I cannot tell if that’s a threat, or her true, delusional belief. That like Ben, she thinks some tenuous connection between us—attraction and love, or in this case, family—means I’m an ally. That I’ll go on with my life, allowing a murderer to walk free. For what? So I won’t be alone?

Fuck that.

I need to get out of here. Now.

Fifteen feet. The back door is fifteen feet past her shoulder.

But the knife block is closer.

Maura defies her age; catlike, she lunges for the block, brandishing eight inches of shining silver blade seconds later.

On her feet now, she waggles the knife in my direction, her voice a low hiss. “Disappointing. Too much like your mother, then.”

I fumble backward off the barstool, ass hitting linoleum seconds later. Scoot-slide away, feet slipping on Maura’s fucking dress as I try to get up. I hear a rip as I haul myself to standing, and I derive a sick pleasure at the sneer that pulls at Maura’s lips. Good. Fuck her. Fuck this dress. She made me into her doppelganger, living out some sick fantasy she’d failed to accomplish with my mom. But I am my own person. Not a puppet.

And now I’m that much closer to the kitchen stairs, I bolt up them, taking two at a time, ignoring the way my limbs burn after a night of pushing them to their limits.

Maura thunders up behind me. Bitch lied about her bad knees, too. She’s tight on my heels, allowing me no time to stop for a breath, or to formulate a new plan. Outrunning her won’t work; I’m not at peak strength, and she has more than I anticipated. Plus, there’s the knife.

“Agh!”

The blade catches my calf. Searing white-hot pain radiates up my body, and I collapse onto the third-floor landing. I manage to flip onto my back, curl up from my core, then land a two-footed kick into Maura’s torso. Screaming, she flies down into the darkened staircase. Did I just kill my grandmother?

“You bitch!”

Guess not. I hear her scrabbling toward me. I crab-walk away as best I can. The gash in my right leg is bleeding profusely, soaking the periwinkle satin of the fucking dress a deep crimson. But no bone peeks through. The wound isn’t deep. And I can stand, if I’m careful not to put full weight on my injured limb. I hop-stumble to the end of the hall. Where the fuck can I go? Up was a bad idea. Can I make it to the front door?

“Celia, dear.”

I yelp as Maura appears on the landing, hair a wild mess and eyes blazing. The way she ground out her nickname for me deceptively low and calm, turned it into an epithet.