"Does Eddie know?" Kira demanded the moment they got through the front door, trying to keep her head on straight. "About Patricia, I mean."
Fabian shook his head distractedly as the two tore up the stairs toward the attic. "No, there was no way to tell him without her realizing that I knew," he explained in a rush, making a beeline for the attic door. It was locked fast, and he grunted in agitation. "Give me one of your hair pins."
Kira did so without hesitation, one of her more unruly pieces of hair unfurling into her face. She brushed it away so she could better watch as Fabian deftly picked the lock and pushed the door open with a careless bang. Kira shoved past him so she could make it up the stairs first, eager to see KT and praying that, when she did, she'd be at the very least safe. However, when she made it to the top, she gasped at the sight before her: the room was empty, the only indication anyone had been there recently being the open window under the stained glass with a long rope of bedsheets dangling out into the open morning air.
"Did she really jump out the third story window?" Kira exclaimed in a mixture of terror and awe.
Fabian scrambled up the steps behind her and his jaw dropped at the sight. "Holy shit, she really did. Kira, that means they were trying to trap her!"
"No, it means she could be anywhere," she said, rushing to the window and peering down. Thankfully, her girlfriend's broken body wasn't lying at the bottom. With that confirmed, she raced back down the attic stairs to the girls' corridor, then to her own room.
"Kira, what are you doing?" called Fabian from the base of the steps.
"I'm getting my shit to go look for her," she answered, dropping to her knees on the opposite side from where the hami khafi glass still law strewn to grab her hat from under her bed. "It's cold out there, and I bet she left without anything to keep her warm!"
She made to stand up, but a flash of yellow under Patricia's bed caught her eye, and she crawled to reach what turned out to be some sort of parcel from a law firm in America. "Fabian, it's addressed to KT," she reported with mounting anxiety.
He entered the room and took the package from her, squinting at the "Why would Patricia have this under her bed?" he asked dubiously.
"Because the possessed bitch stole it, that's why!"
"Rutter, Miller?" Victor's voice snapped from the hallway, and the two went rigid before leaping to their feet. "Where is KT?"
While Fabian hid the parcel behind his back, Kira advanced a step into the corridor. "We could ask you the same question," she challenged.
Victor pursed his lips, expression calm yet somehow still murderous; it sent a chill up her spine. He glanced toward the open attic door, then back to them coldly. "KT has, this morning, decided to leave the school," he answered tersely. "It would appear she has already done so..." He looked back toward KT's abandoned room with a tense set of his shoulders. "This is bad," he whispered, more to himself than to them. "This is very bad indeed." Without waiting for a reply from either of them, he turned and blustered back in the direction of his office.
"Kira," muttered Fabian, "this is bad."
"No shit," she muttered back. "C'mon, if Patricia hid that package from KT, it's gotta be important."
—
Once Eddie rounded Alfie up, they snuck away from the school toward the crypt, descending into the stale air which was just as unwelcoming as always. He wasn't sure exactly what he was supposed to be looking for, but if it looked anything like Jerome's artifact, that thing could be hiding anywhere in the godforsaken tomb.
"Okay," he said, trying to sound optimistic for Alfie's sake. "'In the place of rest you will succeed.' Well, let's succeed, eh? You take this side, I'll take this one?"
"Yeah, whatever," Alfie grumbled.
They searched the place what felt like top to bottom, but neither of them could find anything. When they reconvened in the center of the room, Alfie was beyond agitated. "I hate this crypt! I don't wanna be here!" he complained. "Tunnels could be leading anywhere; secret rooms: kind of intriguing; cellars: dark and dusty, but okay. Crypts are for dead people! Alright? I'm making a stand! Alfie says no more!"
He slammed his hand down on one of the metal rods that lined the large stone sarcophagus in the center of the crypt, but it came loose and nearly caught Eddie in the jaw. He managed to grab it before he ended up with a bloodied chin, though, and as soon as his fist was around it, did the metal begin to burn white hot. Eddie nearly dropped it again, but the searing heat only lasted the second it took him to look down at the markings on the rod. The golden etchings matched the artifact they'd uncovered in the living room.
"Alfie, you found it!" he cheered. "The second artifact!"
"Really? Hell yeah!" Alfie exclaimed. "Can we go now?"
With no better place to stash the second artifact for the time being, the boys elected to keep it where it was until they could come collect it later. Hidden in plain sight and all that jazz. They reemerged in the woods and hightailed it back toward the school lest they face Mara's directorial wrath. Still, they had an hour before curtain up, which in Eddie's opinion, wasn't cutting it that close: the show didn't start till half-past noon, and it was only 11:45 at the latest.
