Spencer shrugged. “I haven’t seen any stairs leading down.”
Aria whirled, her eyes wide. “Did you hear that?”
“What?” Hanna asked shakily, standing very still.
No one said a word. Hanna listened very hard. She didn’t hear a thing. She stared around at the dark, empty, creepy space. “Maybe this isn’t it,” she said. “I don’t see any evidence of anything. I don’t think Ali’s here.”
Spencer breathed out, too. “Maybe we were wrong.”
There was a creaking sound above them. It sounded like branches scraping across the roof. “Maybe we should go,” Emily said, tiptoeing toward the door. “This place is freaking me out.”
Everyone nodded and moved toward the exit. But then footsteps sounded behind them, this time for real. Hanna spun back around, her muscles stiffening. Suddenly, someone was standing in the shadows near the back of the room.
The others turned, too. Spencer gasped. Aria made a small eep. Emily cowered against the wall. “H-hello?” Hanna called out shakily, trying to make out who the figure might be.
A flashlight snapped on. Diffused, yellow light scattered throughout the room. The mouse squeaked and scampered. The house creaked and groaned with the wind. Finally, the figure holding the flashlight flipped it upward, shining it on himself. “Hello, girls,” a guy’s voice said.
Hanna blinked at his face in the light. He had brown eyes, a sloped nose, and a pointy, clean-shaven jaw. There was a gun in his right hand, aimed at them.
As he drew up to his full height, Hanna realized with a jolt that she knew him. Madison had just shown her his picture.
“Jackson?” she exclaimed. The bartender. The one who’d overserved Madison and laughed when Hanna suggested they call her a cab.
Only . . . what was he doing here?
“Derrick?” Emily said slowly, next to her.
Hanna frowned and studied the look of shock on Emily’s face. Who was Derrick?
Spencer was twitching, too. “Phineas,” she said dazedly, staring at the boy. “Easy A Phineas from Penn.”
“Olaf,” Aria said at the same time.
Hanna recoiled, too many neurons firing at once in her brain. “Wait. Olaf from Iceland?”
“Yeah,” Aria said slowly, her hand half covering her mouth. “That’s him.”
Hanna shook her head vehemently. “That’s not Olaf. I met Olaf.” Her night at that dive bar in Philly had happened before Iceland—she would have known if the same guy who’d waited on her the night of Madison’s accident was also hitting on Aria halfway around the world.
Or . . . would she? She stared at Jackson’s dark eyebrows and thin lips. Come to think of it, he did sort of look like Olaf. But she never would have thought to connect the strange Icelandic guy with a preppy bartender in the States.
“I-I don’t understand,” Spencer croaked.
“What the hell is going on?” Hanna said at the same time.
The boy stepped forward. “My name is Jackson,” he said. “And Derrick. And Phineas, and yes, even Olaf. But my real name is Nick. Or Tripp to my friends. Tripp Maxwell.”
Emily blinked hard. “Tripp,” she whispered. “Oh my God.”
Spencer looked at her. “Who’s Tripp?”
Emily’s jaw trembled. “Iris liked a boy named Tripp Maxwell. He was a patient at The Preserve.”
“Oh, Iris.” Nick rolled his eyes. “She always had such a thing for me.”
Hanna’s head spun. He was a Preserve patient. His name started with an N. This was Ali’s boyfriend. He was the person who Graham was talking about. He’d hurt Noel, too. Killed Gayle. Murdered Kyla.
He was Helper A.
Panic rose in her chest. She peeked over her shoulder. They were only a few steps away from the door—maybe they could make it out without Nick getting any of them. She grabbed Spencer’s arm and yanked her around. Emily and Aria made a break for it, too. Hanna took one step for the door, then another, reaching out her arms for the wobbly knob.
But then, seemingly out of nowhere, a body shot forward and stood in front of the door, barring their exit. “Not so fast,” said an icy voice.
This voice Hanna knew instantly. All at once, the scent of perfume wafted through the air. Hanna’s blood ran cold. Vanilla perfume.
Slowly, dramatically, Nick trained the flashlight on her. Scars covered her neck and arms. She still had huge blue eyes and a heart-shaped face, but there was something hard and mean about her. She was thinner, reedy, stripped down, and very sick-looking. Her eyes were cold and mocking, without the slightest bit of joy. Hanna drew in a breath.
“Greetings, bitches,” Ali whispered, pulling out a gun as well. “You’re coming with us.”
33
THE SWEET SMELL OF DEATH
Emily trembled as she felt Ali’s steely, murderous gaze upon her. Here she was, finally. Real. Alive. Sickly and way too thin, her jeans hanging off her hips, her arms like toothpicks, cords and veins standing out in her neck. There was dirt all over her face, her hair was matted, and one of her front teeth had rotted, spoiling her smile. It was like scribbling over the Mona Lisa. A beautiful girl, the most beautiful girl, envied by everyone, adored by Emily herself. Now she was just a tarnished ruin. A twisted freak. Then she spun around again and looked at Nick. Derrick. It made no sense. Emily couldn’t believe this was her sweet confidant, the boy who’d helped her through a bleak summer. He’d offered to rescue her from Carolyn’s dorm. But he was looking at her coldly now, an eerie, unfamiliar smile on his face. And something else occurred to her, too: Derrick knew Gayle. He had worked as her landscaper that same summer. It was why Gayle spoke to Derrick with some familiarity the night he’d killed her. She’d probably wondered what Derrick, of all people, was doing in her driveway.
