The time for talk was over. Both sisters stood for a moment, squared off beneath the moon. Both of them muddy and bloodied. Both of them injured and scraped and bruised. Both of them gasping heavily. Heidi wet, dripping, and Ilse with red hands.

For a moment, Ilse considered stepping back, retreating back to the house. But she was so tired of running away. She faced off with this figment of her past. Was this truly her sister? Perhaps. As good a story as any. Because that’s all it was. A story. There was no truth to someone who couldn’t remember. It was all just make-believe until the memories lodged back into place. And maybe they never would. Ilse could remember the gasping, the struggling, the shattered glass as she’d been pushed through that small window. She thought she could remember a little cheer rising from her siblings in the basement. She remembered stumbling away, bare feet against pine needles. Then the yelling and the screaming. She had escaped. And she had forgotten. For so long she’d forgotten everything. By the time the memories returned, she thought it was too late to do anything at all. She hadn’t even remembered where the house was with that basement until she graduated. And by then, she had taken to cycling through Google maps, looking at the Black Forest. It was far too large for her to guess which house. Had her subconscious known her father was in prison? Her siblings had been loosed? Three weeks too late, apparently. Though all of that was missing. Ilse had long since changed her name. No one had known who she was. No one even suspected she had a history worth hiding. No one except Dr. Mitchell, and he cared about her.

And now a fragment of that past had come like a wraith to haunt her. To kill her. This woman, this poor wretch who claimed to be her sister, had already killed at least seven others. She had intended to kill Ilse too.

Some people went through trauma and recovered, deciding to help. Ilse was not perfect. She had done things she wasn’t proud of. She had even hurt others, with her words, and sometimes her actions. She was no saint. But there were others who went through horrors, and then buckled. It almost seemed like something would snap inside of them. Heidi was one such person. She had joined the very monsters who had tormented her as a child..

There was an old phrase. If you can’t beat them, join them.

And so Heidi had. Like father like daughter.

If you can’t beat them, join them.

Ilse certainly wasn’t going to join her sister.

She supposed she would just have to beat her then.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Both of them snarled at the same time, and lunged. Fingers went toward throats, and fists flew. Ilse tried to go for the fifty-fifty leg lock again, but this time Heidi saw it coming and retreated back into the shallows. The water swirled into her shoes and socks, soaking. Ilse stumbled in the shallows as well, carried by her own mistaken momentum, sliding on the ground, one leg wet, the other trying to catch her balance. She righted, bringing herself up, but was kicked, a foot colliding with her knee.