Everything was right on schedule.
—
Kira and Fabian crawled past Victor's office, where he sat and fumed over KT's escape. They silently agreed they didn't want to deal with how Victor would react if he realized they were also viable options for captives, and so thought it best to sneak about rather than thunder around the house like bulls in a china shop.
Once they were on the bottom floor, they zipped into Eddie and Fabian's room, shutting the door behind them cautiously so as not to make any noise. Fabian was already ripping into KT's parcel before Kira even turned away from the door and he spread the contents out onto the bed. She sat down beside him and peered at the contents, only feeling slightly bad that they'd opened KT's mail without her permission. Whatever was in here had to be important, and it almost certainly couldn't wait.
Fabian held aloft a media impression square, squinting at it with the light behind the lens before pulling out his device to download it, while Kira lifted up a small book from the pile. It looked similar to the boobytrap manual she'd found at Rutter's Antiques, but what caught her attention most was the ripped corner of paper that fluttered out from the yellowed pages onto her lap. One sentence was scribbled on it in chicken scratch handwriting:
"'The sinners walk among you,'" she read breathlessly. "Definitely important."
Fabian offered her a grave expression, clicking the square into the impression machine and hitting the download button. The loading bar seemed to take ages, each percent creeping by at a snail's pace while the two friends held their breath. Finally, bar was full and a truly terrifying image jump-scared them on the screen: an illustration of a woman— one of the same women in the drawings from the book they'd found in the secret room— with pupil-less, glowing red eyes.
"Patricia," Fabian whispered forlornly, and Kira took his hand, squeezing it so tightly she felt a joint pop slightly; Fabian squeezed back just as hard.
"We have to find KT," she said, heart rate increasing at the thought of her girlfriend— because goddamnit, she was still her girlfriend!— out there alone with a bunch of Sinners and lunatics on the loose. "Right now."
Kira pulled her phone out of her bag and pulled up KT's contact, clicking the call button. She shifted her weight on the bed with the intention of jumping to her feet, but she froze completely solid when she caught sight of who'd silently opened the door behind them. Kira dropped her phone onto the bed beside her in shock and screamed at the top of her lungs; Fabian's head spun to see what had frightened her. "What?! What is it?!" he yelped moments before he started screaming too.
There, heaving painfully in the doorway, was Robert Frobisher-Symthe himself.
Pandemonium broke out between the three of them, the teens shouting and screaming while Frobisher began groaning and wailing in agony as he dropped to the floor. Fabian leapt the width of the bed to cower in the corner while Kira reached for the nearest object to wield as a weapon, settling on Fabian's guitar.
"No, no, no, no!" Fabian exclaimed, though whether he was begging Frobisher not to kill them or for Kira not to destroy his expensive instrument, it was hard to say.
"Stay back!" she cried, swinging it out in front of her like a baseball bat. "I'm not afraid to use this!"
Frobisher panted heavily kicking the door closed behind him and dragging himself across the floor toward them like the girl from The Grudge.
"Don't you dare come any closer," Kira warned, even as she scuttled backward. "I will Jimi Hendrix your ass!"
"Kira, do not Jimi Hendrix Robert Frobisher-Smythe!" shrieked Fabian.
She dared an incredulous look over her shoulder. "And why the fuck not?" she snapped, whipping back around when the man reached out a trembling hand toward her ankle, kicking him away. "He's had a good, long life!"
"Because it's Robert Frobisher-Smythe! And my guitar!"
"So?! He basically killed my dad! And my roommate!"
"Please! You have to listen to me" gasped the man in question. "I am sick!"
"No, you are evil!" Fabian retorted. "We know why you're here, Frobisher!"
"Yeah, so leave us alone!" added Kira, shaking the guitar so it made a discordant sound. "Or I'm gonna make you leave us alone!"
"I just need your help!" Frobisher pleaded, crawling forward once more. Kira yelped in fright, loosing her nerve and abandoning the guitar on the bed as she was forced to skirt the edges of the room along with Fabian in an attempt to get to the door. "I need to get to the Gatehouse! Back to the tank!"
"Go, go, go!" Kira chanted and long-jumped the prone body of the caterwauling Victorian mastermind, Fabian right behind her. They darted into the foyer, panting heavily, and she was about to shove through the front door when Fabian hesitated.
