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Covered in the blood of her in-laws, Grace lights a cigarette on the steps. The mansion burns behind her. She inhales steadily.
She's humming Mendelssohn's Wedding March, delirious, when the paramedics and cops speed up. She considers a wave or something, but that might make her look more murderous than she already does, so she settles for smoking. Besides, she's exhausted.
She's numb as firefighters and cops rush to the house, smoking her cigarette and feeling blood dry on her skin. One of the paramedics is talking to her, knelt down beside her, trying to get her to toss out her cigarette.
But Grace isn’t listening. She isn’t listening because striding down the walk, an apparition of smoke and flames, is Mr. Le Bail. He’s unnoticed by everyone else, but he turns and makes direct eye contact with Grace.
She stares at him, feels her eyes widen. This has to be a hallucination or something. Mr. Le Bail is a dead man, and the image she saw in the fireplace was fake. Or some sort of demonic shit, maybe, but either way. Mr. Le Bail is not real.
He waves, cheery, and her cigarette falls out of her open mouth. And then, with a wide, twisted smile, he snaps his fingers.
“What the fu-” Grace starts, as her world fades to black.
-----
She’s in the games room, which freaks her the fuck out, because half a second ago she was sitting on the front steps.
Frantically, she stares down at her dress. It's immaculate: clean, white, as pretty as it was when she first put it on. She reaches up and touches her hair. It's still done, still perfect.
She’s nearly panting as she glances around the table, sees that the Le Domas family is staring at her.
“Grace?” Alex asks as she tries to make sense of everything. “Sweetheart, are you okay?”
“I’m fine," she lies quickly, staring around the room.
Did she have some sort of weird, insane, That’s So Raven style vision? What the hell was that?
One second ago, she was sitting on the steps. One second ago, everyone in this family was dead, and she was covered in their blood. One second ago-
They’re still staring at her, and Tony's holding out the box. Maybe it was a vision. Maybe she blacked out, or something.
“Sorry.” Grace smiles her best I-didn’t-just-watch-you-all-die smile and accepts the box from him.
“It’s quite all right,” Tony says, and Grace stares at him for a beat too long, thinking of the way he exploded all over her.
She pulls the card, looking anywhere but at Daniel, and forces herself to have the same reaction as before.
“Hide and seek?” She asks, but this time, she knows what all those facial expressions mean.
-
She decides, as she runs through the halls to find the dumbwaiter, to keep everything the exact same. If it was a weird vision, then she won. She lived, she saw herself live.
There’s tightness in her throat when she thinks about Alex.
She swallows it down, crawls into the dumbwaiter, and tilts her head back.
-
The night is a carbon-copy of the one she’s almost positive she experienced, down to the murder of the maid, Emilie’s coke on the mantel, Alex’s warm smile as he assures her everything is okay. Down to the way she felt like a fucking deer stuck in headlights, down to the way she sprinted into the study to avoid the Le Domas clan.
When she arrives in the study, panting and terrified, vision be damned, Daniel is sitting there.
“Grace," he says, and she focuses on him so hard that the rest of the room goes fuzzy.
“Give me my ten-second head start, Daniel," she spits, venomous for reasons she doesn’t understand.
He died for her, he’ll die for her again. He’s the good guy, she knows that, and it makes looking at him hurt.
“What?” He’s almost startled, staring at her like she’s insane. Like she knows something he doesn’t.
“Give me a ten-second head start, and call them into the study.”
“Now, what makes you think I’ll-”
“See you later, Daniel,” Grace says and takes off running.
Ten seconds later, she hears a bellowed, “She’s in the study!”
-
She still hates Georgie. She knows he’s like ten, and made to be like this because of his family, but she hates him. Children should not have access to guns, that’s for damned sure.
She still impales her hand on the nail, she still cuts her back open on the fence, she still gets ignored by the car, she still gets pursued by Steven, she still chokes what she thinks is the life out of him.
Justin the On-Star guy hangs up on her. Stevens drives, she has a terrifying dream, she wakes up.
Exactly the same now, Grace, she tells herself, as the car flips. With Stevens’ dead body in the front seat, Grace crawls out.
“Don’t do it,” she pleads to Daniel, and he shakes his head.
“I’m sorry,” he breathes, so quiet she barely hears it, and he slams the butt of the gun down on her forehead.
-
She wakes on the table, the sacrificial lamb. She knows, deep in the back of her head, that they’ll all puke their guts out, but she’s still terrified.
Until Daniel’s hood slips off and he grabs her by the wrist, helps her off the table.
The two of them take off running out the room and down the hallway, and she clutches his hand.
“I knew you’d help me.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Trust me, Daniel. I did," she says, and then he stops short.
She knows, before he even does it, that he’ll step in front of her, shield her from Charity. She knows that he’ll be shot, and she knows that she’ll pistol-whip Charity like she’s Henry in fucking Goodfellas.
And she does. It all happens, and Grace feels some sort of joy when she bashes the gun against Charity’s head.
“I’m sorry, Daniel,” Grace breathes, holding his head in her lap. “I should’ve done something differently.”
“You couldn’t have,” he manages, choking on his own blood.
“I could have. I really could have," she whispers, and kisses his forehead, smoothing back his hair.
