The Twin They Erased novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Top Room

Willa's POV

The nurse came at Tilda first.

She was broad and quick, and she had the needle up before I understood that it was meant for my sister.

I shouted no and got between them.

The nurse's free hand closed on my throat and pushed me back against the bedpost.

I had fought in a rope ring, and the first thing a ring teaches you is that nobody lets go because you ask.

I took hold of her wrist with both hands, the way I had taken hold of the tower rail every night for a month, and I turned it.

The syringe dropped on the rug.

She hit me in the ribs with her other fist, and I felt it down to my teeth.

"Hold her," my aunt said from the door. "She's hysterical."

"I'm not," I said, and drove my shoulder into the nurse's stomach.

She went back into the dresser, and the lamp went over and out.

The room went dark except for the hall light behind my aunt.

Tilda was on her knees on the floor, patting the rug for the syringe.

"Don't touch it," I said.

"I'm going to throw it out the window."

She found it, stood, swayed and threw it overarm into the dark.

I heard it hit the roof tiles and roll.

The nurse got up with a roar and reached for my hair, and a hand came over the windowsill behind her.

Then a second hand, then a shoulder in a flannel shirt.

Eamon came over the sill with plaster on his knees and a ladder scraping the wall behind him.

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