The machete swung and Hapless Blonde Number 2 shrieked, standing stock-still and helplessly flapping her hands. The machete plunged through flesh and bone, and copious amounts of fake blood sprayed across the TV screen.

Jenny Ryan rolled her eyes. "That blood is pink! Pink!"

"Boo," Mikey yelled, hurling a handful of popcorn at the screen. "Why didn't she run or duck? She could easily have got away."

Jenny reached across the sofa and confiscated his popcorn bowl. "It's not that simple. Everyone knows about the fight or flight response, but there's a third option, and that's freeze. Some people just freeze up, and there's nothing they can do about it."

Mikey snorted and threw a piece of popcorn at her. He must have a stash of it in his lap or something. His aim was poor, and the popcorn attached itself to his on-again, off-again girlfriend's hair. Eleanor Smith slowly turned her head and gave him an icy look.

"Michael Jones-Kent, did you just throw popcorn at my hair?"

Mikey paled and hastily removed the offending treat. One thing everyone in the group knew was that you did not ever mess with Eleanor's hair. Ever.

"Careful, Mikey," said Chris Ecton, sitting on a squishy beanbag next to the sofa. "This film might give her ideas."

Onscreen, the machete-wielding killer in the white mask dispatched another nubile young victim.

"Does this even have a plot?" Jenny asked.

Weekly film night had become something of a ritual for them. Four times a month they took it in turn to cram into each other's flats, drink too much, eat their own body weight in popcorn, and gleefully tear apart every film they watched. Last week had been romcoms. This week was horror.

It was Maggie Newman's turn to host, and her flat was the smallest of all. Jenny, Eleanor, and Mikey were squeezed on the sofa, Adam and Chris had beanbags, and Maggie herself was sprawled across the rug on the floor. Bowls of differently flavoured popcorn were strategically placed throughout the seating arrangement, and everyone had a cold beer.

"Who needs a plot?" Mikey said, happily eating the popcorn he'd liberated from Eleanor's hair.

"I wouldn't mind one," Jenny said.

"Nah, all we need is boobs and blood."

Jenny and Eleanor exchanged a long-suffering look, and Jenny suppressed a laugh. Sometimes she still couldn't believe how quickly and easily the group had welcomed her as one of their own. They'd been a happy unit of five for years, and then Jenny had met Eleanor through a mutual friend at university. Things had snowballed from there. Even when the others recounted events from before Jenny had joined them, she never felt excluded or unwanted. She fitted in with them as naturally as if she'd always been there.

Across the space between them, Chris caught Jenny's eye and grinned.

Lately she'd begun to notice him giving her these little grins, ones that were softer and warmer than usual, like they were only for her.

She smiled back, a tiny flush creeping into her cheeks.

Chris was cute and funny and kind, he dressed well and everyone adored him. Maybe it had only been a matter of time before Jenny fell under his spell too.

The horror film came to a dramatic and suitably gory end, and Mikey cheered, almost dislodging the bowl he'd sneaked back into his lap.

"That was awful," Eleanor declared.

"Did you expect anything else from something called Slasher Man Returns?" Jenny asked.

Eleanor made a wry face. "I guess not."

"What's next?" said Maggie, muting the TV as the credits rolled up the screen.

A loud debate ensued, during which film tastes were called into question, and a popcorn battle was started in defence of Mikey's honour. In the end, the choices were narrowed down to a tossup between a low-budget Jack the Ripper flick, and an even cheaper-looking one, in which lots of dim-witted but big-breasted girls ran around in bikinis while terrible CGI sharks chased them.

"I vote for Lake of Blood," Mikey announced.

Eleanor rolled her eyes. "Of course you do. It's basically ninety minutes of plastic boobs bouncing around."

"Exactly."

She swatted the back of his head.

Jenny never understood why those two kept breaking up. They clearly adored each other, and they always got back together a few days later anyway. Why they kept putting themselves through pointless drama was beyond Jenny, but, like the others, she'd grown used to it. It never affected the group as a whole, and it always seemed to work out for Mikey and Eleanor in the end.

"I vote for The Ripper Lives," Chris said, shifting his weight in the beanbag.

"But there's no boobs in that," Mikey protested.

Chris kicked Mikey's foot. "Some of us actually like films with a plot."

"I second that," Jenny said.

Chris's eyes met hers over Maggie's sprawled form, and he gave her another of those soft smiles. She couldn't get close enough to clink her beer bottle against his, so she settled for tipping it in his direction, a gesture he returned.

