you thought about what the hell we’re going to tell Maria and the other seniors? Or the security company?” Christine asks, desperately hoping there’s some kind of plan but internally resigned to her certainty there isn’t.

“Let me introduce you to the three most beautiful words in the English language, darling,” Amber says. “’Somebody else’s problem’. Dear Maria’s an old hand at managing the security people when one or another of their toy soldiers goes astray; she did it all the time in my day, aha. I’m sure she’ll smooth things over, even if she acts terribly annoyed about it. Personally I think she loves spinning a good story for them: it’s the only excitement in the terribly safe life she’s made for herself here. She craves the next disaster. Understandable, I suppose, given her past.”

“You don’t have to keep working for her afterwards,” Christine grumbles.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart, I shall selflessly shoulder any and all blame,” laughs the woman who actually did kill one of the men and tortured a kidnap victim until he became the girl who partially ate the other.

“Wow, thanks,” Christine murmurs.

Maria is indeed waiting at the top of the stairs, alongside a number of other senior sponsors, who have collectively been growing more frantic by the moment and seem to have been on the verge of trying to batter the door down with one of the long, heavy dining tables before Aaron and Steph emerged. Amber pushes through like an immaculately poised icebreaker, Jessica nestled protectively under her jacket as if she’s a celebrity trying to escape the paparazzi, and the whole thing happens so suddenly and with such assuredness that nobody thinks to question who she is or why she’s there until the pair of them are through and gone, leaving Christine exposed in the open doorway with no answers and nowhere to hide.

“Christine,” Maria says, silencing the clamour of voices with just the one word.

“It’s, ah, it’s Amber, she… I mean, her daughter Jessica. And they, they… in front of Aaron, and… and Steph. They’re… probably not okay.” Christine stammers, wild-eyed and very near the end of her ability to cope.

“Okay. It’s going to be fine, Christine. You get yourself to bed. We’ll sort all of this out, all right? And… thankyou. It’s not fair to make you carry so much on your own. Beatrice should have known better,” Maria says, the gentleness of her tone belying steel underneath.

“Uh,” Christine replies, far too overwhelmed to process this last thing.

“Was it her?” Maria asks, as Christine moves to stumble away, supported on one side by Edie. “Leeds, Glasgow. The murders. Was it her, Christine? This ‘daughter’?”

“No,” Christine says, and genuinely can’t think of anything further to add.

***

“Do you really have to go with her?” Paige murmurs. It’s morning, and she and Christine are cocooned safe in the dark of her bed, bodies furnace-hot against one another and indescribably comforting, where there are no killers or corpses or monstrous daughters to spoil their peace.

“Yeah. I kind of think I do,” Christine says, fighting every single impulse to stay and hating herself for it.

“I still don’t really understand why.”

“I just- I’ve seen a lot of how she… operates… now, you know? I think she can solve this; I’m starting to think maybe she’s the only one who can. But in her fucked-up way, I think she really is desperately lonely. She’s only going to stay interested if she has an audience. To be shocked and appalled on cue, and to ask her all the questions she secretly wants to answer, and to tag along while she does all the horrible shit she does. Otherwise she’s going to get bored and give up, or… or I don’t know, forget why she’s supposed to care and end up helping the murderer or something. She wants it to be this, like, girls’ trip, and I think without someone willing to buy into that, she’s no help whatsoever. If I give up, and there are more murders, that’s on me.”

“All right, but it’s not worth putting yourself in danger for. That’s all I’m saying.” Paige says, leaning up on one elbow and looking Christine in the face with a very serious expression, which only serves to highlight how incredibly beautiful she is.

“I’m genuinely starting to think that for one of, you know, us, being by Amber’s side - being on Amber’s side - is the safest place we could possibly be,” Christine says.

“You can’t guarantee that,” Paige replies.

“I can’t,” Christine agrees, softly.

***

Showering and dressing proceeds without much further conversation, but it’s a good silence, punctuated with smiles and brief touches for reassurance. Paige declines to accompany Christine to breakfast: sanguine about the realities of her girlfriend’s self-appointed task she may be, but she isn’t able to promise she’ll be able to look the woman who kidnapped her in the eye without taking a swing. So it’s with kisses and promises echoing in her head that Christine enters the dining hall, and despite her recent experiences she does an almost cartoonish double-take. Sitting at one of the long trestle tables, surrounded once again by a rapt audience of second- and third-years, is a sparkling, salon-fresh Amber; next to her, to Christine’s abject horror, is Jessica. She’s clean, with freshly glossy black hair brushed back behind her ears, and she’s dressed in a light sweater and jeans Amber must have acquired from somewhere or other during the night. In wondering where it all came from, it strongly occurs to Christine that Paige should probably do an inventory of her copious wardrobe, although that still leaves the question of where Amber found the time to alter it all to fit her and her creation’s decidedly un-Paige-like proportions. Jessica is firmly in what Christine is coming to think of as her normal-girl mode, laughing and chatting with all the ease of somebody who hasn’t spent the last six months living in an air vent.

“Morning, darling! Come, sit! I was just telling these lovely ladies about how Jessica and I first met,” Amber calls out warmly.

“That’s right,” Jessica continues, with the clear, sweet enunciation she seems to be able to switch on and off at will. “I was on such a bad path before Amber found me. Hanging around with all the wrong sorts of people-“ Amber silently mouths something to Christine she could swear is Greenpeace, “-deluding myself into thinking I had a future as a man, you know? You can all relate, I’ll bet. But Amber opened my eyes to all sorts of things I was too afraid to see,” she says, smiling fondly at her torturer and forcible remodeller, “and she really didn’t let me quit, no matter how much I might kick and scream.”

“Sounds like you, Mia,” one of the second-years laughs.

“I didn’t scream that much,” Mia mumbles sulkily, clearly annoyed at being embarrassed in front of Amber, to whom she seems to have developed what Christine considers a deeply troubling attachment.

“You’re lucky Amber found you, Jessie. There are so many girls out there who don’t get the help they need,” Rebecca ventures. Christine swears she catches a momentary twitch of Jessica’s eye and the flicker of a dark expression across her surprisingly delicate features, but as quickly as it appears it’s gone again.

