My Heart Is a Chainsaw (The Lake Witch Trilogy #1)(100)

“W-what could do that?” Letha says, trying to fall to her knees, give up.

“Shotgun, chainsaw,” Jade says, not letting Letha give up, just pulling her deeper into this.

“But what did he do to—to deserve this?” Letha asks, and Jade lets a grim smile touch her lips: if Letha’s already seeing these deaths like that, as the consequence of previous bullshit, then there’s hope.

Jade eases them around Ross Pangborne, trying not to step in the blood as that leaves red footprints.

“We can’t just—” Letha starts.

“We have to,” Jade completes, and then they’re to the top of the stairs, in the tower part of the yacht, she’s pretty sure, are having to step over a shattered shotgun to see— Letha falls back shaking her head no, no, and Jade doesn’t want to look, but has to: Mars Baker has been thrust headfirst through the big window, and his jaw has been pulled off too, so his mouth is locked into a forever scream.

Letha falls back shaking her head no, no, and now it’s Jade’s turn to throw up. Just into her mouth at first, but when she can’t swallow that, all the salmon and potato skins and lavender and melatonin comes up and out, splashes her boots and Letha’s bare feet, and it’s not purple, and her eyes are hot and leaky so she guesses that means she’s crying because there’s vomit burning her nasal passage, and now more’s coming up, and Letha’s hand is on her back, the same as it was for Tiffany K, once upon a puking.

Jade reaches out, steadies herself on the thin blue knee of Letha’s sleep pants.

“Who’s doing this?” Letha says, a kind of checked-out quality to her tone now, her eyes practically flashing vacancy, tilt, like she’s pulled some internal eject lever on this whole situation. Like she’s reached the maximum amount she can sustain, so the rest can now just wash over her.

“Where’s the machete?” Jade asks.

Letha looks down to her empty hand, and then they both hear it: scraping on the ceiling above them. Meaning somebody’s a floor up in the tower.

“Dad?” Letha says, and leads Jade out onto the deck to look up to the top.

With both of them already straining to see, Tiara comes sailing out over the railing of the deck above them, pedaling her legs, waving her arms like there’s anything to grab on to.

“T! ” Letha screams, rushing the railing, slamming into it like if she could have just got there a second earlier, she could have reached out, snagged the hem of Tiara’s shirt.

Jade tracks Tiara’s ragdoll body all the way down to one of the posts built into this modular pier. The post isn’t sharp, is flat and blunt, but all the same it plunges up and through Tiara’s chest, splashes out the back, and when Tiara’s face slams into the wood or plastic or plastic wood, whatever it is, Jade feels her own cheek tingle in sympathy.

“This can’t be happening,” Letha says.

“We’ve got to get off this boat,” Jade says back, hauling Letha up and casting around for—for whatever’s next. They have to get off this boat, right? Right. Jade steps to the railing, chances a look down to the lake side of the deck. It’s dizzying.

This yacht is a monster.

“How deep is it down there?” she asks.

“The water?” Letha asks.

“The water,” Jade confirms, having to lead this final girl along.

“The valley is steep on this side,” Letha pretty much recites from Mr. Holmes’s rambling talks, “that means… that means —”

“It’s deep enough,” Jade says, and, steps up onto the rail, holding Letha’s hand to steady herself.

“No, if we—”

“There’s nowhere safe here,” Jade says, pulling Letha up onto the rail, which nearly overbalances her.

Letha steps up in her dainty athletic way.

“My dad,” she says, peering around from her higher vantage point to the deck Tiara was just launched from.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Jade says. Not that she probably just missed him in the costume closet. “He’d—he’d want you to be safe. That would be his first concern, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t he throw you over this railing himself if that’s what it took to keep you safe?”

Letha looks down and down, to the water.

“If he were here, he’d tell you your first job is to survive, wouldn’t he?” Jade asks, and before Letha can answer, Jade pulls her arm hard enough that it’s jump or fall—also hard enough that she’s committed now herself, is already tumbling, wheeling her arms, pedaling her legs just like Tiara was, breathing in as deep as she can with all the air sucking away from her. Once in the open, no footing, she loses Letha’s wrist immediately, which she tells herself is probably for the best, as they don’t want to come down on each other.

Seconds later she hits the surface of the lake with a thought-erasing slap, is slamming down into Ezekiel’s Cold Box, all the breath she thought she was saving gone in an instant, the water around her thinner than makes sense—made of bubbles and speed and thrashing, but in slow motion too, like it’s not a body of water Jade’s fallen into, but a nightmare pool, the kind you can never surface in.

She hits the slanted bottom, her face scraping rock, and pushes up clawing for air, certain beyond certain that a large hand is about to wrap its cold dead fingers around her ankle.