"Okay, so that's one for Lake of Blood, and one for The Ripper Lives," Mikey said. "The rest of you need to cast your vote."

Maggie sat up suddenly, blocking the TV with her head. "I don't want to watch a film about Jack the Ripper," she said, her voice serious.

"Aww, come on, Mags," Mikey said. "If it's too scary, I'll give you a sofa cushion to hide behind."

She turned around, her normally-delicate features tight and fierce. "If I was worried about being scared, I wouldn't have offered to host our horror night."

"Then what's the problem, sweetie?" Eleanor asked. "Because, to be honest, I was going to vote for the Ripper film too. I think Mikey's seen enough blood-splattered breasts for one night."

Mikey made a vague noise of protest.

"Don't you think it's a little disrespectful to be watching a film about the Ripper right now?" Maggie snapped.

"Why?" Mikey said, clearly baffled.

Jenny shook her head. She adored Mikey as much as the rest of the group, but he could definitely be dim sometimes. Maybe that was why he and Eleanor kept breaking up.

"The copycat Ripper murders," she said, and understanding dawned on Mikey's face.

Even Mikey, who never bothered with the news, knew about the three recent murders that had rocked East London. Newspapers were calling it The Return of the Ripper. Although not identical to the infamous Whitechapel murders that had taken place more than a hundred years earlier – two of the victims were male, and none of them had any links to the sex industry – there were enough similarities in the nature of the wounds and the location of the bodies for comparisons to be drawn. The killer wasn't copycatting the original Ripper murders, but they had clearly been inspired by them.

"Can I just point out that those murders have only happened over the last two weeks, and this film came out last year, so it's not like it's trying to ride the publicity train," Mikey said.

"That's not the point," Jenny said, and Maggie shot her a grateful smile.

"What is?" Chris asked.

She shrugged. "It just seems a little insensitive to watch a film about a historical killer that a real-life killer is currently mimicking, especially when it's so close to home. That last murder was only a mile away from here."

"I didn't think about it like that, but I can see where you're coming from," Chris said. Jenny wasn't sure if he was agreeing with her because he thought it's what she wanted to hear, or if he genuinely thought she was right. "I'm taking back my vote," he added.

"You guys do realise that whoever's killing people won't have a clue whether or not we watch this film, right?" Adam said, stretching out his long legs and almost kicking over Maggie's beer. "I mean, what difference does it make if we do watch it?"

"It's a moral issue," Maggie said, rounding on him. "If the guy behind this is copying the Ripper murders then he's still got two victims to go. That means, unless the police catch him in time, two more people are going to die."

"Right, but watching or not watching a film isn't going to change that."

"No, but it does feel like trivialising what's happened," Jenny said, and Maggie vigorously nodded. "And I really don't think anyone should trivialise this, you know? It's insulting. People are dying, practically on our doorstop." She looked around at her friends. "This is serious shit and we should all remember that."

"I hadn't forgotten," Adam mumbled.

No one spoke for a few moments, the atmosphere decidedly sombre.

"How come he only killed five people?" Mikey said at last. "I mean, it's not that high a number, not for one of the most famous killers in the world."

"The number five is significant for a number of reasons," Maggie said, her voice taking on that slight lecturing quality it did when she started showing off her knowledge. "There are five senses. The Romans considered it the number of marriage. Five is the number of the human being – symbolising all four limbs and the head that controls them."

"It's also regarded as the number of the universe," Jenny said, and everyone looked at her. She gave a self-conscious little shrug. "What? Maggie's not the only one who knows about this kind of thing."

"It probably didn't mean anything with the Ripper, though," Adam said. "The guy probably stopped killing because he died. There was so much shit to die from back then."

"What makes you so sure it was a man?" said Eleanor with a ghoulish smile.

"Well..." He trailed off, scratching his head.

"After all," Eleanor said, still with that same smile, "the Ripper cut out some of his victims' organs with surgical precision, and we all know that no guy is that good at finding his way around a woman."

There was a chorus of protests from the boys.

"Who says the Ripper was a man or a woman?" Maggie said.

Another long pause.

"What do you mean?" Jenny asked.

"Oh God, don't get her started on one of her conspiracy theories," Mikey said, softening his words by reaching over and tousling Maggie's hair.

"It's not a conspiracy theory," Maggie said, ducking away from Mikey's hand. "You know, there are plenty of other serial killers throughout history who killed five victims."