“Oh, don’t I know it!” Jessica says brightly, face instantly back to being earnest and sunny. “And I was so excited to get the chance to visit the place where Amber was given the help she needed, too. I admit it took me a minute to get used to the idea, but when I really thought about it, it made a lot of sense.”

“Weren’t you down in the basement when the power went out? Great welcome to Dorley that was; it must have been terrifying!” Aisha says.

“Oh, it was!” Jessica enthuses. “Stuck down there in the dark, knowing there were these, like, dangerous, unreformed boys just on the other side of those doors. And you start imagining, there could be anything down there with you. Reaching out of the air vents, watching and waiting… haha, your imagination can really run away with you.”

“Was it really the guards? Someone said they got sick of the job and went, what do you call it, AWOL, and broke a bunch of stuff on the way out. Is that true, Christine?” Faye asks, looking perhaps slightly unconvinced by this explanation.

“Officially? No comment. But, er, yeah, that’s more or less what happened, as long as you didn’t hear it from me,” Christine says, desperately hoping the rumour bears at least passing resemblance to whatever story the senior sponsors have settled on.

“Sick. Stick it to the man,” Mia says.

“We’re an all-women organisation,” Cara reminds her.

“Gotta stick it to someone,” she murmurs, defiantly.

“It must be difficult for them, as men, seeing what goes on here. I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often, really,” Amber muses. Christine nods, conscious of the need to reinforce the story but hardly enthusiastic about further slandering a pair of relative innocents.

“So are you staying for longer this time, Amber? I really want to hear how the story about the rugby club and the riverboat ends,” Fiona says, eyes bright.

“You’ll literally never guess,” Amber replies with a cryptic smirk. “But sadly, duty calls; Christine and I really must be off first thing. And Jessica too, of course,” she adds, giving her creation’s skinny arm an encouraging squeeze, which elicits an easy, warm smile in return, almost as if the pair of them were at all what they seem.

“And Jessica too,” Christine repeats flatly.

“Well, of course, sweetie. Would you rather we just left her here?” Amber laughs. “Who knows what sort of trouble she might get into? She’s a dangerous girl, this one.”

Everyone at the table finds this very funny, Jessica included, and if anyone notices how forced Christine’s own laughter appears, they’re polite enough not to say.

***

After forcing down a cup of coffee and a banana in a state of extreme tension induced by the proximity of Amber to the second-years, Christine finally manages to extract the three of them through a series of increasingly strained and unsubtle hints that the younger girls should make themselves scarce, which they eventually do in a grumbling huddle.

“So, it wasn’t Annabelle, and it wasn’t Jessica,” Christine says, walking beside Amber in the general direction of the main entrance. “It wasn’t you, was it, Jessica?”

“I keep telling you, no,” Jessica rasps, back to her unsettling vocal affect now the three of them are, temporarily at least, alone. “How is sweet Annabelle, anyway? I always think of her when I see a pretty dolly, or when somebody swallows a bug.”

“She’s dead,” says Christine, flatly, certain that making something up would be worse but braced for a reaction she can’t begin to predict.

“What a terrible pity,” Jessica says, hardly sounding devastated. “How did she go? Did her dress catch fire and burn her all up like a silly little candle, all spitting fat and crispy skin and screams?”

“Amber stabbed her in the throat,” Christine informs her, deeply regretting whatever sin she committed that’s damned her to have this conversation.

“Well, it’s how she would have wanted to go.”

“Anyway, if it wasn’t either of them, it must be the third one, right?” Christine ventures, looking over at Amber, who seems quietly amused by the whole awful interaction.

“If it was any of them,” she says, in a tone Christine considers infuriatingly breezy.

“You said you were sure it was!” Christine says, appalled.

“I said I hoped it wasn’t. And now I’ve been reacquainted with two of my lovely girls, I have to confess I sincerely doubt that any of them would do such a thing,” Amber says, primly.

“Amber, Jessica ate a man last night.”

“Not all of him!” Jessica protests. “I’ve got my waistline to think about.”

“Anyway, we do still have a responsibility to check on darling Lily. And I’m certainly not claiming to know what she has or hasn’t been up to,” Amber says. “I just can’t imagine her preying on Dorley women. Look at Jessica; if Lily were to stumble upon this place, I expect she’d be just as driven to protect it.”

“Protect?” Christine scoffs, momentarily heedless of Jessica’s presence right next to her. “Tell that to the guards! And Maria, having to cover everything up, and Steph. Not to mention poor…”

“Aaron!” Jessica exclaims delightedly. Christine thinks for a moment that she’s just excited at the mere idea of him, but no, there he is, Steph alongside him, caught descending the stairs from the first floor, where Aaron presumably spent the night on special dispensation in Steph’s room. From the indulgent smile on Amber’s face, it’s crystal clear that she was entirely aware of where the couple were being housed for the night, and picked her route accordingly.

“Oh, uh, hey, hi, girl from my… I mean, who lived in the… and was my… you. Hey, you,” Aaron manages to say, forcing a weak smile, while Steph looks outright ready to fight for her love.

“I hope you didn’t have too horrible and sleepless a night without me there with you,” Jessica says, voice sickly-sweet, moving closer with a sort of disjointed, boneless shuffle. “You know that nasty little usurper could never keep you safe the way I do. You do. Of course you do. Sweet, precious Aaron.”

“Leave him alone,” Steph says, moving protectively in front of Aaron but simultaneously glancing at Christine in a clear, wordless plea for help.

“Yeah, you should. Leave me alone,” Aaron stammers, “Because I, uh, I never actually asked for a terrifying spider-lady crawling around in the air vents and watching me literally all the time. And if I did, I would definitely have specified like, one who didn’t constantly threaten my girlfriend. And also maybe wasn’t a cannibal? Definitely, uh, less of that. And yes, okay, I do get that this place doesn’t exactly run on a foundation of, you know, asking people before you do things or whatever, but I really think this behaviour is, well. A bit much. Right?”

“Adorable!” Jessica exclaims, clapping her hands together in what might be the least encouraging demonstration of joy Christine’s ever witnessed.

“Don’t worry; we were just leaving,” Christine says firmly. “You won’t be seeing Jessica again.”

“Must I really go, Mother?” Jessica asks Amber plaintively, crooking her head so that one wide, beseeching eye is visible through the curtain of hair.

