Killer (31 page)

But here’s the million-dollar question: Who—or
what
—did they just see rise from the ashes? Could Ali be
alive
? Or is it all just smoke and mirrors?

It’s enough to make
anyone
crazy. The Radley may be closed for business, but there are other loony bins nearby. By the time I’m done with Hanna, Aria, Spencer, and Emily, four pretty new patients might just be checking in.

Sleep tight, girlies. While you still can.

Kisses,

—A

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Words cannot express how grateful and fortunate I am to have such a smart, driven, and creative editorial team behind me, helping to make
Killer
as twisted, riveting, and tight as it possibly could be. Enormous thanks goes to Josh Bank and Les Morgenstein, for their spot-on sense of what makes a great plot; to Kristin Marang, for all her help on the wonderful Pretty Little Liars Web site; to Sara Shandler, creative genius extraordinaire and lover of dogs; and especially to Lanie Davis, for being a pleasure to work with, for sitting through many a long phone call struggling to piece exactly how this book hinged together, and for having so many ideas that really pushed
Killer
to the next level. Huge thanks to Farrin Jacobs, Gretchen Hirsch, and Elise Howard at HarperCollins for all their skillful input, fastidious attention, and unrelenting support. I am forever indebted.

Thanks to the readers of these books, many of whom I have had the pleasure of meeting and talking with. Thanks to my husband, Joel; my sister, Alison; my parents, Shep and Mindy; and my parents-in-law, Fran and Doug, for allowing me to write this novel in their living room. And finally, this book is for Riley, a wonderful bear of a dog. We will miss you so.

Credits

Hand Lettering by Peter Horridge
Doll design by Tina Amantula

Excerpt from The Lying Game

PROLOGUE

I woke up in a dingy claw-foot bathtub in an unfamiliar pink-tiled bathroom. A stack of
Maxim
s sat next to the toilet, green toothpaste globbed in the sink, and white drips streaked the mirror. The window showed a dark sky and a full moon. What day of the week was it? Where was I? A frat house at the U of A? Someone’s apartment? I could barely remember that my name was Sutton Mercer, or that I lived in the foothills of Tucson, Arizona. Had someone slipped me something?

“Emma?” a guy’s voice called from another room. “You home?”

“I’m busy!” called a voice close by.

A tall, thin girl opened the bathroom door, her tangled dark hair hanging in her face. “Hey!” I leapt to my feet. “Someone’s in here already!” My body felt tingly, as if it had fallen asleep. When I looked down, it seemed like I was flickering on and off, like I was under a strobe light.
Freaky. Someone definitely slipped me something.

The girl didn’t seem to hear me. She stumbled forward, her face covered in shadows.

“Hel
lo
?” I cried, climbing out of the tub. She didn’t look over. “Are you deaf?” Nothing. She pumped a bottle of lavender-scented lotion and rubbed it on her arms.

The door flung open again, and a snub-nosed, unshaven teenage guy burst in. “Oh.” His gaze flew to the girl’s tight-fitting T-shirt, which said new york new york roller coaster on the front. “I didn’t know you were in here, Emma.”

“That’s maybe why the door was
closed
?” Emma pushed him out and slammed it shut. She turned back to the mirror. I stood right behind her. “Hey!” I cried again.

Finally, she looked up. My eyes darted to the mirror to meet her gaze. But when I looked into the glass, I screamed.

Because Emma looked exactly like me.

And I wasn’t there.

Emma turned and walked out of the bathroom, and I followed as if something was yanking me along behind her. Who was this girl? Why did we look the same? Why was I invisible? And why couldn’t I remember, well,
anything
? The wrong memories snapped into aching, nostalgic focus—the glittering sunset over the Catalinas, the smell of the lemon trees in my backyard in the morning, the feel of cashmere slippers on my toes. But other things, the most important things, had become muffled and fuzzy, as if I’d lived my whole life underwater. I saw vague shapes, but I couldn’t make out what they were. I couldn’t remember what I’d done for any summer vacations, who my first kiss had been with, or what it felt like to feel the sun on my face or dance to my favorite song. What
was
my favorite song? And even worse, every second that passed, things got fuzzier and fuzzier. Like they were disappearing.

Like
I
was disappearing.