"Wait!" he hissed, catching her by the sleeve.
"What?"
"What if he's actually in trouble?"
She stared at him with an open mouth. "Are you on crack?" she hissed back. They could still hear him calling after them from the bedroom. "The man who turned one of our friends into a soulless shell of herself turns up at your doorstep, and you think he's asking us for help?"
"Kira, he's still a person!" Fabian insisted.
"No, he's not!" she argued. "He's a Sinner! Fabian, he's The Sinner! After everything we just had confirmed about Patricia, are you really suggesting we go in there and get ourselves captured? Or worse! It's a trick."
"And what if it's not a trick?" he challenged. "What then? Then, we've just left a sick, suffering man to die on my bedroom floor. Could you live with yourself if we just left him there?"
"Yes," she answered immediately, and the blubbering down the hall increased in volume. "It's not my bedroom floor."
Fabian shot her a dirty look. "Look, call me crazy, but I think we should at least hear him out," he said. "If anyone can fix this, it's Robert."
"Okay, you're crazy," she said. "Fabian, we should go warn Eddie and Alfie and find KT. They're our priority right now, not Frobisher."
He pursed his lips, taking a slow step backwards toward the boys' corridor. "Then you go on ahead; I'll stay here."
"Fabian, I'm not just gonna leave you here alone with him!" she said exasperatedly. "Will you please come on, before Victor realizes we're down here and decides to join the party? Besides, we've got to get back to school soon anyway. The play's in like half an hour."
"I can't in good conscience leave him here," Fabian said decisively. "We didn't hear KT out, and that turned out to be a big mistake. I'm not making it again."
Kira bounced between the balls of her feet, anxious to flee but unwilling to abandon Fabian to his own devices. Where was the meek pushover from the year before? She needed that Fabian now, not this stubborn dickhead. "You're going to get us killed, you know that?" she whispered furiously, steeling herself before marching back down the hallway.
Surprised, Fabian trotted after her and they peered through the doorway at Frobisher, who still languished pitifully on the floor. Truthfully, he did look a mess, with his hair sweat-plastered to his forehead and veins bulging from his neck and temple. Kira wrinkled her nose. Gross, she thought, even as she crossed her arms over her chest.
Before Fabian get a word in edgewise, Kira started in on him: "Okay, listen up, Frobisher," she said, heart thundering a mile a minute. "We've decided to hear you out. You can thank my friend here, because if it were my choice, I would have left your sorry ass for dead. So make it quick before we change our minds."
"Kira!" Fabian whispered, horrified.
"No," wheezed Frobisher, struggling to sit up against the foot of Fabian's bed. "No, she has every right to be angry with me. I have done... most terrible things under Ammut's influence."
"So you admit you're under Ammut's control," Kira probed.
"I was," he admitted. "But I managed to break free... at a cost."
Fabian narrowed his eyes with interest. "What cost?"
"My health." Frobisher broke into a heavy coughing fit, his spindly frame racked by sundered breaths.
"So what is it you want from us?" he asked.
"I need your help, Fabian. Both of you. I must get back to the tank—"
"Wait, how do you know my name?" breathed Fabian, and Kira rolled her eyes.
"Someone obviously told him," she drawled.
"Quite, Miss Miller," Frobisher's amused chuckle turned into another hacking fit. "I have been looking for brilliant minds... for those I can trust," he coughed. "I'm too weak to do all that must be done. We are at risk, all of us. We, those who were under the Devourer's control, can fight it, but you must help me—" He broke off in a hiss of pain, head lolling to one side, and Fabian hesitantly picked up the glass of water from Eddie's desk and offered it out to him. Frobisher took it gratefully and drank it down.
Kira felt sick watching him, and some of her conviction began to wear off. He really did look quite sick, but so too had Patricia seemed like a saint when she'd picked her up off the floor that morning. Once again, Kira found herself questioning what was truth and what was fabrication. She thought of a quote from Crime and Punishment: "lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth."
What truth would they find behind all these lies?
Once he drank his fill, Frobisher refocused his gaze on Kira and Fabian. "I," he began but reconsidered. "We must complete my work."
"W-What work?" Fabian asked. "Do you have a plan?"
He nodded weakly. "Yes, I'll tell you everything, show you." He wheezed for a moment, chest stuttering. "I need the tank; it will restore me."
"Hell no," she said immediately.
"Kira," Fabian repeated irksomely.