“Yes, I think on balance it’s for the best, sweetheart,” Amber says, reassuringly. “Dorley has its methods, and we mustn’t interfere. Tempting as it may be.”

“Well… if I really have to leave dear Aaron, can I at least have something to remember him by? Just a little tiny token of the precious time we shared?” Jessica pleads. Christine relaxes fractionally, relieved that whatever has transpired between Amber and her creation overnight, it appears to have involved Jessica accepting Dorley isn’t the place for her. An old sweatshirt or a lock of hair seems like a small price to pay in order to get rid of her.

“Perhaps a finger, or a toe?” Jessica ventures, full of hope.

“Oh, go on then, if you must,” Amber says, ever the indulgent big sister. “Just be quick. And only a little one; we don’t want the poor girl falling over or dropping things all the time, do we?”

“Steph!” Aaron cries in fear, stumbling over himself to retreat as Jessica eagerly advances, clutching a vicious little blade she’s produced from somewhere.

“Christine!” Steph calls, urgently.

“Amber!” Christine snaps at the killer beside her.

“Oh, fine, fine. I suppose the poor boy’s going to be losing enough bits and pieces in due time. But really, you try saying no to that face, darling. Come along, Jessica, we’ll get you a lovely toe on the way,” Amber says, laying a restraining hand on Jessica’s spindly arm.

“She won’t be back,” Christine reassures the shaken couple, privately fantasising about the myriad security improvements she’s going to make the very second this whole nightmare is over. Her mind’s-eye version of Dorley Hall could probably repel an army at this point, although even she would admit the moat and the gun emplacements are unlikely to get past Beatrice’s veto. “She won’t, right?” she asks Amber, slightly undermining the reassurance she’s trying to give but sorely in need of some herself.

“No, darling, she won’t. Sweetheart, if I ever hear you’ve come back to Dorley Hall, I shall be very annoyed indeed,” Amber tells Jessica in a stern tone.

“I shan’t, Mumsie. I’ll be good,” Jessica rasps. Amber pats her fondly on the head.

“I know, dear,” she murmurs.

The three of them make their way through the inner layer of security - Amber indulgently allows Christine to unlock the door via legitimate means, and the expression on her face says she feels she’s done her good deed for the day - and Christine is starting to feel that, if nothing else, at least she’s succeeded in getting Jessica out from under Dorley’s roof. So it’s with the faintest glimmer of hope in her heart that she rounds the corner to the entrance hall, and sees Indira standing there silhouetted against the crisp morning light, blocking the way to the doors in an unambiguously combative stance.

“No.” Her voice is calm and clear, and though she only says the one word, there’s no mistaking the intent.

“Pardon, dear?” Amber says, caught halfway between amusement and surprise.

“I said no.” Indira shifts position, raises both hands in front of herself in a motion that confuses Christine until the image clicks into focus in her mind. In place of the taser, Indira’s holding a handgun of the sort the guards are issued, which she’s pointing, with surprisingly steady aim, directly at Amber. “I’m not letting you take her again. I don’t know what the hell went on in the basement last night, but from the blatant lies Maria’s got the seniors telling about what happened to the guards, it can’t have been anything good. As her sponsor, and her Sister, and her friend, I refuse to let you drag Christine into any more of your fucking evil.”

“Really, darling. Once was amusing, but twice is testing my patience,” Amber says, the overt lightness of her tone failing to disguise a very imminent menace swimming beneath. Christine catches the glint of metal cupped in her left hand, and feels a cold clench of terror for her sister squeeze her heart.

“Dira, really, you need to let this go,” she says carefully, choosing every word as if Indira’s life depends on it, because it very well might.

“She won’t hurt Sisters, Teenie. That’s her one rule. She said it herself. She can’t do a thing,” Indira says, although her confidence sounds like it’s wavering.

“I suppose there’s hurt, and then there’s hurt,” Amber says, conversationally. “There’s an argument to be made that a person can lose some fairly substantial pieces and still be considered fundamentally intact. Walking, talking, higher reasoning; all things one would rather hold onto, I’d think, but none of them truly essential to life. You should really listen to your Sister, Indira.”

“Just leave, Amber. Take whoever the hell that is and go. But I’m absolutely not letting you kidnap Christine again,” Indira snaps, finger ready at the trigger.

“I’m not kidnapping anyone, you beautiful lunatic!” Amber exclaims, mock-outraged by the mere notion. “She’s coming with me entirely by choice! In fact, it seems that the only one trying to deny her the freedom of that choice is you. And, since I’m in such an altruistic mood, I feel rather compelled to protect the freedom of my lovely Sister. So I repeat: move aside, Indira.”

“Dira, please,” Christine begs her, tears making hot rivulets down her cheeks, convinced she’s about to see her beloved sponsor and Sister die in front of her. “She’s right. I want to go with her. You need to let us.”

“Amber,” Indira says, voice shaking with what could be barely-suppressed fear or rage or both. “She isn’t choosing to come with you. Nobody would ever choose to go anywhere with you, because you’re a fucking monster. You’re lonely because you’re fundamentally unlovable.”

“Well!” Amber says, but Indira isn’t done.

“Teenie, take care of yourself, because this broken thing certainly won’t.”

With that, Indira lets the gun drop to her side, clicks the safety back on and walks away, back straight and posture rigid, visibly forcing herself not to turn back or let any emotion show.

“That was a bit unnecessary,” Amber says once she’s gone, actually sounding vaguely hurt. “She didn’t have to make it personal.”

“What an unpleasant person,” Jessica opines, shuffling along beside her, legs bowed, as they pass into the fresh, cold morning air and Christine dares to breathe again. The car is still where Indira parked it the previous night; Amber clicks the cheap, plastic keyfob with a momentary quirk of distaste, and almost as soon as the doors unlock, Jessica folds herself into the rear seat and away from the bright sunshine like a spider huddling into its den. Christine reaches for Amber’s shoulder before she can take the driver’s seat, halting her momentarily while she leans in close and whispers in the woman’s ear.

“If you ever hurt Indira, I’ll stop at nothing to ruin you,” she says, voice flat and hollow from the maelstrom of feeling behind her fragile resolve. “Dorley, my own life, even the others’. I’d burn it all down to expose you. You know I could.”

