The radio crackled with updates from the second patrol car that was somewhere behind them, following to provide backup.Jenna also knew that Spelling was sending a highway patrol unit, but she and Jake would be the first to arrive at the old house.
The connections between the murders had been there all along—Vivian's rejected book, the fairytale deaths, the focus group members targeted one by one.But they hadn't seen the pattern until Piper's warning had pointed them toward Ida Billings and her collection of antiques, including an old doll named Loyalynne.
“We should have figured it out sooner,” Jenna muttered.“She's been planning this since—”
“Don't,” Jake cut her off.“We got here as fast as we could.We're here now.”
The road narrowed as they approached the turnoff to the Billings property, gravel crunching beneath the tires as Jenna slowed just enough to make the turn without sending them into a ditch.The old farmhouse waited at the end of the lane, abandoned for years now that Ida lived with her daughter in town.
They rounded the final bend and there was the old house, surrounded by tall trees.A plume of dark smoke rose from somewhere behind the house, curling into the clear blue sky like a malevolent spirit.
“Jake—” Jenna’s voice failed as fear squeezed her chest.
“I see it,” he said.“Could be a brush fire.”
But no.“Watch out for the flames,” Piper had warned, and their mother had delivered the message to Jenna.Now, with smoke billowing into the autumn sky, the words took on the meaning she’d most feared.
“The witch,” Jenna whispered.
“What?”
“In Hansel and Gretel,” Jenna said, her hand on the door handle.“The witch was burned alive in the oven.”
And Jenna knew that was exactly the horrible fate that Vivian had planned for poor Ida.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The porcelain face caught the light, those glass eyes reflecting nothing, yet somehow seeing everything.Vivian cradled Loyalynne in her arms.All these years of searching, of planning, of correcting the stories that needed to be told true—and now, at last, she and the doll were reunited.Yet something unsettling lurked in those familiar glass eyes, something that made Vivian's certainty waver like a flame in a draft.
“Are you angry with me?”Vivian whispered, her voice small in the old brick outbuilding.The heat from the oven pressed against her back, the scent of burning wood sharp in her nostrils.“I did everything for you.Everything.”
Loyalynne stared back, silent and accusing.
Vivian ran a thumb over the doll's porcelain cheek, feeling the fine hairline cracks that time had etched into the once-perfect surface.The years had not been kind to either of them.But they were really together now, with no glass-box separation.That was what mattered.
“They kept us apart,” she continued, her voice strengthening with conviction.“Ida kept you locked away where I couldn't reach you.But I fixed that.I fixed all of it.”She glanced toward the oven, where the flames licked eagerly at the wood she'd fed them.“I made the real stories true again.”
The wail of sirens pierced the quiet, close and undeniable.
Vivian's head snapped up, her heart stuttering in her chest.The sound was loud, clear—not her imagination, not a trick of the mind.Real sirens, drawing closer.
They were coming for her.
“No,” she clutched Loyalynne tighter to her chest.“Not now.Not when we're finally together.”Her eyes turned to the old woman on the wooden bench.Ida Billings lay bound and unconscious, but still breathing.The witch was still alive.The story wasn't finished.
The sirens fell quiet.Had they arrived?
“It's all right,” Vivian told the doll, her voice taking on the soothing cadence she'd used in countless readings to children over the years.“We'll finish our story.I'll make it right.”
“You've made nothing right.”
The voice—high, clear, and cold as winter—froze Vivian in place.It came from nowhere and everywhere, yet she knew with bone-deep certainty that it had come from the doll in her hands.
“Loyalynne?”Her own voice was barely audible beneath the thundering of her pulse.
“I will never belong to a murderer.”The doll's painted lips didn't move, but the voice echoed in Vivian's mind with painful clarity.“Soon I will belong to another.”
Vivian's grip tightened.“What are you saying?”Her voice cracked.“Everything I did was for you—for us.They had to be punished.They kept you from me.They made the stories wrong.”