"Fabian," she mocked him, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him into the hallway so they could talk more privately. "Look, it's one thing to play nursemaid here, but are you really confident enough to go with him to the Gatehouse? Even if he has managed to throw off Ammut's control, there's still Denby and Victor to contend with, and now Patricia and my dad, and anyone else who's on Team Evil that we don't know about!"
"There's three of us," Fabian reasoned stubbornly, but he was beginning to crack. "We could take them."
"Oh, yeah! Because three beanpoles— one of whom has a thumb freshly out of a cast, and the other who currently can't even stand up and is also over a century old— are really gonna bring the house down. Be fucking for real."
"Kira, I know it's risky, but if what he says is true, he can end this. If we don't do something now, he's going to die," he said, putting both hands on her arms, "and with him, any chance of saving the others."
Robert seemed to sense their stalemate. "Please," he begged, and Kira could see he was beginning to fade, "do the right thing. Trust me."
Kira's mouth puckered with conflict, eyes darting between Fabian and Frobisher. "When did you become such a bleeding heart?" she sighed, shaking off Fabian's hands. "This is stupid," she said. "No way."
"Look, let's compromise," suggested Fabian. "We'll stay here, and you run for back-up. That way, when we take Frobisher back to the Gatehouse, we can't be overpowered."
"Fabian, come on," she begged, tugging on his wrist. "Come on, dude, don't be dumb."
"Kira, I believe him. It's possible to break curses— believe me, I know! He's going to die if we don't get him to the tank," he said. "I promise I'll wait here for you to come back with help, okay?"
"It's alright, child," Frobisher assured her, which made her even more reluctant. "I can hang on a little longer."
Kira bit the inside of her cheek and before she could second-guess herself, dropped Fabian's hand and booked it out the front door. The cold air hit her like a wall, and she took off running, regret burning like acid in the back of her throat.
—
The moment Eddie and Alfie got back to school, they were being whisked away by Joy and Jerome respectively. Everyone was in a bit of a tizzy, and the whole lounge felt shockingly chaotic despite only a handful of the actors and production team even there.
Apparently, Kira and Mara had a major blowout— which he'd expected to come eventually, but not quite so publicly— and now neither of them were anywhere to be seen, the former having run off with Fabian and the latter locking herself away somewhere in the building to lick her wounds. Alfie was going to have to stand in as the Stage Manager if Kira didn't turn back up, and both Joy and Jerome were worried about Mara's delicate emotional state after the fight.
Truthfully, Kira and Fabian disappearing had Eddie more than a little on-edge, especially since Kira was no longer in Sibuna. Had she been turned into a Sinner herself and tricked Fabian? He hated himself to the point of illness for even considering it, but why else would his roommate have vanished? But no, there had to be a more logical explanation. Maybe Kira was finally coming around. It was torture, not knowing.
To make matters worse, his dad had apparently chewed Joy and Jerome out for no reason, and Willow's costumes were, by all accounts, completely ridiculous. Joy had been digging around in the costume closet with Jerome for almost an hour trying to find last minute getups for the cast.
"It's been a nightmare," she confessed, shoving a blue button down, an orange t-shirt, and a sparkly golden neck-tie into his arms. "Eddie, you were going to be a horse. Don't ask. Just put these on, yeah? I've gotta find Patricia and give her hers. She's not gonna like it."
"She doesn't like anything," he joked weakly, wrinkling his nose at the tie he'd been given.
Joy mustered up a smile. "She likes you alright, god knows why. She'll definitely like this better than the unicorn costume Willow had for her. Also, here." From her back pocket, she pulled a rolled up packet of papers. "New ending scene. Oh, Patricia!" She waved down her best friend, who was entering the lounge with her nose buried in her phone, and jogged up to her to probably deliver the same spiel.
Great. More nonsense to memorize. Eddie went backstage and shrugged off his uniform clothes, adorning himself with the heinous apparel he'd been given. One look in the mirror confirmed his fears: he looked like a moron.
"At the risk of sounding like Amber, that's a crime against fashion," Patricia remarked, coming up behind him in the mirror in her own ugly costume.
"You look like you're auditioning for the Blue Man Group," he laughed.
"Ha, ha," she deadpanned in her true blue blazer. "Hilarious."
They walked back out onto the main stage, and it seemed Mara had finally reappeared. Her face was only slightly splotchy from crying, and she had an eerily calm look on her face that suggested if anyone even mentioned what happened, she might bite their head off. "Yikes," he muttered, and Patricia hummed in agreement.