Amber, turning, chokes out a surprised laugh. “Don’t be so dramatic, darling, I wasn’t serious!” she exclaims, seeming genuinely caught off-guard. “Actually, between you and me, I like her even more after our little showdown. So resolute! No, on my very life, your darling Sister has nothing to fear from me.”

“Then what the hell was the point of all that? The threats, the lying? Just to be cruel?” Christine demands, furious.

“It’s a cruel world out there, darling; far better to be under a minimum of illusion regarding the potential consequences for heroics, don’t you think? Much better to find a subtler way. And if demonstrating that to dear Indira requires my playing the villain, that’s a weight I’m willing to bear. For her sake, of course.”

Christine opts not to point out that there are any number of other reasons Amber might be considered the villain. “Okay,” she breathes, feeling utterly unbalanced and with no idea what portion of Amber’s claims are true or false, and certain putting her in this state is exactly what Amber intended. “So. In the spirit of all this altruism, where are we headed?” she asks, opting to let the matter lie for now and sliding into the passenger seat next to Amber, trying hard not to think about Jessica lurking quietly somewhere in the back behind her.

“Can we stop for ice cream?” a querulous voice asks, almost endearingly hopeful.

“We haven’t even started yet, darling,” Amber laughs. “I suppose there’s no need to be cryptic this time; we’re going to Edinburgh. The University Of, specifically, where dear Lily has been moving back and forth between halls of residence and campus since I turned the tracker back on.”

“That’s close to the third victim,” Christine says.

“But not the first or second. The mystery deepens,” Amber replies, sounding as if nothing could please her more.

“I wonder whatever dear, sweet Lily could be up to,” Jessica warbles, accompanied by a rhythmic scratching of her nails down the glass of the rear windows, which makes Christine shiver from somewhere deep in the base of her spine.

“Me too, my sweet, me too,” Amber says, starting the car and pulling smoothly out of Dorley’s driveway.

“Something wholesome, no doubt,” Christine mutters, watching home and the illusion of safety recede in the rear-view mirror until they’re lost entirely to the morning haze.

***

“No, I’ve heard what you’re saying, darling, but I’m absolutely certain he isn’t,” Amber proclaims. The car is passing through a knot of woodland somewhere north of Almsworth, and this conversation has been going on so long that Christine is genuinely starting to consider trying to knock herself out on the dashboard.

“But he took to it so easily! And before, when he was so terribly bad, that was clearly just him putting up walls against ever so big and scary a truth! It makes so much sense!”

“I think you’d be diagnosing every bad person in the world, if that’s sufficient evidence.” Amber says, lightly chiding.

“Do you know, he said once that he didn’t think he was ever especially strongly gendered? I heard it, from the vents. That he just accepted maleness because that’s what was presented to him. That’s precisely how lovely little eggies feel, before they realise that men don’t actually feel that way. Isn’t it?”

“I really think that might just be how some people feel. It doesn’t make them women-in-waiting. And furthermore, it seems it would rather undermine the whole premise of Dorley Hall if half of their subjects were really girls all along, you know? There have to be some boys to reform or it just doesn’t make sense.”

“Why are you so determined to deny it, Mother? Aaron is an egg! He is he is he is! And nothing you say will change my mind!”

“Well, frankly I’m more convinced than ever that he isn’t.”

“Oh my god, stop!” Christine cries, finally pushed past breaking point. “I’m putting some bloody music on.”

“Do we have any showtunes?” Jessica asks. Christine discovers entirely new depths of despair.

***

By late evening, the car is wending its way past suburbs and small towns just shy of the border, the sporadic copses of trees to both sides of the road turning the last dregs of daylight to dappled night and back again. Jessica and Amber have been quiet for a while; the effort of switching into normal-person mode for long enough that Christine and Amber could stop for coffee and a sandwich seemed to drain her desire to argue or complain, and Amber standing firm in her refusal to let Jessica pick off even the smallest of the employees at the motorway-services Burger King hasn’t served to improve her mood. Amber even let Jessica sit in the front by way of compensation, relegating Christine to the strange smell and deep gouges she’s left in the back, but it’s to no avail: Christine has slowly shifted from blessed relief to growing concern about the eerie girl’s silence, and the deep, throaty rattling and occasional clicks she’s begun to make in the past half hour are hardly helping. So she almost jumps out of her skin when, apropos of absolutely nothing she can detect, Amber suddenly hits the door release and boots a startled Jessica out onto the road. The car slows but doesn’t stop; as Christine watches, horrified, Jessica’s spindly shape bounces, rolls and lies still, like a bundle of dirty rags in the middle of the road. Christine starts to rattle the handle of her door, assuming that Amber is halting the car and intending to get a head-start on catching up with Jessica - although she hasn’t thought as far as what she’s going to do when and if she does - but after a moment, Amber actually steps on the accelerator. In the rear-view mirror Christine watches Jessica lurch to her feet with a bone-chilling scream of rage and betrayal before darting away, shockingly quick despite her uneven, spidery gait, toward a nearby house with lights visible in the downstairs windows. There’s another inhuman shriek, rapidly receding, and this time Christine swears it’s accompanied by a distant scream of terror; she looks at Amber, aghast, but all she gets in return is a knowing smile.

“I know, sweetie, but she really will be much happier,” she says, with confidence. “I did my research: the houses have lovely, spacious attics and even a basement or two. She’ll be in heaven.”

The car accelerates smoothly away, leaving Jessica and any new acquaintances to their respective fates.

***

Christine and Amber coast into Edinburgh city centre sometime after ten, which Amber declares far too late to start chasing down the mysterious Lily, and instead books the pair into another stratospherically expensive hotel. Without access to Amber’s wardrobe, the evening meal is a more muted affair than last time; Amber seems unfocused, and distractedly orders half the room service menu, then picks lackadaisically at it while Christine stuffs her face with dishes that each must have cost half her month’s salary. There’s quite a lot of wine, too, and while food and forbearance keep Christine from reaching the depths of drunkenness she plumbed the other night, she’s definitely feeling somewhat relaxed, and this time she wonders whether Amber isn’t a little drunk too.