"So?" Adam asked, taking a long swig of his beer.

"So don't you think that's significant?"

"Not really." He followed his response with a burp.

Maggie lowered her voice. The TV was still muted, and the light from the screen cut strange shadows on her face. "Some people believe the Ripper wasn't human."

Eleanor giggled. "You mean, like a vampire or something?"

"Of course not." Maggie rolled her eyes.

"So, like a demon, then?" Mikey said, nudging Eleanor.

They shared a look, and Jenny found her eyes drifting back to Chris. Eleanor and Mikey had epic fights and they'd broken up more times than she could remember, but when they were together, they worked.

What would it be like to have someone like that?

Jenny had had boyfriends before, back when she was a teenager, but university changed everything. Training to be a nurse took a lot of hard work and dedication, and she'd no longer had the time or the inclination to venture into a proper relationship. There'd been one-night stands, brief drunken fumbles, but nothing serious. Now her uni days were behind her, and she was tired of picking up guys in clubs and hoping they weren't so drunk they couldn't give her a good time. Maybe it was time for something more.

Chris had been watching Maggie, but, as if he sensed Jenny's eyes on him, he glanced at her and smiled. There was so much hope and possibility in that smile, the potential for a happy future together if Jenny could just reach out and take it.

"You're missing the point. Again," Maggie said, and Jenny was drawn back into the conversation. "There are things in this world that we don't understand, things that are way beyond our tiny human comprehension."

She made a wild gesture with her hands, and Jenny stifled a smile. Maggie had a lot of outlandish ideas, but she was genuinely passionate about them, and once she got started, there was no slowing her down.

"We like to think we know everything about everything, but people throughout history have frequently thought that, and how many times have they been proved wrong?" Maggie continued.

The others knew her well enough to know that she wasn't actually expecting an answer, so they all stayed quiet.

"Ever since the Ripper started killing, people have assumed that a man is responsible, but what if the real Ripper is something more than that? What if it was something beyond our understanding?"

"This is definitely beyond my understanding," Mikey mumbled, scratching his head.

Maggie lowered her voice, suddenly very serious. "What if the Ripper was true evil?"

"People can be true evil," Jenny pointed out.

"More than human evil." Maggie gestured frantically with her hands again. "I believe there are things in this world that have been around far longer than humans, and I believe these things will be around long after we're dust."

"I'm still not sure what you mean by 'things'," Jenny said.

When Jenny had first joined the group, Maggie's strange, passionate outbursts had taken her by surprise, but now she had grown as used to them as the others. Most of the time she thought Maggie was talking complete nonsense, but it was who Maggie was, and her friends loved her anyway.

"I can't name them because I don't know what they are."

"No offence, but isn't that a big hole in your logic, right there?" Chris asked. "You think there are ancient things that live alongside us, but we can't see them and we don't know what they are, so you can't name them. Why are you so sure they're real, then?"

Maggie turned her intense stare on him. "Do you think the world is only what we can see?"

He shrugged. "Never really thought about it, to be honest."

"History is packed full of paranormal phenomena, and there is no smoke without fire. I don't know what's out there, but I cannot believe that the world is just what we see with our own two eyes. There's way too much evidence to suggest otherwise."

"I'm a little lost, Mags. Where does Jack the Ripper fit into this?" Eleanor asked.

"People think that he was a man, a serial killer, but I think he was so much more than that. I think he, she, it, whatever name you want to give, was a force of real evil in human form."

"Do you mean like possession?" Jenny asked.

In their last horror marathon, a couple of months back, they'd watched a series of possession-based films. Each one had been more or less the same, lots of people screaming and contorting and speaking ancient languages in voices that weren't their own. It wasn't exactly what sprang to mind when Jenny thought about Jack the Ripper.

"Maybe," Maggie said.

"Maybe? C'mon, Mags, you don't know what you're talking about, do you?" said Mikey, nudging her with his foot.

"I can't provide all the answers. We're talking about things that are bigger than the world we know, and that means they're bigger than we can fully understand."

"Lemme see if I've got this," said Adam. "Your theory is that the Ripper was some ancient, unnameable force of evil that somehow possesses people and forces them to kill?"

"It's not my theory, but yes, that's more or less it," Maggie replied.

"And you believe it?" Adam's voice was heavy with scepticism.

"Why not?"

"Because it's nuts."

Maggie scowled. "Maybe to you."