Ali waved the gun, her body still planted firmly against the front door, their only exit. “There’s a trapdoor in the corner. Go there. Now.”
They marched the girls to a hidden door in the floor. Nick pulled at a rusty hinge and yanked it open. A set of stairs descended to a basement. A strip of dim light shone on a carpet. A strange, sweet smell wafted out, causing Emily to cough. “What is that smell?” she sputtered.
“No questions. Climb down,” Ali demanded, pressing the butt of the gun into Aria’s back.
Trembling, Emily staggered down the stairs, nearly falling twice. Spencer, Aria, and Hanna followed. Emily’s feet touched the bottom, and she looked around. They were in a narrow corridor. There was nothing down here except for four walls. The sweet smell was stronger, cloying and almost suffocating, and there was an unsettling hiss in the air, perhaps of more of the sweet poison filling the space. Emily coughed a few more times, but it didn’t seem to help. Spencer took heaving breaths. Aria looked pale.
Ali’s and Nick’s shapes danced before them as they climbed down the ladder last and shut the trapdoor. “So, girls,” Nick said, grinning like a crocodile. “Are you still confused?”
No one dared to speak, though Emily was sure they were all as confused as she was.
“You followed me to Iceland,” Aria stated.
Nick shrugged. “I guess I did.”
“Were you there, too?” Aria asked Ali, peeking at her in the dim light.
Ali just smirked, not answering. Probably figuring she didn’t have to answer.
“Did you put Noel in that shed?” Aria whispered, tears coming to her eyes.
Nick crossed his arms over his chest. Again with that sly smile.
Then Emily cleared her throat. “You stole that money from Gayle. And you killed her. And you came on the cruise with us. You told the Feds about Jordan.”
“And you bombed the ship,” Aria added. “You almost killed me.”
“You did kill Graham,” Hanna said.
Nick and Ali glanced at each other, looking proud. They seemed almost giddy.
Emily reached for Aria’s hand. The extent of everything he’d done knifed through her, hot and sharp. It was bad enough what Nick and Ali had done to Noel. But the two of them had killed Ian, too. And Jenna. He’d helped set fire to Spencer’s yard. He’d more than likely been in the Poconos when Ali tried to kill them, too. He’d helped Ali escape.
Even though it made no sense, even though it was crazy, somehow this guy had been four people at once, different people to all of them.
“I trusted you,” Emily whispered, staring at Nick. “And because of you, I almost gave my baby away to a crazy person.”
Nick’s eyes hardened. “I didn’t force you to make that deal, Emily. You did it yourself. That’s the beauty of this, girls—I got you all into trouble, but you were the ones, ultimately, who sealed your fates.”
Everyone exchanged a doomed glance. He was right. They were culpable . . . and ultimately responsible. Somehow Nick had figured out their weaknesses and exploited them.
“You killed Tabitha, too, didn’t you?” Emily sputtered.
Nick glanced at Ali, and she snickered. “We just did what we had to do,” Nick said.
“And what about Iris?” Emily whispered.
Nick shrugged. “No more questions. We’re done.”
He brushed past them and located a small bump in the wall. He twisted it once, grunted, and the whole wall shifted, revealing a hidden room. Light spilled out from a bare bulb in the corner. “Go,” he demanded, pushing Emily and the others inside.
Emily walked shakily into the space. It was a small, damp, basement room that smelled of mildew and that horrible sweetness she couldn’t identify. There was an old tweed couch pushed against the cinder-block wall, a table at its side. And on the walls, covering every inch, were pictures of Ali.
Old school pictures from seventh grade. Snapshots from yearbook in fourth and fifth grades, candids of her when she’d returned to Rosewood after Ian was arraigned, family portraits Emily remembered from the DiLaurentis front hall, only one DiLaurentis twin smiling a gap-toothed smile. The pictures covered every inch of the space. Newspaper articles about Alison returning to Rosewood, Alison going missing after the Poconos fire, and Alison sightings all over the country were plastered on the walls as well, certain lines of text highlighted, other things circled with red pen. WE LOVE YOU, ALI, read sparkly letters along the top border of one wall. WE MISS YOU, ALI, read letters on the opposite wall.
Emily stepped back. “What is this?”
“Like it?” Ali asked behind them, her gun still pointed at their backs. “You should. You made it.”
Emily blinked, her head lolling on her neck. She couldn’t feel her legs, exactly. “What do you mean by that?”
“When they find you,” Ali explained in a pleasant voice, “they’ll figure it’s your shrine to me.”
Spencer’s eyes blazed. “We would never make a shrine to you.”
“Oh, please.” Ali rolled her eyes. “You love me. You’ve always loved me. I’m all you’ve been thinking about these past few years. That’s what the cops will think when they find all of you dead here. Your own little death plan, a final tribute to moi.”