“So, um… you kind of seem like there’s something on your mind. Are you okay?” she asks between mouthfuls, resigned by now to the fact that she and the serial killer have developed some sort of relationship beyond kidnapper and victim.

“Oh, I’m fine, I’m fine,” Amber says, breezy but not entirely convincing. “I’m just wondering what we’re going to find tomorrow. After Annabelle’s failure to thrive, and Jessica, bless her, being so very, well, Jessica… I worry, that’s all. It would be nice to know at least one of my girls turned out the way I envisioned.”

“And how’s that?” Christine asks, unsure whether this unexpected show of vulnerability is genuine or an attempt at manipulation, but curious despite herself.

“Like me, I suppose,” Amber says, wistfully. “The hard truth is, I’ve never met anyone like myself. Even other… adventurers… in the farther reaches of human experience, you might say: on the rare occasions we’ve met, I’ve always hoped to see something I recognised in them, but no. Fascinating creatures, many of them, but nothing at all like me. So I’d hoped at least one of my little projects might become someone I understood, and could be understood by in turn. I suppose that’s why I did it, in truth.”

“But you weren’t made that way, were you?” Christine asks, thinking about what Indira said to Amber, and whether she genuinely managed to reach some vulnerable emotional core at the heart of the killer. “There was… I mean, you were you, before you ever came to Dorley. Right? And Dorley was nothing like the abattoir.”

Amber nods morosely. “In the absence of candidates who resembled my old self, I thought maybe I could change them… make them think more like I do. Lily is the last hope for my having succeeded at all. So I suppose I’m a touch nervous about…” Amber visibly collects herself, takes a deep breath, delicately wipes away what might plausibly be a tear. “I’m sorry, darling, I really didn’t think that looking the girls up would affect me this badly. I probably shouldn’t be drinking, aha.”

“It’s okay,” Christine reassures her, unable to quite accept that she’s doing so. “So how do you want to do it? Approach her, I mean.”

“Carefully,” Amber says, and nothing more.

***

‘Carefully’ turns out to mean a long, tedious day spent shadowing the unsuspecting Lily around campus; lurking in cafes, watching from the windows of empty classrooms, and in one case hiding between bookshelves in the library while Lily and her study group spend an excruciating hour working near-silently nearby. So intense is Amber in her predator’s trance that sometime around noon Christine has to outright demand a break before she passes out from hunger, and she barely has time to wolf down her sandwich before they’re back at it, lest the slightest nuance of Lily’s behaviour pass them by. They’ve been up and focused since five in the morning, when, despite Christine’s protestations that they were unlikely to see any students before midday, they spent hours staring at the unmoving doors of a red-brick halls of residence while Christine nursed a mild hangover and Amber barely even blinked. They’re back there now, watching those same double doors with their flyers and handwritten want-ads, and Christine is again making her displeasure known.

“Patience,” Amber says primly, “might be the most important quality in this line of work.”

“Good thing I’m not apprenticing, then,” Christine says, tone acid. She’s grumpy from the long day and the headache and the lack of any results to speak of, and coffee and a fresh set of clothes - which she doesn’t like to imagine how much Amber must have paid to have delivered - haven’t helped overmuch. She’s been kept occupied for a while conducting a deep-dive into Lily’s social media, and latterly the contents of her university admin file, email account and GP records - all accessed by nefarious means - but the conclusion is that Lily appears to be exactly what she seems. It’s certainly possible the smiling, pretty Black girl in the photos - surrounded by friends, posing in the salon with her hair styled for a party, exchanging chatty emails with lecturers and fellow students for group projects - is merely putting on an act like Jessica, but if so then she’s been doing it for a long time, and without a single slip Christine can find. Christine hasn’t yet dared suggest out loud that perhaps Lily actually is normal, her traumatic remaking in the abattoir relegated by some miracle of mental fortitude to being a terrible, secret history and nothing more. But she knows Amber is thinking it too, and the killer is growing more tense and snappish with every new mundane detail of her creation’s life.

“There she is!” Amber hisses, squinting into a miniature set of binoculars pointed out of the driver’s-side window, which Christine is privately convinced came from Vuitton’s spring/summer surveillance collection.

“Finally,” Christine sighs.

“Oh, doesn’t she look lovely?” Amber breathes. From the door, Lily has indeed appeared; in contrast to her campus outfit of oversized hoodie, yoga pants and tied-up hair, she’s dressed up for a night out: her pale yellow two-piece highlights toned legs and abdomen, and her hair is full and curly, framing bold, bright makeup and statement jewellery. She’s with a pair of other students, and the three of them are chatting with the kind of giggly, casual ease Christine can’t imagine Jessica keeping up for long, let alone Annabelle. To all appearances she really is an ordinary girl heading out for drinks and dancing, and as Amber and Christine watch, the three of them spot their lift and clamber in, still laughing together, still entirely unremarkable. Almost before their car has pulled out, Amber is stashing the binoculars in the glove compartment and collecting her bag and phone, reaching for the door latch with a deep frown creasing her delicate features.

“Wait, hold on, what are you doing?” Christine asks, startled.

“Something isn’t right here,” Amber says, sounding as if she’s only halfway paying attention, if that. “I need a closer look.”

“You’re going in there? That wasn’t the plan!” Christine protests, but she climbs out of the car and follows Amber as she hurries between pools of streetlight, not even pausing to lock the car. Privately Christine thinks she’s probably hoping it gets stolen so she doesn’t have to risk being seen driving it again. The magnetic lock on the halls’ door presents no impediment to Amber, who pulls out a small plastic box, which beeps a couple of times and unlocks the door with zero fuss. Inside is a corridor with mailboxes on one side and a noticeboard plastered with stratified layers of old flyers on the other, which Amber strides past at double-time. Christine hurries along in her wake, silently praying they don’t encounter anyone. Lily’s room is 214, located up a flight of institutionally bland stairs and through another keycard door separating the residential corridor from the lobby. Christine can’t help noticing the resemblance to the newer parts of Dorley, and sincerely hopes that there’s nothing worse than leaky pipes and old furniture in the basement here.

Reaching Lily’s door requires passing the entrance to a communal kitchen area, again uncomfortably familiar, and it’s just bad luck that Amber and Christine happen to be in full view as one of the residents, tall and broad and stinking of beer and cigarettes, dressed in what he probably thinks of as his going-out shirt and clearly pre-gaming hard, is stumbling out.

