I try to keep track of time, but it’s impossible. It feels like we’ve been in here for hours. Finally, I hear a car door open, the jangle of keys, then the trunk springs up.

It takes a while for my eyes to get used to the moonlight, and when I recognize where we are, I start to retch, and Mr. Farrell pulls the gag from my mouth just as I throw up.

When I look up at him, he smiles, and I notice he’s head to toe in black, with only his face visible. I look at his hands and wonder if those were the gloves he used to strangle my mother.

He doesn’t say anything, just waits for me to take a few deep breaths, then pulls me forward. I know exactly where we are going, and he doesn’t disappoint.

Mr. Farrell keeps pushing us along until we reach my mother’s gravestone.

Only then, when he forces us to the muddy ground, does he say, “Surprise.”

Chapter 137

“Are you impressed?” the Magpie Man says. “I don’t know where they all are. But she was special.”

I want to smash his face in. I want to kill him right here, where we buried my mom.

Jamie is breathing fast, and I look at him, telling him to settle down with my eyes.

The Magpie Man stares at him and says, “Calm down, little man,” but that only makes him worse.

He unzips a bag and pulls out a kitchen knife, the biggest in those five-set collections that sit in blocks of wood on the countertop, the one you only use on special occasions.

When Jamie sees it, he starts making whimpering noises through the cloth, and I guess this is it. The Magpie Man is going to murder me next to my mother’s grave. So what harm is there in talking to him if he has already decided my fate?

“This is your big plan?” I say. “You’re going to kill us here. They’ll find you, you know.”

He laughs, so loud it echoes in the darkness, and says, “I’m not going to kill you, Jessica. You are going to kill each other.”

“What?”

“Well, technically, I’m going to force you to kill each other. But they won’t know the difference.”

“You’re sick.”

“Maybe. But I’m also smarter than you. If you and your boyfriend make a suicide pact, if you slit your wrists by your mother’s graveside, that’s not suspicious—it’s just sad.”

“I won’t hurt him.”

The Magpie Man smiles and says, “We’ll see about that.”

“This won’t work,” I say. “The police will figure it out.”

“They didn’t last time.”

He pushes me onto my front and cuts through the rope holding my hands behind my back. Rolling me over, he leans down and stares into my face until I have to look away.