After haring back to Carvell, we went straight to the library and dragged three chairs around one of the computers that had a floppy drive.
The password worked. Alice seemed more outraged by this than I did.
My neck still ached – not just from the rubies, but from Dacre’s thick fingers squeezing all the air from my windpipe. I didn’t scare easily, but I had to admit, I’d been scared then. Still, nowhere near as afraid as I was in the beat before Alice decided not to kill Dacre. If she’d done it, she’d have spent the rest of her life behind bars. I would not have survived seeing her like that.
The first and most important thing we found on the floppy was a jpg file named ‘ritual pages’. It was a scanned version of the missing pages from Renner’s book. Alice nodded stoically, although afraid to get her hopes up, but Hafsah collapsed into tears. She then excused herself and disappeared to the bathroom so she could ugly-cry in peace. I couldn’t blame her. There was no guarantee that the reversal would work, but Renner’s research had been flawless thus far. Even if Alice wasn’t hopeful, I was.
Sorting through the rest of the documents took time, but we did so diligently. The fury built in me with every single file we opened.
What we discovered was that I was right: Dacre’s ‘Chamber’ had been studying the Society for ten years. There were notes upon notes upon notes, transcripts of conversations with Feathering, Mordue and the other victims, followed by reams and reams of annotations, hypotheses and further experimental ideas – all to prove that female violence was both fundamentally unnatural and existentially dangerous. There were bone-chilling suggestions for how to neutralise female anger for good, using a barbaric surgical procedure not dissimilar to a lobotomy. There was an account of how Le Conte had poisoned Renner with an archaic tincture that wrought madness – all to keep the reversal ritual hidden from Mordue and the Society.
Worst of all, there were long-range photographs of the original North Tower murders. There was the moment Janie threw Sam from the Observatory. A few days later, there were the vague silhouettes of the Society members mid-episode, hitting and clawing and kicking each other senseless. And there was Janie climbing on to the windowsill in the few dreadful moments before she jumped. In that photo, she was in the tower alone.
Dated a week later, there were pictures of a limp-limbed Fiona being shoved by a faceless shadow; moments later, Dawn. But in the latter, the silhouette of a familiar profile could be seen, illuminated just enough by the stark moonlight to remove any doubt.
I gasped. ‘Son of a –’
It wasDacre.
‘No, yeah, I should’ve killed him,’ Alice groaned.
It was him.
He had murdered innocent girls to falsely prove that we were fundamentally unnatural and dangerous. To give substantial cause to implement the ‘cure’ for anger he had outlined; a lobotomy designed to carve out something essential and human in order to keep us compliant.
Finally, there was a folder of more recent video footage. Low-quality CCTV cameras rigged up in some dim rafter of the Observatory, recording Poppy’s final moments as she grappled fearfully with Dacre. He pushed her from the North Tower in a bid to make it look like suicide – a story Mordue had inadvertently corroborated with her planted note. I could barely watch, stomach clenching like a fist as a still-fighting Poppy was hurled cruelly from an open arch by a man she should have been able to trust to keep her safe.
Alice collapsed forward. ‘It wasn’t Mordue. It . . . it wasn’t the Society. I can’t wait to tell them. I can’t wait to . . . it wasn’tthem. They’re innocent.’ A meek little sob. ‘I’minnocent.’
I’m going to make them pay for this, I told myself, the blood roaring in my chest and ears, and as I thought it, as I let the ferocity of the desire grow in me like a guiding light, I felt some invisible grip on me loosen, a long-held sigh exhaled, a hundred years of suffering finally passing through some liminal boundary.
Sister Maria’s rubies didn’t vanish immediately, but they lost all their heat. They no longer felt too tight around my throat, no longer felt like a noose that could kill me at any second. The roots retreated, albeit slowly. I knew, somehow, that they wouldn’t be there much longer.
Bye, babes, I thought, knowing I wouldn’t miss the salty old bitch in the slightest.
I felt Alice’s fingers lace through mine; hers cool and elegant, mine clammy and calloused from hockey. I gave her hand a squeeze and gazed out of the arched library window at the vast, dark woods outside.
‘This is going to make one hell of a story,’ I said, with a half-strangled laugh. I realised too late that I was crying.
‘Yeah,’ Alice snorted, her eyes and nose streaming with tears. I turned back to her. She still looked so beautiful; wine- red hair flipped over in a wild wave, cat-eye liner slightly smudged around the edges. ‘And I think you should write it.’
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Come on, Lottie.’ Her hand squeezed mine. ‘I see how you look at those stacks of true crime books on your desk.Youshould be the one to tell our story. Let’s take the power back from the exorcists. Let’sownthe demons in our throats.’ A defiant upward tilt of her chin. ‘I’m tired of feeling like a monster.’
‘You were never a monster, Alice,’ I whispered. ‘Not even close.’
‘No?’
‘No.’ My voice hitched. ‘Do you remember when I told you I’d never wanted to kiss anyone before until . . .?’
She gave the slightest nod, with the general expression of someone who’s just stopped breathing.
‘It was until I metyou.’
Her eyes brightened so suddenly it was like the sun coming out from behind the clouds.
For all the times I went barrelling into situations without fear, I suddenly felt extremely vulnerable. I had never put myself out there like this before. Hell, I’d never even entertained the concept of romance before, let alone declared it in such a brazen way. It felt like every nerve in my body was standing to attention.