“Alright, girls. Haven’t seen you round here before,” he mumbles, making a spirited attempt at leaning nonchalantly against the wall but sliding down it just a little.

“Oh, we’re just, erm, visiting a… yeah, we’re here to. You know. Friends.” Christine stammers, startled by the man’s appearance and a little intimidated by his approach, but simultaneously trying her best to save his life.

“Fuck off before I feed you your own eyeballs,” Amber snaps, tension stripping away her usual affect, leaving behind pure malevolence.

“Alright, alright, Jesus. I was just being friendly,” the young man protests, before shouldering clumsily past the pair of them and lurching away in the direction of the stairwell, rebounding off the wall and muttering something that could be a stream of misogynist invective or the contents of his shopping list.

“Sorry. That was careless,” Amber breathes, a moment later, shaking her head in apparent disappointment with herself.

“I think it’s exactly what a lot of students would have said,” Christine tells her. “If anything it probably made us less conspicuous.”

“I’m quite appallingly off my game today,” Amber says, shaking her head with an air of frustration with herself.

“You’re just worried about her. It’s understandable,” Christine says. “Although most people wouldn’t be this nervous that their daughter wasn’t a murderer,” she adds, under her breath.

Lily’s door has a nameplate she’s made by hand, with felt pens and coloured paper. There are flowers around her name; Amber shudders deeply while picking the lock. Inside is no better, or no worse, depending on perspective: there are clothes strewn around, and a pervading haze of perfume and hair product, but other than that it’s the very picture of a tidy little student room, with a photo collage of Lily with her friends and personal touches like scented candles, fairy lights and posters from local shows.

“No, no, this isn’t right at all,” Amber mutters, leafing through the topmost of Lily’s textbooks and giving the contents of her drawers a quick but thorough examination.

“You’re really certain we have the right person,” Christine says, imagining for a moment the next room over inhabited by some giggling, knife-wielding monster, and the pair of them digging through the unmentionables of a complete innocent.

“I’d know that face anywhere,” Amber says. “I carved it myself, after all.”

“And there’s really no chance she just, you know, turned out… normal?”

“I don’t know!” Amber cries, sounding forlorn, while she rifles through more of Lily’s utterly ordinary possessions. “If you’d seen what I… I mean, the process I put them through, I just… isn’t that the most depressing idea, sweetheart? To survive all of that, to be made anew, only to end up just like everybody else? The mundane? The everyday? The cattle?”

Gradually Amber appears to register the look Christine’s giving her. “No offence.”

“None taken,” Christine murmurs, more than a shade sarcastic, and turns back to lackadaisically inspecting the contents of Lily’s built-in wardrobe, which fills a little space beside the poky en-suite bathroom. “She’s got nice taste, anyway,” she adds.

“I should think so; it took long enough to teach her,” Amber says. “She was a terrible slob when I took her in: always in old sweatshirts and poorly-fitted jeans. I don’t care if you’re volunteering at a food bank or rescuing feral cats, you owe it to yourself to look presentable, at least!”

“Well, maybe you can be proud of that,” Christine says, her irritation at the whole ridiculous day spilling over. “You didn’t make a serial killer, but you did make a fashionista. That’s something.”

“Ugh,” Amber groans, but doesn’t elaborate further on her opinion of that idea, and nor does she lunge at Christine with a knife, which is something of a relief because for a moment she thought she might have gone too far.

“Girl has a lot of shoes,” Christine opines, looking under the bed and finding even more. “Is that a sign she’s a murderer? Lots of shoes?”

“Paige has a lot of shoes,” Amber points out.

“Again, is that a sign she’s a murderer?” Christine asks, which actually raises a snort of laughter from Amber.

“This is horrible,” Amber mutters to herself, now flicking through a paper journal filled with sticky-note reminders and entries in multiple colours of ink. There are even little stars drawn around some of them. Meanwhile, driven by the slightest, barely-perceptible tickle of suspicion, Christine returns to the wardrobe and swishes aside all the clothes. “Hang on, what’s this?” she begins, and there’s the scraping sound of something being moved aside, then a perceptible gasp. “Amber…” she calls out, then again, more urgently. “Amber! I really think you should…”

“Oh, thank god,” Amber breathes, squeezing in behind the motionless Christine. Someone, presumably Lily, has cut a neat, square hole in the back of the closet, exposing a small space between it and the bathroom. And inside, between water and waste pipes, luminous in the harsh light of Christine’s phone, are-

“Faces,” Christine whispers, aghast. There are four of them, stretched over frames probably meant for artist’s canvases; thick masks of skin, their empty eyeholes and mouths open wide in a terminal case of shock, features flat and alien without muscle and bone to support them, but unmistakable nonetheless.

“This is simply marvellous!” Amber enthuses, while Christine gags and has to turn away, pushing out of the cramped little cupboard to dry-heave over Lily’s wastepaper bin. “Look at the precision of these cuts! These aren’t impulsive, flighty crimes of passion; she’s taking real care over her work. Just like I taught her! Oh, I wonder what sort of statement she’s making? The interpretations are endless: is she stripping away masks or commenting on beauty and the superficial? Highlighting our similarities, or our uniqueness? So many possibilities!”

Christine wipes compulsively at her mouth, unnecessary as it is, her hands shaking from the shock and the nearness of Lily’s awful trophies, out of sight but still separated from her only by the thin plywood of an internal wall.

“Could she be out looking for a fifth right now? Oh, that’s so exciting! I wonder what her process is?” Amber continues, heedless of Christine’s distress. She carefully replaces the cut-out section of closet and rearranges Lily’s clothes, before practically skipping out of the walk-in, shuffling a few papers into an eerily precise recreation of their original state and carefully repositioning scattered shoes according to some eidetic internal picture. “I’m unspeakably relieved. So, my dear: shall we?” she asks, sounding intensely chipper and holding out a hand to Christine like a dashing suitor helping her date over a puddle.

“That’s it? We’re done?” Christine demands, disbelieving. “What happened to finding out if she’s the one murdering Dorley girls? You know, the whole reason we’re even here? I mean, now we know for certain she’s a killer!”

