Chapter 03

Valarie's POV

I was still inside the coffin. That was the first thing I understood when the world came back into focus, except now I was looking down at it from somewhere above, weightless, floating, my soul hovering just below the garage ceiling like a balloon someone had let slip from their hand.

My face had turned a terrifying shade of bluish purple, the color of a bruise that had been left to sit for days. My lips had gone black, cracked and still. My eyes were wide open, staring straight up at the ceiling, unblinking, unseeing, fixed on nothing at all.

Below me, Caspian was still patting the coffin lid, completely unaware that the girl inside it was no longer breathing at all.

"Whoa," he said, grinning down at my motionless body like he'd just watched a magic trick. "Did she really stop breathing? What a talent. That kind of breath control could win her an Oscar."

Gerald laughed beside him. "She's probably tired from acting. Too lazy to move now."

I looked at their smiling faces from above, at the easy, careless joy dancing across their features, and something inside my ghostly chest twisted so violently I thought it might tear me apart all over again. I screamed at them with everything I had left in me, every ounce of grief and fear and desperate hope that maybe, somehow, they would finally hear me.

But no sound came out. Not even a whisper.

I wasn't pretending, I wanted to tell them. I'm really dead. Can't you see that? Can't any of you see what you've done?

My body lay quietly inside the glass coffin, undisturbed, unmoving, while the world outside kept spinning as if nothing at all had happened.

It was Gerald who noticed first. The smile on his face slowly faded, melting away like ice left too long in the sun. He stepped closer to the coffin, his nose almost touching the glass now as he stared hard at my face, at the wrongness of it, at something his mind hadn't quite let him name yet.

"Osborne?" His voice suddenly sounded tight, strained in a way I had never heard from him before.

Osborne didn't even look up. He was still looking down at his phone, scrolling through something, his thumb moving lazily across the screen. "What?"

"Valarie's face looks wrong."

That got his attention. Osborne glanced up, frowning slightly, but he didn't move yet.

Gerald reached into his pocket and pulled out the spare key to the glass coffin, his hand shaking just slightly as he held it up to the light.

"She's white as a sheet," he said, his eyes never leaving my face. "Her lips are turning black. What if she really passed out?" His jaw tightened. "I'm opening it."

Yes. Yes, Gerald, please. Open it. Please, just open it.

He took the key and moved toward the lock, and for one shining, impossible second, I felt something close to hope flicker through whatever was left of me.

But then Elle rushed over, quick as a cat, and grabbed his wrist before the key could even reach the lock.

"Gerald, what are you doing?"

Gerald frowned at her, pulling his wrist back slightly. "Her face looks awful. Something's not right."

"What do you mean, awful?" Elle's voice sharpened, and she pointed at my body inside the coffin, her expression twisting into something that looked almost offended and hurt. "She stole my foundation."

Gerald froze. "Foundation?"

Elle's eyes turned red, glassy with tears that hadn't fallen yet. She bit her lower lip, looking wounded, betrayed. "My pale shade of foundation went missing this afternoon. So she stole it and put it on. Her skin is so dull and dark now — of course she looks weird wearing my lightest shade. It doesn't match her at all."

I wanted to scream at the absurdity of it, at the sheer cruelty wrapped up in something so small and stupid. A shade of foundation? You're going to let me lie here dead because of a shade of foundation?

Osborne suddenly looked up from his phone, his eyes narrowing. "Elle. Are you saying she stole from you?"

I floated in the air above them, screaming silently, full of a hurt so deep it felt like it belonged to someone else, someone who had never known kindness at all. I didn't steal anything. My face is pale because I suffocated to death in that coffin your brother built for me. Can't any of you understand that? Can't you look past her lies for even one second?

But no one could hear me. No one ever would again.

Elle wiped her tears delicately, careful not to smudge whatever makeup she still had on, and nodded, her voice small and trembling. "It was the limited edition one you brought back for me from France last month, Osborne. I loved that foundation. And she just took it, like she takes everything else."

Osborne's face went completely dark, the way storm clouds gather before a downpour. Something shifted behind his eyes, something cold and final.

He strode over to the glass coffin without another word.

He lifted his foot and kicked the side of it, hard, the sound cracking through the garage like a gunshot. The force made the whole coffin shake violently on its stand. My body rolled with the impact, helpless, lifeless, unable to brace for the fall the way I would have if I'd still been alive to feel it.

With a dull, sickening thud, my head slammed hard against the glass wall of the coffin.

Osborne pointed down at my motionless, broken body inside, his voice thick with disgust, his hands trembling with barely controlled fury.

"Valarie," he spat, "stealing wasn't enough for you? Now you're playing dead just to scare Elle? I really think—" he paused, breathing hard, glaring down at the still, silent shape of the girl he had once, briefly, considered giving a welcome gift to. "I really think we should just leave you in there to think about what you've done.”