For a moment, Beth stood very still, like there was a snake on the floor in front of her and any movement might tempt it to strike.
“Kali, they already tried to kill you once,” she said finally. “The people my dad’s working for don’t kid around, and I’m already on their watch list. They probably know you’re here, talking to me. If I let you into the lab, they’ll know that, too.”
“Is that a no?” Skylar asked, wide-eyed and far too innocent.
Bethany didn’t dignify that question with a response.
After a few seconds of silence, I decided I’d have to give Bethany something—a tiny piece of myself, tit for tat for the secrets she’d already given me. Slowly, painfully, I brought my hands to the bottom of my stolen tank top. I pulled the fabric up, inch by inch and bit by bit, until I was standing in Bethany’s foyer uncovered from the waist up, save for my chest.
I heard Skylar’s sharp intake of breath, saw Bethany blink one, two, three times as she took in the sight of my stomach, my rib cage, my waist. I didn’t look down, but dragged my fingertips across my flesh.
Across the ouroboros and the pattern—golden, intricate, overwhelming—inked into the surface of my skin.
“What is that?” Bethany asked. Somehow, she pulled off sounding unimpressed, even though her face betrayed her horror, her fascination, her awe.
“That,” I said, “is why I think I know what your father’s endgame is. It’s why I need you to let me into his lab.”
That wasn’t exactly the truth, and it wasn’t full disclosure, but it was something.
Skylar reached forward and ran her index finger lightly over the surface of my skin. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, offering her face up to the ceiling. When she opened her eyes again, she seemed lighter, more sure of herself—like whatever burden she’d been carrying since she’d met me on the Davises’ front lawn had been somehow lifted from her shoulders.
“I knew it,” she said simply. “This is it.” In typical Skylar fashion, she didn’t wait for either of us to process that statement; she just plowed right on, talking and switching subjects with no warning whatsoever. “Is the lab in the basement?” she asked Bethany, who still hadn’t managed to tear her eyes away from the markings on my skin. “Because I kind of feel like the lab might be in the basement.”
“Would you just stop it with the feelings?” Bethany snapped. Skylar recoiled, but recovered quickly, and I wondered how many times her peppy you-can’t-hurt-me facade had rebounded too quickly for the outside world to notice that she wasn’t quite as bulletproof as she seemed.
“I don’t care about your feelings, Skylar, and I don’t care about Kali’s questionable taste in body art.” Bethany was a good liar—but not good enough. Sensing that I wasn’t buying her outright dismissal of the situation, she continued, her voice softer, her face every bit as guarded as it had been a moment before. “I can’t do this anymore. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.”
Bethany’s eyes flickered toward the kitchen, and I thought about her mother, dressed in a twin set and talking to the air.
“What exactly did your father say to keep you from calling the police?” I asked, gauging her reaction to my question and seeing the moment it hit its mark.
“Does it matter?” Bethany asked bitterly. “Either way, I can’t help you. You should get out of here before he gets home.”
I thought about my dad—about the painful silences and well-rehearsed lies, the fact that he knew less about me than the people in this room, neither of whom I’d known for longer than a day.
“Your dad wouldn’t hurt your mom … would he?” Skylar sounded painfully young, and I wondered how someone with any psychic ability at all could still believe the best about the world.
In response to Skylar’s question, Bethany straightened her shoulders and stared at the wall behind the younger girl’s head as she answered. “My father wouldn’t hit my mom. He wouldn’t put a gun to her head. But would he take her to see Tyler, force her to look at him until she had a very public breakdown in close proximity to the hospital’s psych ward?” Bethany shrugged. “It’s hard to say, really.”
The idea that Bethany’s father would even think of holding something like that over her head was disgusting. As much as I wanted access to the lab in the basement, I wasn’t about to press her to take that kind of risk for me. She had someone else to think about, someone to take care of. I, of all people, could understand that.