“I…” Jack’s gaze flicked to the wall of glass, and the figures beyond it. She should’ve instantly recognized the blond girl sitting at one of the tables. But the girl’s back was turned to her, and her pale hair blended with her coat. Her coat blended with the white plastic chair. For a minute, Jack told herself it wasn’t Lily Holloway sitting at the detention center, nervously pulling a thread on her coat.

Lily despised Belle. Belle despised Lily. The two had been at odds since Lily had started sneaking into Raven’s bedroom—when she wasn’t spying on him in the orchard. Belle had never trusted her, and after Lily had discovered the Recipe for the Perfect Murder and hidden it somewhere on the Holloway estate, that distrust had darkened to hatred.

Presently, Belle entered the visitors area. Her dark, lustrous waves were pulled back in a stringy ponytail, and her fierce eyes were rimmed with circles instead of kohl. She looked tired. She looked scared. As she slid into the chair opposite Lily, Lily grabbed her hands and yanked her forward before a guard could intervene. A gasp slipped from Belle’s lips. Then a smile lanced across her face as Lily pulled her in for a kiss.

10 Belle Époque

It took about three months. Three months of missing Raven. Three months of replaying the scene in the rose garden over and over again. By the time spring had bled into summer, and all the roses in town were in full bloom, Belle knew exactly how to repay Jack and Raven for betraying her.

She just needed one thing.

The August before her freshman year, she paid a visit to the Rose Hollow Wellness Facility while her father was at a charity auction. She scribbled her name in the visitors log at the front desk. And then she sat in a rickety wooden chair, bracing herself for the reunion with Lily.

The last time they’d seen each other, Lily had been a wild, poisonous blossom, but as she shuffled into the wood-paneled foyer, it was obvious that blossom had wilted. Her long, lithe arms clanked against her sides, as delicate as glass. Belle could see the outline of her rib cage beneath her paper-thin shirt. There was a common area off to the right, where patients lounged about in street clothes, but Lily clearly hadn’t earned that privilege yet.

She ambled forward in a uniform that looked a lot like scrubs. White collared shirt. White pants. She wore tattered slippers, and Belle wondered if it was because shoelaces could be used to wrap around a person’s neck. Your own or someone else’s. She’d never been particularly fond of Lily Holloway, but in that moment, she wanted to throw the smaller girl over her shoulder and bolt out of there like a villain in a silent movie.