have viole[n]t ends. clue.

For a moment I hesitate, key hanging just above the trapdoor hole. Instinct, perhaps, or common sense. My body flinches, heart racing, begging me not to go back down there. I can hear Whitney's gasps, the way she held me back as her voice shook so violently it were as if she'd seen a ghost.

"No, Vi,"
"No, you don't want to be in here."
"Please, please, let's go, you don't—"

But we saw much worse than a ghost.

It's the thought of her that pushes my hand down. The key slides in to the hole with ease and I gasp a little, like perhaps I'd hoped it wouldn't fit. But of course it did. I knew it would. Because I'm not stupid. Not all the time. Sometimes I'm right.

And Whitney - she's right. Right and good and kind and brave, and she's worth plunging back into the dark to find again.

So I furrow my brow, take a breath, and twist my wrist with vigor.

[ violet tries to open the door #2 ]

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But it doesn't budge.

"No!" I moan, writhing and heaving at the edges of the trapdoor. "No no NO! Damn it all!"

Something underneath the wood latches the door shut. It groans and scratches at my efforts but they are for naught, giving up as I slump back onto my knees and pound the floor childishly with my fist. Stupid Violet, thinking it would be that easy. Even in his death Malcolm Nox was still holding me back, still making me sweat, still grinning at me like he knew something I don't.

"Fuck!" I bark, twisting the key up and out of its hole. So sure I had been this would work. So confident - how he mocks me, Mr. Nox, alone and afraid in his mansion of horrors.

Still, Whitney's safety perils my heart. I slip the damn thing into the pocket of my jeans and get to thinking. If there's a trapdoor here, and one in the kitchen, and Whitney found me in the dark somehow, then there has to be more secret doors in the other rooms.

No weapon as sharp as the plan in my head, I leap from my place and slip quietly out of the office.

[ violet tries to find another key in another room ]

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It fits. But I must learn my lessons if I'm to pass this test. Instead of a gasp, my chest rises and falls calmly with shallow breaths, all too aware of the failure I'd found in the office. It's what Mr. Nox would have wanted, I think. To watch me grow and learn. To make me a better person. To make me think, assess, look beyond the box. To solve his riddles and puzzles.

Perhaps without the fear of death wrapped around my every muscle, but I suppose that's not his fault.

Look at me now, Mr. Nox, I think slyly as I move to turn the key. Look at me now.

[ violet tries to open this door #2 ]

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This house is mocking me.

I shriek, push out terrible word from gritted teeth, and kick the painting over in a huff.

"Give her back!" I beg the night, frustrated and manic and flooded with guilt. "I didn't," breathless and dizzy, "I didn't let go-"

She let go of my hand.

Because she didn't want to be saved.
Because she didn't want me in here when Coralie,
when Poppy,
when Amrin,
when she-

Maybe I didn't lose Whitney. Maybe I escaped her.

I rise and hurl myself through the door, the halls, up the stairs and around corners. I'm not thinking clearly. There's a killer in this house, and a dead boy in the basement, and by sunrise I'll either be gone like Whitney or worse like Blaine. And if I can't trust anyone, not even Whit, not even my own mind - then what's the point of it all? What was the point of me coming here, taking a chance I knew was slim to begin with, just to die alone and unsure of my own self?

Like hell.

Furious, I rattle doorknobs and hurl the first unlocked door wide open with a bang. Anger coarses through me, though who I'm most angry at I cannot tell. Mr. Nox, for sending the stupid lavender invitation. My parents, for convincing me to try. Poppy and Adam, for locking me in the kitchen. Whitney, for taking my hand and letting it go and stealing away my reason to replace it with doubt.

Or myself, for being too stupid to end up here in the first place.


[ violet be lookin for a key AGAIN!!!!!!! ]

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It's a given that this key fits and turns all the locks just fine. But which it unlocks is a question I could spend all night hunting for the answer to. If Mr. Nox were here he'd tell me to be smart, slow down, to take a moment to think - but I'm all out of time, all out of smarts, and damn all out of patience to care about the advice from a dead man. All the intelligence in the world couldn't stop him from inviting a murderer into his home, letting them sleep in one of his rooms, allowing them to get so close to him that they were so easily able to kill him. All the money in the world and he's dead, yet I'm still alive. That's got to count for something. It's just got to.


[ violet be opening a third damn door #2]

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