CHAPTER 45

So much was going on inside Lola’s head. She couldn’t stop looking at the completely dismantled body of Nora. It made her entire body feel cold and her mind seize up. She couldn’t think and couldn’t do much more than pull her knees up to her chest and fold herself up as small as possible. The flashes of imagery she’d gotten during her blackout kept smashing into her mind, making the shock of what happened even worse. What happened? How? Why? These questions overwhelmed her but she had no answer for any of them. Did she kill Nora? Or did something else save her? She looked down at her hands and was appalled to find them covered and slick with blood. In a frantic, furious state, she used the cloak she wore to scrub at them, trying to get the blood off. When that proved ineffective, she scrambled to the pond’s edge and dunked them into the frigid water. It was too dark to see below the surface, but she could imagine thin swirls of blood floating down into the depths of the pond. The gu