“And we know she didn’t do it,” Amber says, sounding infuriatingly reasonable.

“How?”

“The victims still had faces,” she replies smugly.

“But that doesn’t… I mean, it’s not… Amber, seriously, don’t we at least need to talk to her?” Christine attempts, helplessly.

“I thought about it, darling, but honestly I’ve decided it’s better not to disturb her,” Amber replies, bustling Christine out of the door before re-locking it with a much more assured twist of her hairpins. “I’d hate to influence her overmuch while she’s still finding her voice as an artist, you know?”

“So we’re just going to leave her here, skinning people?” Christine hisses, angry but cognizant of the risk of being overheard. “No, wait, what am I saying? Of course we are, because that’s just how far my moral compass has veered off the bloody map at this point. So was this whole thing only ever an excuse to look in on your little murder-dolls? And you dragged me into it for what, a chance to have one of the normals gasp and cry at how shocking it all is? What fun!”

“Oh, don’t be a downer, sweetheart; this is the best I’ve felt in ages!” Amber says, actually doing a little twirl right there in the corridor. “Of course I care about our dear Sisters being bumped off; of course I do! My wayward darlings were a solid lead, and now we’re able to discount them as suspects and move on to chasing down whoever is actually doing it. Progress! We’re that much closer to cracking the case, and in my opinion, that’s reason to celebrate!”

“I’m really not in the mood,” Christine mutters, scowling.

“You’ll come around,” Amber says with rock-solid confidence, turning as she trots down the stairs to the main entrance to favour Christine with a brilliant smile, her grey eyes unusually bright with barely-repressed glee. “How about this: who would you like killed, darling? Anyone at all; my treat. No?” she says, registering Christine’s expression. “Hm. Maybe I’ll just eviscerate a Times journalist. That’d cheer anyone up.”

“So what are these other leads you were talking about?” Christine asks, choosing to believe against all available evidence that Amber is joking, and really in no mood for small talk.

“Hold your horses, sweetheart, there’ll be time for that later,” Amber says, her grin turning cryptic. “Now, what did I say about celebrating, hmm? I’m feeling simply fabulous, and the night is young!”

***

A quick trip back to the hotel and a heavily coerced change of clothes later, Christine and Amber are three glasses deep at the corner table in a wine bar so expensive Christine doubts she could afford the napkins. The city lights are surprisingly pretty through the tall portrait window, and between the alcohol and the unrelenting exposure to Amber’s high-intensity cheer, Christine feels the trauma of Lily’s trophy cupboard receding slightly, or at least is determined to believe it might be. Amber, back in their suite, took great and obvious pleasure in doing Christine’s hair and makeup and squeezing her into a sleeveless Prada dress in butter-soft black leather, which she Googled during a moment of inattention from her tormentor and was appalled to discover cost almost six grand. For her part, Amber is in a pleated gold piece with a structured bodice, with statement jewellery and her choppy, white-blonde hair teased up, and genuinely seems to be on cloud nine since her daughter was confirmed to be actively murdering people.

“So I thought to myself, who’s the most beloved symbol of English national pride? The one person who would really puncture this nation’s ridiculous sense of collective importance, were they to be found, say, filleted and run up the flagpole outside the House of Commons?” Amber says, midway through an enthusiastic, meandering tale of past crimes.

“One of the royal family?” Christine asks, inebriated enough to be impressed by the audacity even if she’s not entirely on board with the morality.

“What? No. Mr Blobby, obviously,” Amber answers, and manages to keep her face straight for a full second or two before bursting into peals of bell-clear laughter. “I’m joking, I’m joking. Although as I say it, I’m wondering if there isn’t something to the idea…”

“Amber, no.” Christine says flatly, but she’s smiling as she takes another sip. “Anyway, listen, seriously, what’s our next move?” she asks.

“Oh, really, what’s the rush, darling?” Amber says, looking bored by the subject. “Let’s not spoil a lovely night by talking shop, eh?”

Christine thinks for a moment. “I’ll come dancing if you’ll tell me,” she offers; she’s stood resolute in her refusal up until now, but she’s growing desperate for some sort of progress, and a night on the tiles with the serial killer doesn’t seem quite as terrible a proposition with a few glasses of wine inside her.

Amber gives a long, theatrical sigh. “Fine, fine, if you insist. But after this, we’re getting shots and finding somewhere incredibly inappropriate to shake the frankly adorable derrières our dear Auntie gave us. Deal?”

“Deal,” Christine replies, already regretting it.

“Well, then,” Amber says, making a show of glancing around before leaning in conspiratorially, arching her perfect eyebrows and pursing her impeccably painted lips. “How much do you know about the early history of Dorley Hall?”

“Early?” Christine asks, surprised by the topic. “You mean before Aunt Bea? I know it was… bad. There was someone called Grandmother. A whole bunch of people under her. And they did, I don’t know, the same sorts of things, but for terrible reasons. Right?”

“Ah, Grandmother. Dorothy, to the intimately acquainted,” Amber says, with the air of someone reminiscing about an old friend. “I really know her rather well, considering we’ve never actually met. Strictly off limits, Beatrice told me, lest her connections unleash the most terrible vengeance upon the Hall and all its precious Sisters. And I took it seriously, because there is not the slightest bit of doubt in my mind that Beatrice would have done the job herself, were it at all possible. Still, nobody said I couldn’t spend the odd night lurking outside dear Dorothy’s window, or in her wardrobe, as the case may be. And believe me, some of the things I’ve seen and heard would make steam come out of Auntie’s ears, if she’d only have an actual conversation with me. Absolutely ghastly woman, that Dorothy - just the epitome of upper-class wretchedness, entirely at the beck and call of her grubby perversions. Oh, the spectacle I would make of her, given half a chance. Heaven would weep, my sweet, and Hell boil over in envy. I’ve had honest-to-god dreams about it, and I assure you, you’d understand how singular that is if you knew how rarely I dream.”

“So you think this Dorothy woman is killing our Sisters?” Christine asks, pulling back slightly at the sheer, predatory excitement in Amber’s eyes, and the way she’s salivating so much she’s had to dab twice at her mouth with a napkin. “I get that she’d have reason to resent the new management and the girls they’ve helped, but wouldn’t she be like ninety by now?”