"Can we get some more details?" Chris asked, playing along. "I mean, does the Ripper force choose people who are inherently bad, or will it take anyone?"

"I don't know, but it is an interesting point. A lot of people on the site are debating it, actually."

"Okay, so how long does the Ripper possess these people?"

"I don't know," Maggie said. "The obvious answer is as long as necessary, as long as it takes to kill the five victims."

"So you think that the only reason the Ripper never killed anyone else is because the force responsible moved on?" Mikey said, scrunching up his face.

"And possessed someone else?" Eleanor added.

"Does that really seem so strange?" Maggie asked.

"Yes," her friends said in unison.

"What happens to the body after the Ripper leaves it?" Adam asked. "Does the person die?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. There are a lot of serial killers with five victims to their names, and some of them are still alive."

"Doesn't that poke a hole in the theory, then?" Jenny asked.

"I don't believe so. If the Ripper took their bodies and used them for its own means, then who's to say they weren't changed by the experience? Perhaps most serial killers throughout history started off being possessed by the Ripper. Perhaps its presence in their bodies damaged them in ways we can't understand. Perhaps it broke open something dark and terrible inside them, pushing them to keep on killing long after the Ripper left them."

"And perhaps serial killers are just really fucked-up human beings," Mikey said.

Maggie lowered her eyes. "I know I'm not going to convince any of you, but I believe in this."

"You got all this from that website you like so much, right?" Adam said.

She nodded.

"Isn't this the same website that said Freddie Mercury wasn't really dead, but that the mothership had taken him back to his home planet so he could spend the rest of his life partying with Elvis?" A snigger followed Adam's words.

"Some of their theories are more...out there than others," said Maggie, with as much dignity as she could muster. "But that doesn't mean we should dismiss everything they say."

"Of course not," said Jenny, scooting forward and hugging Maggie from behind.

"So," Mikey said, after a beat of silence, "back to the films. Lake of Blood work for everyone?"

There was a murmur of agreement. Mikey put the film on and everyone settled down to watch it.

The criticism began less than a minute in, when the stars of the film arrived at a ramshackle cabin in the woods and immediately began stripping off.

"Oh, come on," Eleanor said. "Girls who go on holiday together don't automatically go skinny-dipping."

Another few seconds passed.

"And they don't suddenly indulge in lesbian experiments, either," she added, rolling her eyes.

"Hush, don't spoil this for me," Mikey said.

Jenny handed Eleanor a cushion, and Eleanor smacked Mikey with it. It didn't even break his concentration.

As the girls romped and played onscreen, the first killer sharks appeared, their dorsal fins slicing through the water like blades.

"Those have got to be the worst CGI sharks I've ever seen," Adam said, almost choking on his laughter.

"Worse than Sharknado?" Chris asked, pulling a face.

Adam thought about it, studying the screen. "You know what? I reckon so."

"What's worse than the CGI is the fact that those are clearly meant to be great whites," said Maggie, as one of the sharks grabbed a shrieking girl by the leg and pulled her under the water.

"So?" Mikey said, glued to the screen.

"So great whites can't survive in fresh water. Bull sharks can – why didn't the director just pick those?"

"Mags, you've seen how shitty this film is going to be, right?" said Eleanor. "I doubt anyone involved in it even knows what a bull shark is."

"That's what Google's for!"

"I bet there'll be lots of lovely medical fails in this, too," said Chris, and he flashed Jenny a grin. "I hope you're up to the challenge of spotting them, Nurse Ryan."

When it came to a film marathon, nothing was safe. The group would tear apart the acting, the directing, the cinematography, the special effects, the story-line – or lack of, as was often the case – but the medical inaccuracies were Jenny's speciality.

"I think I can handle it," she said, returning Chris's grin.

It didn't take long for her inner critic to rise to the surface. "I can already predict what's going to happen," she said, as a shark bite victim was frantically wheeled into hospital.

"Do share," Chris said.

"Oh no, it's more fun to watch it play out. That way I don't have to admit if I'm wrong."

Events on the screen ticked by, lots of people shouting and rushing around, while the bitten victim writhed unconvincingly and groaned.

"She's flatlining," someone screamed.

Jenny rolled her eyes. "I knew it. I just knew it. Any second now someone will wheel out the defibrillator."

"Oh, there it is," Eleanor laughed, pointing.

It was hardly the first film to trot out this particular medical myth, but it was one that really pressed Jenny's buttons.

"C'mon, Jen," said Chris. "Tell us why it's wrong."

