“I’m not afraid of him.” At that, Lily pushed to her feet. But instead of joining Raven in the center of the room, where he was pacing, she strode to the window, looking down at the roses below. “I haven’t been hiding the way Jack’s been hiding,” she told Raven, “but I have been cowering in the dark for years, trying to keep my mother from hurting me.” She turned, opening her pale pink purse. The movement was innocuous. Innocent. But Lily Holloway was neither of those things, and she pulled the rusty gardening shears into the light. “I’m not cowering anymore.”

21 Blood in the Snow

They had three hours to put the details into place. Lily’s father didn’t get off work until four in the morning, which gave Lily and Raven time to track down the perfect rose. Jack, in the meantime, snuck into the guest rooms to check on the boys. Conner and Dylan were wide awake, turning their four-poster bed into a fort. Meanwhile Diego buzzed the sides of Flynn’s hair in one of the guest bathrooms, so that only the curls remained on top. Jack took one look at the end result and asked, “Can you do that to my hair?”

The answer was a resounding yes.

Three hours later, Jack felt more like himself than he had in years. No, scratch that. Jack felt more like himself than he ever had, and it wasn’t just the hair. It wasn’t just the white collared shirt and jeans, gifted from Raven and topped with the long green jacket that made Jack feel like a conqueror of giants. It was the power he felt as he slipped out of Andrew Kane’s back door. It was the feeling of taking control of his life without resorting to poison, or panic, or pain.

They were going to win this. Jack knew it definitively as Andrew’s truck turned into the driveway. Everything was quiet, the deep breath before the scream. The silence before the confession. Lily had set up a camera in the kitchen, where she was planning to meet her father. But unlike the last time, when she’d greeted her mother with belladonna, she came bearing an elegant rose.

No poison.

Just thorns.

That was Lily, Jack thought, as he took up his post in the backyard. Raven was hiding in the living room closet. After Andrew stepped into the house and strode toward the kitchen, Raven would slip out of the closet and block the front door. Jack would block the back.

Then Lily would go in for the kill.

When the front door opened, Jack’s heart started to thump. It felt too heavy in his chest. Slamming and slamming like the footfalls of a giant. He told himself to breathe, to trust Lily, because she could play innocent better than any of them.