“Eighty-one. It isn’t her,” Amber says lightly, drying her mouth again and composing herself a little. “I keep a close eye. I shouldn’t like to miss my opportunity, if the situation were to evolve. However, there were quite a few lower-tier toffs wetting their nasty little beaks at Dorley Hall, back in the day. A clique, one might say, and one that’s still thick as thieves all these years later. I’ve done a little casual digging, and some of their movements around the time of the murders have been… suggestive, let’s say. Far from conclusive, but perhaps worthy of proper investigation. Now, I don’t know exactly how any of them might have gotten their dusty mitts on the graduate files, but as you pointed out, the motive is certainly there, and the resources. And if the old guard themselves are too doddering to have actually wielded the knife, there are any number of offspring who haven’t fallen far from the proverbial tree.”

“Jesus. I didn’t know any of them were still… I mean, I didn’t think about it, I guess. God. Are these people, you know, off limits too? If it was one of them, can we… do anything about it?” Christine asks, pointedly refusing to think about how narrow the range of solutions might be, given the circumstances.

“Fret not, darling; the suspects I have in mind are a decidedly lesser breed of parasite than Dorothy, and unworthy of even her protection; no such restrictions apply. If we were to discover they’re the ones attacking our Sisters, there’s really no limit to what we might do.”

“Like turn them in. To the police.” Christine says, but she sounds unconvincing even to herself.

“Mmm-hmm,” Amber vaguely assents, and says nothing more on the subject. “At any rate, we’re in luck; apparently, there’s a very fancy party being thrown in three days’ time, at Madrigal House. Lair of the beast and all that. Celebrating a birthday, or anniversary, or business venture or something equally tedious. All the second-stringers from Dorothy’s day will be there, along with a selection of offspring and hangers-on. If any of them really was responsible for the murders, or knows anything, it’s a guarantee that they’ll be in attendance that night. All we need to do is secure ourselves an invitation, and in due course a confession.”

“And how do you plan for us to do that?” Christine asks, deeply suspicious of the timing but unable to frame an objection.

“Well, there’ll be food, and drink, and no doubt all sorts of achingly pedestrian debaucheries. What better opportunity for loose lips to divulge all manner of secrets - under appropriate questioning, of course? But we shall have to do this one properly, Christine,” she adds, looking serious, one slender finger tapping at her glass. “It won’t be like faking our way past a couple of receptionists and a half-baked surveillance system at the morgue. These people squat in a vast web of old, interfamilial relationships; everybody knows everybody, because everyone is somebody’s nephew and somebody’s brother and somebody’s husband. Three different people, if we’re lucky,” she adds, with a grin as fleeting as a summer storm. “Our stories will have to be impeccable, our outfits flawless, our manner exactly the right kind of old-money horrible. Three days to prepare might be cutting it rather close, I fear. Still, needs must, and I’m confident we can make it work.”

“What are you saying?” Christine asks, registering the distinct twinkle of anticipation in Amber’s empty grey eyes, certain from recent experience that it doesn’t portend anything good.

“I’m saying yes, Christine, you shall go to the ball!” Amber exclaims, beaming, clearly extremely excited to deliver that line. “But first, I seem to recall there was the little matter of shots and dancing. Come along, you beautiful thing, it’s time for you and I to paint the town red!”

Pulled along in Amber’s laughing, brilliant wake, in her beautiful dress, with hair and makeup perfect and her Sister’s endless compliments bouncing around in her pleasantly tipsy brain, Christine finds she doesn’t find the prospect half as objectionable as she might.

***

> WELCOME TO THE SISTERS OF THE ABANDONED ABATTOIR ON ENTERPRISE WAY.
> None of the usual Consensus rules apply. Click >here< for unusual rules. Obey them or else.
> There are no stupid questions. Only dead people who asked stupid questions. Feel free to ask stupid questions.

1997 Nic Cage Classic

Mother came to visit me today. She watched me for hours, she broke into my room, she rooted through all my stuff and didn’t even stay to say hello. And I think someone was sick in my bin. It was very rude.

ThIs HoLe WaS mAdE fOr Me

She kicked me out of a moving car.

xX_prettydolly89_Xx

yes well she stabbed me in the throat!!!!
i almost DIED, thankyou so very much for the concern!!!!!!

1997 Nic Cage Classic

Don’t be a whiner, Annie. Mother knows the difference between a nick to the jugular and a fatal blow. If she’d meant to kill you, you’d be dead. She just wanted to put on a show for the new girl.

xX_prettydolly89_Xx

i had to stitch myself up with little mabel’s spare thread!!! now what will i do if she pops a seam?
she saw the whole thing, now she’s positively inconsolable!!!
traumatised!!!
and as for this new girl, i don’t like her one teeny tiny little bit. she thinks she can come waltzing in like a little ballerina and steal mother’s affections!! well, pretty ballerinas BREAK and SMASH into teensy PIECES!!! she'll see!!!

ThIs HoLe WaS mAdE fOr Me

No smashing Christine, she was nice to me.
She gave me her croissant at breakfast.
And she’s helping Aaron a lot.

I miss Aaron.

1997 Nic Cage Classic

Who on Earth is ‘Aaron’?

ThIs HoLe WaS mAdE fOr Me

He’s just a little guy, you know?
He likes rocks.
I miss his funny little rants.
And how he would cry sometimes, when he thought nobody was watching?
I was watching.
Although I admit it’s nice here in the crawlspace.
Roomy.
And the family upstairs seem very interesting.

1997 Nic Cage Classic

Moving on.
Serious talk, girls. Mother’s up to something; checking up on all of us, chasing some murderer for the place where she was made. Taking on this girl Christine as her apprentice or little sister or patsy or whatever. She’s got a plan, and we clearly aren’t part of it.
She’ll want to know.
So what do you say?
Do we make the call?

xX_prettydolly89_Xx

yes yes yes do it yessssssss
hahhahahahahaaaha mother will be so surprised!!!!

ThIs HoLe WaS mAdE fOr Me

I don’t like it, Lily. She scares me.
But maybe she’ll know a way I can get back to sweet precious Aaron. She’s clever like that.
Yes. We should do it.

1997 Nic Cage Classic invited #4 to the chat.

#4

Hello, Sisters.