"It got ugly," she whispered. "Never seen your sister scream like that." She paused, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. "You don't think..."
Even though the thought had crossed his mind, too, he shook his head vehemently. "No," he said. "They've been having issues for a while; I guess it just hit critical mass."
She hummed again. "You're probably right."
"We are at five minutes till the house opens, people!" Mara barked, all business. She caught sight of Eddie and Patricia on the stage and pointed at them menacingly. "Remember your lines, or so help me, I will make you regret it."
Patricia's laugh was almost patronizing. "Yeah, okay, Mara," she snorted, spinning on her heel heading backstage; Mara glared after her.
"Stop with the pressure, Mara, or I'll forget them," Eddie laughed, trying for levity. Clearly, that was the wrong course of action, because her scowl only deepened.
"Do not play with me right now, Eddie, I am very much not in the mood. I just want to get this done, so all actors, backstage!" she snapped, then turned toward her Director and Assistant Director and clapped sharply. "Joy, Jerome, hurry and get this started, yes? Okay? Okay, break a leg!"
Eddie sucked in a bewildered and slightly put-out breath through his nose and followed Patricia into the wings, while Willow hopped up to the opposite side where Alfie sat with an official looking clipboard. Jerome and Joy scuttled up onto the stage and went to draw the curtain, but exclaimed in tandem surprise when a small body zipped in between them.
"Eddie! Eddie, I need to talk to you!" KT exclaimed shakily, clearly out of breath.
Unsure what to make of KT's breathless and panicked arrival, Eddie merely stared at her. "Hey," he greeted, not quite nervous, just bemused.
"It's Kira," she explained in a rush. "And Fabian. I think something's happened to them."
Eddie's stomach twisted uncomfortably. "Such as?"
As if summoned by KT's presence, Patricia ducked into view from behind the flats, glaring at her with ice cold eyes. KT met her gaze and set her jaw, before continuing: "I think they're with Frobisher."
"Oh, come on," scoffed Patricia. "You're just trying to get one of us to go with you to look for them, and then you're gonna kidnap us."
"Shut up, Patricia!" snapped KT, and turned to plead with Eddie once again when she was suddenly wrenched back around to face Patricia again.
"No, KT, you shut up," she snarled, eyes flashing dangerously.
It was only a second, maybe not even that, but Eddie's soul froze at the sight of Patricia's eyes. Patricia's eyes. Crimson. Like his vision when the phonograph had been smashed. Her... it was her. His vision of Patricia— it hadn't been a warning, it had been a promise. A cruel, twisted promise. Something fate decided to torture him with, make him think he'd circumvented it, only to have been made a complete and total dickhead of.
Everything KT had said, had begged them through tears and screams to believe, was true. And that meant... Patricia— the real one— was the one being tortured. She was trapped, stuck in that sarcophagus, while this monster walked around in her skin, wore her face, used her voice... He knew how scared she must be— she hated locked doors. Eddie bit down on his tongue to stifle a scream, and blood began pooling in his mouth, red as his girlfriend's eyes.
He couldn't react, though. Somewhere in the haze, he knew that he couldn't react. Eddie had to keep playing Team Evil's game. So, he swallowed the blood and saliva, and put himself in between KT and the Sinner. "Drop it, KT," he ordered, trying to communicate with his eyes how fucking sorry he was.
"But, Eddie—" KT pleaded.
"Just leave it, alright?" he interjected sternly, holding up a hand that he hoped Patricia didn't notice was shaking.
KT's expression became a little more hopeless, and she shook her head. "You're useless," she spat at him, then ran off.
Eddie watched her go despondently. She was right.
"Hey," Patricia said, putting an ice-cold hand on his arm. He could feel the muscles in her fingers flexing slightly, like she wasn't quite comfortable in her own skin.
Because it's not her own skin, he thought, a wave of nausea hitting him full-force.
"Are you okay?" he forced himself to ask.
She nodded, expression softening, but now that he was really looking, he could see the contempt behind her winning smiles. "Of course, doofus," she said, leaning closer. "Thanks to you."
He almost laughed. How long had he let her say such sweet things to him without realizing just how wrong it sounded in her voice? He almost laughed, but if he did, he'd probably throw up. Eddie dodged her kiss, the realization he'd been kissing a complete stranger for weeks now enough to make him cry. Instead, he pulled her into a hug, squeezing as tightly as he could without crushing her. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine it was all okay.
But nothing was okay. Nothing might ever be okay again.