As it turns out, Sofia was one of the most badly burned in the fire, which did her a favour in the end, because guess what they dosed her with for the pain? Oxycodone. Her bloodstream’s alibi secure, the coroner had nothing to gain from testing her, as no pattern could be proven. She was found to have acted as she could have reasonably been expected to. Katherine’s keeping an eye on her, and she’s doing better. They are almost friends.

Marcelo, Audrey and I have dinner once a week. Audrey stands up far less often, which is nice. I’ll invite Erin soon; she’ll always be family, flint or not. Divorce is a word that’s scary and formal, but we’re working towards it, ironically enough, as a team. Juliette and I got to know each other better on publicity tours, since she’s also signed a book deal for this story. Hers is called something like Hotel of Horror. My publishers are trying to squeeze mine out a month before hers.

What else?

There are some technicalities to go through, I suppose.

You might think that my mother didn’t kill anybody. You’d have a point. I’ll argue that I told you I’d tell you the truth as I knew it to be at the time that I thought I knew it. I also told you that my use of grammar was not deliberately dishonest. Perhaps I could make the argument that a locked car on a baking summer’s day was the end of Jeremy Cunningham. That my mother was responsible for ending that life and birthing another: one who dreamed of choking. Where Jeremy ends and the Black Tongue begins is up to you. Or at least that’s my excuse. We can debate the literary merits of this reasoning later. Email my agent.

And Andy and I both having our own sections? I don’t know what to tell you there. Andy struck Jeremy. I’d say it was a mortal strike. Jeremy was burned and bloodied and was surely dying in the snow from his injuries when I got to him. And me? My lawyer tells me to tread carefully here. All I’ve told you is the truth: that when my brother died, I was sitting next to him. You can make up your own mind.

Katherine Millot is an anagram of I Am Not The Killer, by the way. Darius derives from a Persian king, Persia being where the suffocation by ash torture began. I didn’t change that for the book though; it really was the moniker Jeremy gave himself. Too bad he didn’t target a group of history professors; they would have solved it straight away.