She'd probably said it so many times that her friends could recite the spiel by heart, but they let her rant anyway, the same as they indulged Maggie's quirks and oddities.

"A defib is useless if the heart is actually flatlining. In the real world they're used to restore normal heart rhythm if that heart rhythm is abnormal, like if the patient is suffering from ventricular tachycardia or something like that. You can't actually start someone's heart again using a defibrillator." Jenny shoved her fingers through her hair. "It bugs me so much."

She knew why they did it – it made for better drama, but that didn't mean it didn't annoy the crap out of her.

"I love it when you speak nurse," Mikey teased.

Jenny smiled at him, but her eyes were on Chris.

As per usual, the onscreen doctors started the victim's heart again using the defibrillator, and Jenny rolled her eyes. "Sorry, guys, your patient would still be dead. You should be doing manual CPR instead."

"Don't the films get that wrong, too?" Maggie said.

"A lot of the time, yeah."

There were plenty of other hospital scenes that Jenny could have torn to pieces, but it was getting late and she honestly couldn't be bothered. Plus, the others had plenty of criticisms of their own, and she didn't want to dominate the conversation.

The film finally ended in a suitably absurd way, with the battered and bloodied heroine taking on the largest shark with some sort of homemade chainsaw.

"Well, that was completely bloody awful," Eleanor said.

"That's part of the fun. If the films were actually good, we couldn't rip them apart," Mikey said, slipping an arm around her shoulders.

She snuggled against him.

"One more?" Adam asked.

"Not for me. Sorry, guys, but I'm beat." Jenny stretched her arms over her head.

Adam quietly booed her.

"You guys can stay and watch another one," she said, tossing a stray piece of popcorn at him.

He managed to catch it in his mouth.

Jenny climbed to her feet, brushing crumbs from her front. "Thanks for hosting, Mags," she said.

Maggie rolled over and stared up at her from the floor. "You're not walking, are you?"

"Why not?"

"You should get a taxi."

"It's Friday night, Mags. The wait list is probably about an hour long. I can walk home in twenty minutes."

Maggie sat up, narrowing her eyes. "There's a killer out there. There is no way any of us are letting you walk home by yourself."

Chris scrambled to his feet. "I'll walk her home," he announced. "If you don't mind, that it," he added, almost shyly, looking at Jenny.

She shook her head. In her peripheral vision she caught sight of Eleanor giving them both a speculative look. The other girl would grill her about the potential romance as soon as possible, Jenny knew.

Out in the hallway, Chris fetched Jenny's coat for her and held it up so she could put it on.

"Thanks," she said.

"Be safe," Mikey called. "If you see anyone who looks like the Ripper, run."

"That's not funny," Maggie scolded.

A muffled thump followed her words, which Jenny took to be Eleanor hitting Mikey with a cushion again.

Then she and Chris stepped out onto the street, and closed the door behind them. Their friends' voices fell quiet.

For the first few minutes they walked in silence. Jenny was aware that Chris kept glancing at her. She was aware of every little intake of breath as he started to say something, but then thought better of it. He'd never been as outspoken as Mikey, but she'd never really thought of him as shy before.

"Did you believe any of that stuff Maggie was saying earlier?" Jenny asked, hitching her handbag higher on her shoulder.

"What all that crap about the Ripper being some ancient force of evil?" Chris chuckled. "Nope."

Jenny was silent for a few moments.

"Wait, you didn't believe it, did you?" Chris said.

"I know Maggie believes everything on that crazy website, but...what if she was right about some things?"

Chris mulled that over. "I don't know how to answer that," he said at last. "In the nicest possible way, I can't imagine any universe in which Maggie is right about that kind of thing."

Jenny slowed, falling slightly behind Chris. All around them London buzzed with life, neon lights brightening the edges of the sky overhead, but the little street they were on was quiet and empty. Only one of the three streetlamps was working, and the pavement was shrouded in pools of shadow. Several trees stood in between the iron lampposts, and when the wind blew, the rustling leaves sounded like dozens of people sighing.

Jenny stared at the back of Chris's head, the faint tan-line just above his collar, the way his hair curled into the nape of his neck. He was a good guy, the kind that girls couldn't wait to bring home to their parents, the kind that Jenny was lucky to have in her life, whether as a friend or a boyfriend.

Too bad he couldn't be either.

Jenny slipped a hand into her handbag, closing her fingers around the metal handle that jutted up between her phone and her diary.

