Aimee’s arms were twisted behind her back, a strip of silver duct tape across her mouth and Lena’s arm around her throat. Aimee’s metallic champagne cocktail dress was wrinkled and askew at the neck, and she wore only one shoe, its stiletto heel throwing her further off-balance. Tears shone on her cheeks in the flashlight’s beam, and smudged mascara bloomed around her eyes. When she saw me, she struggled more, but Lena pressed the tip of a knife right against her jugular.

Maybe I had imagined vengeance and humiliation for Aimee, maybe I’d thought she’ll be sorry, but I’d never wanted to see Aimee afraid for her life. I didn’t want to watch her die.

How long had we been here? Surely the police would arrive soon. Warily, I approached, stopping next to Winged Victory. Cold seemed to radiate from its raised wings, but they offered the illusion of shelter.

And now I could see more clearly how the sharp point of the blade indented the skin of Aimee’s throat. No, not a knife. Scissors. The ones from my purse. My breath caught.

Lena watched me, her smile unchanging, a challenge in her eyes.

“What do you want, Lena?” My voice was colder than I’d intended.

But Lena only grinned, the warmth and friendliness of her expression chillingly at odds with the situation. “It’s what you said, Kacy. Remember? ‘The world should be fair.’ This is our chance to even the score.”

Hearing my own words pierced me, and I couldn’t help myself. “Just let her go. You’re better than this.”

“But I’m not.” Now her grin was wolfish. “You don’t have to be either. You don’t have to be hurt or angry or patient. You can get even. Being a good girl for so long, what did that get you? Just another wife and mother. Another automaton moving from the house to the grocery store to lunch with the girls. Fuck that shit. You don’t have to be good anymore.”

My hand trembled, and the oscillating flashlight beam made Lena and Aimee seem like a flickering film projection. “I’m not good,” I whispered. A good wife wouldn’t have left her traumatized husband alone; a good daughter would never have put this burden on her elderly parents; a good mother would never have abandoned her daughter to chase a monster.

Lena shook Aimee by the scruff of her neck, and a whimper escaped from behind the tape. “This stuck-up liar pretended to be your friend, but she was just using you the whole time, laughing at you. Even after she got it all—the job, the money, the prestige—she couldn’t let you go.”