But then I concentrated really hard and I heard a muffled scream. And suddenly it was like I was somewhere else. I felt pain shooting through my body, before a final, sleepy sensation of my muscles surrendering. As my eyes slowly closed, I saw a blurry, shadowy figure standing over me.

“Oh my God,” I whispered.

No wonder Emma didn’t see me. No wonder I wasn’t in the mirror. I wasn’t really here.

I was dead.

1

THE DEAD RINGER

Emma Paxton carried her canvas tote and a glass of iced tea out the back door of her new foster family’s home on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Cars swished and grumbled on the nearby expressway, and the air smelled heavily of exhaust and the local water treatment plant. The only decorations in the backyard were dusty free weights, a rusted bug zapper, and kitschy terra-cotta statues.

It was a far cry from my backyard in Tucson, which was desert-landscaped to perfection and had a wooden swing set I used to pretend was a castle. Like I said, it was weird and random which details I still remembered and which ones had evaporated away. For the last hour, I’d been following Emma trying to make sense of her life and willing myself to remember my own. Not like I had a choice. Everywhere she went, I went. I wasn’t entirely sure how I knew these things about Emma, either—they just appeared in my head as I watched her like a text message popping in an inbox. I knew the details of her life better than I did my own.

Emma dropped the tote on the faux wrought-iron patio table, plopped down in a plastic lawn chair, and craned her neck upward. The only nice thing about this patio was that it faced away from the casinos, offering a large swath of clear, uninterrupted sky. The moon dangled halfway up the horizon, a bloated alabaster wafer. Emma’s gaze drifted to two bright, familiar stars to the east. At nine years old, Emma had wistfully named the star on the right the Mom Star, the star on the left the Dad Star, and the smaller, brightly twinkling spot just below them the Emma Star. She’d made up all kinds of fairy tales about these stars, pretending that they were her real family and that one day they’d all be reunited on earth like they were in the sky.

Emma had been in foster care for most of her life. She’d never met her dad, but she remembered her mother,
with whom she had lived until she was five years old. Her mom’s name was Becky. She was a slender woman who loved shouting out the answers to
Wheel of Fortune
, dancing around the living room to Michael Jackson songs, and reading tabloids that ran stories like baby born from pumpkin! and bat boy lives! Becky used to send Emma on scavenger hunts around their apartment complex, the prize always being a tube of used lipstick or a mini Snickers. She bought Emma frilly tutus and lacy dresses from Goodwill for dress-up. She read Emma
Harry Potter
before bed, making up different voices for every character.

But Becky was like a scratch-off lottery ticket—Emma never quite knew what she was going to get with her. Sometimes Becky spent the whole day crying on the couch, her face contorted and her cheeks streaked with tears. Other times she would drag Emma to the nearest department store and buy her two of everything. “Why do I need two pairs of the same shoes?” Emma would ask. A faraway look would come over Becky’s face. “In case the first pair gets dirty, Emmy.”

Becky could be very forgetful, too—like the time she left Emma at a Circle K. One summer night not long after that, Emma slept over with Sasha Morgan, a friend from kindergarten. She woke up in the morning to Mrs. Morgan standing in the doorway, a sick look on her face. Apparently, Becky had left a note under the Morgans’ front door, saying she’d “gone on a little trip.” Some trip
that
was—it had lasted almost thirteen years and counting.

The sliding glass door opened, and Emma wheeled around. Travis, her new foster mom’s eighteen-year-old son, strutted out and settled on top of the patio table. “Sorry about bursting in on you in the bathroom,” he said.

“It’s okay,” Emma muttered bitterly, slowly inching away from Travis’s outstretched legs. She was pretty sure Travis
wasn’t
sorry. He practically made a sport of trying to see her naked. Today, Travis wore a blue ball cap pulled low over his eyes, a ratty, oversized plaid shirt, and baggy jean shorts with the crotch sagging almost to his knees. There was patchy stubble on his pointy-nosed, thin-lipped, pea-eyed face; he wasn’t man enough to actually grow facial hair. His bloodshot brown eyes narrowed lasciviously. Emma could feel his gaze on her, canvassing her tight-fitting new york new york camisole, bare, tanned arms, and long legs.