"You okay?" Chris said, finally realising she wasn't walking next to him anymore.

Jenny stopped, stared at him, felt the weight of cold steel in her hand. "I like you," she said.

He grinned, wide and open. "I like you, too."

"You wouldn't have been my first choice, but sometimes things don't turn out the way we think they will."

Chris's smile faded. "I'm not your first choice? What do you mean?"

Jenny studied him for a long moment, memorising him the way he was now, handsome and a little confused, hands shoved in his pockets, and hair blowing gently in the wind. She would imprint that image of him in her brain forever.

It was the last time he would look like this.

"It chooses who to take. I don't," she said.

He frowned and took a step closer. "Jen, you're not making any sense."

She shrugged. "I don't expect you to understand."

Snatching the knife from her bag, she stabbed him in the stomach.

The give of flesh and muscle beneath the lethally sharp blade filled her veins with euphoria. The metallic stink of blood, the startled gasp, the look of horror and pain in her victim's eyes, had all become so familiar to her.

After all, this was the fourth time she'd done it.

"Jenny?" Chris gasped, his voice choked with pain. His knees buckled and Jenny guided him to the ground, the knife still buried deep in his abdomen.

"Not exactly." She crouched over him. He tried to pull her hands away from the knife, but she twisted it, savouring the choked cry that spilled from his lips.

"I'm going to tell you a story, Chris. A scorpion and a frog met on the bank of a river. The scorpion asked the frog to carry it across on its back, but the frog hesitated, afraid that the scorpion would sting it. The scorpion told the frog that if it did that, they would both drown. Seeing the logic in the scorpion's words, the frog agreed to carry it. But halfway across the river, the scorpion stung the frog, condemning them both to death. The frog asked why, and the scorpion replied that it was in its nature to do it."

Jenny trailed a finger down Chris's cheek. "Do you see? This is just in my nature."

"Who...are you?" he gasped.

"I have many names. Elisabeth Wiese, the Monster Butler, the Phantom Killer, the Vampire of Bytom." She leaned over Chris, her voice becoming harsh, cruel. "I am the Suffolk Strangler, the Zodiac Killer, the San Mateo Slasher. The Ripper was always my favourite, though. It has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?"

Chris groaned.

"I really do like you," Jenny told him. "In another life, we could have had something. But this is who I am and what I have to do."

She dragged the knife upwards, laying open Chris's abdomen. He gurgled and flopped and his eyes rolled in his head, the mouth that had smiled so warmly at her now twisted in agony.

"Goodbye, Chris Ecton. If it's any consolation, people will probably remember your name for a very long time." Jenny leaned over and pressed a kiss to his mouth. She tasted blood on his lips.

When she drew back, she saw the horror in his eyes, not only for his fast-approaching death, but for the realisation that he faced something he couldn't begin to comprehend, something ancient and eternal, something wrought from pure evil, something that would never die.

It was probably the last thought on his mind as Jenny drew the knife across his throat.

Humming softly to herself, she carved him open, quick and precise. There was no fun in repeating exactly what she'd done all those years ago, so this time she neatly removed his kidneys and his liver, placing them in her handbag. People would compare this murder to her most famous ones. They would speculate over the similarities and the differences.

Tossing the knife into her bag, Jenny climbed to her feet and deeply breathed in the night air. The street was secluded but even so, it wouldn't be long before someone discovered the body. Jenny needed to be well away from the scene by then. Getting caught wasn't a problem as long as her work was done. And it wasn't done yet.

With a spring in her step, Jenny headed down the street, pushing her blood-slicked hands into her pockets. Maybe she should leak some more theories to that website of Maggie's. Most people would dismiss it as nonsense, but it helped feed her own legend, helped keep that dark flame burning bright.

She would never let that flame go out.

Her friends would be destroyed when they learned of Chris's death, and Jenny would be right there with them, aping tears and heartbreak. Maybe she could get one of them alone after the funeral.

After all, five was the number of balance, the number of the universe.

She still had one victim to go. 

---

Bella Higgin () is a Wattpad Star and Featured author, best known for the When Darkness Falls and Belle Morte series. Through Wattpad, she has worked on promotional material for Sony Pictures, and in 2017 she was published in the IMAGINES anthology with Gallery Books. Her standalone novel, Quarantine, is currently promoted by AMC and The Walking Dead.

In her spare time she enjoys being a self-professed crazy cat lady, and is on a mission to get through the 600+ unread books piling up in her house.