The knife's out of your stomach

(but the bleeding is so much worse)

Stupid, traitorous, trusting Emma Duval died on a dock.

She left behind a corpse whose eyes never smile, who tastes blood in her coffee and sees murderers everywhere.

Suspicion whispers in her ears when Ms. Lang slips a phone number into her notebook. It happens again when she first meets Eli in the hallway and again when she speaks to the new sheriff.

It happens when Kieran's hands trace her scar.

Killer, it says. Killer.

Nobody is dead. Nobody is killing. Still, Emma feels ice in her gut. She feels hot blood on her hands—hers, Will's, Piper's.

She struggles to gather the pieces of her old self and pile them back inside the aching wound in her stomach.

She can do this. She can be her old, or fake it well enough.

Right?

The old Emma Duval goes out alone at night.

Stupid.

She dreams of one boy when she's with another.

Traitor.

She trusts.

That's the hardest of all. It's impossible to trust when her nerves sing with anxiety and her mind whispers,

Killer.

She starts small, with three people who would never betray her.

Audrey

Brooke

Kieran

The other two members of the Lakewood Six are also probably safe, but Noah's obsession with serial killers, with Piper, frightens Emma.

And she knows what the Jake does with other people's trust. He breaks Brooke's heart, doling out flowers and worry in a sick, totally unromantic mind game, and Emma thinks

Killer.

That's unfair. She knows it's unfair. Because no one is dead and no one is killing and maybe she came home too soon.

Then…

Then, the body drops.

It's sick and terrible and tragic and such a relief.

People are dying, but Emma Duval finally breathes.