With a grunt, Travis reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a joint, and lit up. As he blew a plume of smoke in her direction, the bug zapper glowed to life. With a crisp snap and a fizzle of blue light, it annihilated yet another mosquito. If only it could do that to Travis, too.

Back off, pot breath,
Emma wanted to say.
It’s no wonder no girl will get near you.
But she bit her tongue; the comment would have to go into her Comebacks I Should’ve Said file, a list she’d compiled in a black cloth notebook hidden in her top drawer. The Comebacks list, CISS for short, was filled with pithy, snarky remarks Emma had longed to say to foster moms, creepy neighbors, bitchy girls at school, and a whole host of others. For the most part, Emma held her tongue—it was easier to keep quiet, not make trouble, and become whatever type of girl a situation needed her to be. Along the way, Emma had picked up some pretty impressive coping skills: At age ten, she honed her reflexes when Mr. Smythe, a tempestuous foster parent, got into one of his object-throwing moods. When Emma lived in Henderson with Ursula and Steve, the two hippies who grew their own food but were clueless about how to cook it, Emma had begrudgingly taken over kitchen duties, whipping up zucchini bread, veggie gratins, and some awesome stir-fries.

It had been just two months since Emma had moved in with Clarice, a single mom who worked as a bartender for VIP gamblers at The M Resort. Since then, Emma had spent the summer taking pictures, playing marathon games of Minesweeper on the banged-up BlackBerry her friend Alex had given her before she’d left her last foster home in Henderson, and working part-time operating the roller coaster at the New York New York casino. And, oh yeah, avoiding Travis as much as she could.

All Emma wanted to do was get through her senior year here. It was the end of August, and school started on Wednesday. She had the option of leaving Clarice’s when she turned eighteen in two weeks, but that would mean quitting school, finding an apartment, and getting a full-time job to pay rent. Clarice had told Emma’s social worker that Emma could stay here until she got her diploma.
Nine more months,
Emma chanted to herself like a mantra. She could hold on until then, couldn’t she?

Travis took another hit off the joint. “You want some?” he asked in a choked voice, holding the smoke in his lungs.

“No thanks,” Emma said stiffly.

Travis finally exhaled. “Sweet little Emma,” he said in a syrupy voice. “But you aren’t always this good, are you?”

Emma craned her neck up at the sky and paused on the Mom, Dad, and Emma stars again. Farther down the horizon was a star she’d recently named the Boyfriend Star. It seemed to be hovering closer than usual to the Emma Star tonight—maybe it was a sign. Perhaps this would be the year she’d meet her perfect boyfriend, someone she was destined to be with.

“Shit,” Travis whispered suddenly, noticing something inside the house. He quickly stubbed out the joint and threw it under Emma’s chair just as Clarice appeared on the back deck. Emma scowled at the joint’s smoldering tip—nice of Travis to try to pin it on her—and covered it with her shoe.

Clarice still had on her work uniform: a tuxedo jacket, silky white shirt, and black bow tie. Her dyed blond hair was slicked into an impeccable French twist, and her mouth was smeared with bright fuchsia lipstick that didn’t flatter anyone’s skin tone. She held a white envelope in her hands.

“I’m missing two hundred and fifty dollars,” Clarice announced flatly. The empty envelope crinkled. “It was a personal tip from Bruce Willis. He signed one of the bills. I was going to put it in my scrapbook.”

Emma sighed sympathetically. The only thing she’d gleaned about Clarice was that she was absolutely obsessed with celebrities. She kept a scrapbook describing every celeb interaction she’d ever had, and glossy signed headshots lined the wall space in the breakfast nook. Occasionally, Clarice and Emma ran into each another in the kitchen around noon, which was the crack of dawn for Clarice after a bar shift. The only thing Clarice ever wanted to talk about was how she’d had a long conversation with the latest winner of
American Idol
the night before, or how a certain action film starlet’s boobs were definitely fake, or how the host of a dating reality show was kind of a bitch. Emma was always intrigued. She didn’t care much about celebrity dirt but dreamed of someday being an investigative journalist. Not that she ever told Clarice that. Not that Clarice had ever asked anything personal about her.

“The money was in this envelope in my bedroom when I left for work this afternoon.” Clarice stared straight at Emma, her eyes squinting. “Now it’s not. Is there something you want to tell me?”