He tells her to run and she runs. She listens to him die, and she keeps running.
After that, she takes a certain, sick pleasure in smashing Becky's face in.
-
It’s Alex she didn’t prepare herself for. She followed the plan with everyone else, right down to being tied on the table.
Feeling his arms close around her as he shouted for his family to come, that was hell. If she’s surviving this, she honestly doesn’t know how she’ll recover from that. The betrayal that slapped her hard will never leave her, and she’s sure of it.
But looking up into his face as he plunges the knife down is like…is like special torture, honestly.
“Hail Satan,” he says, and she rolls hard. The knife goes straight into her shoulder, and she forces herself to her feet, wrenching it out.
She holds it aloft, pointing it at them and screaming like a wild animal.
Then the sun rises. The sun rises, and nothing happens, not for a long moment. There’s a second there where Grace thinks maybe the curse was fake, and she goes hot with rage.
But, suddenly, boom they all go, one by one, until it’s her and Alex.
He’s begging her on his knees, and she’s covered in blood. Dripping with it. It’s dried in her eyelashes, in her hair, crusted over her lips and nose and hand and shoulder and entire body.
“Please, honey-”
Grace raises her hand, shutting him up.
“Alex,” she says, and his eyes widen. Like he’s in the clear. “Alex, I want a divorce.”
The ring bounces off his chest, and then he explodes all over her face.
Grace laughs maniacally, watches the curtains set ablaze, and heads out the door, Becky’s cigarette holder in her hands.
She sits down, lights the cigarette, and laughs a little.
She did it then, didn’t she? She did it.
The laughter turns insane. Then uncontrollable, and she’s slumped over hysterical, her cigarette burning out in her hands. Laughter turns to these violent, painful sobs. She cries like that on the steps for God knows how long, listening to the wail of sirens come closer.
Suddenly, there’s an arm around her shoulder. It feels too light, almost like it isn’t really there.
She turns to the side and finds herself face-to-face with a smoky illusion of Mr. Le Bail.
“Fuck.” She groans. “No, God, no.”
As the world goes dark, her scream catches on a wail.
-----
She keeps it together in the game room this time. She doesn’t freak out, and she stares Tony dead in the eyes while the box prepares her game.
“Hide and seek,” she says, nearly forgetting to look down.
She rolls her eyes when the room goes silent, and finds that her stare lands on Tony once again. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Daniel gawking at her.
“All right. What are the rules?”
-
Grace swears on everything that Daniel looks like he’s experiencing crazy déjà vu. She hopes he’s in this with her, because this is not a vision anymore.
What the fuck? She’s in a goddamn time loop?
That’s so shitty that she can’t even think of a joke. She’s never liked Groundhog Day, but now she fucking hates it.
“Fuck you, Bill Murray," she snaps, sprinting straight into Alex’s bedroom. Fuck the dumbwaiter. Cramped piece of shit.
-
Alex comforts her in the halls, and she zones out. She’s not scared anymore. She’s confused, and she’s pissed, but she sure as hell isn’t scared.
She rolls her eyes at Daniel in the study, happily having avoided the little incident with Emilie from last time, and he stares at her.
She isn’t panting, she isn’t panicking, and she knows not to worry anymore. It appears that this shit doesn’t ever end, but she knows she’ll come out alive. Or…as alive as one can be, in a time loop.
Grace locks the door behind her, and Daniel startles.
“Give me your weapon," he says, grabbing his drink out of his hand and slamming it back. "Whatever shit you have, I want it."
“Excuse me?”
“Give it to me. Or tell me where Charity hides her gun.”
“What the fuck, Grace?” He asks, and she swipes a hand roughly across the back of her mouth, glaring at him, pissed that he’s going to die for her again.
“Take three,” she says. She can almost imagine Le Bail saying it, shadowy and dark and distinctly not human.
Focus, Grace, she tells herself. The shadowy form of Satan did not speak to you. Focus.
“Fuck off.” Daniel's got wonder in his tone. “You remember?”
“Yeah, I fucking remember. And I’m not getting shot again.”
“What, last time was your second time through?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you remember it all vividly?”
“Obviously. I thought I had some weird vision or some shit.”
“It was like a faint dream for me. I was…I had some weird memory of doing everything, but I assumed it was just my brain playing tricks.”
“No tricks here.” Grace looks over her shoulder at the door. “At least, not from your brain.”
“So, what? What is this?”
“You ever seen Groundhog Day?”
“No. No. Shut up, shut up, shut up. This is not a fucking time loop!”
Grace watches grimly as he shakes his head so fast it nearly blurs. He’s taking it…better than she thought, honestly.
“Sorry.” She laughs darkly. “I hope you didn’t like that movie.”
“It’s a goddamn classic, Grace!” He sounds almost hysterical. “I fucking love that movie!”
-
They mutually decide to have her just run. She goes into the kitchen, gets the largest knife she can find, and stabs Stevens before he can grab her.
It isn’t a critical hit, but he goes down hard. She kicks his body away, thanks whatever high power exists that the doors are unlocked, and makes a break for the woods.
Fuck Georgie. She’s not going into that goddamn barn, not this time.
As she’s running for it, she feels blinding pain in her shoulder. She drops onto the ground, as hard as Stevens did.
She reaches up, feels a fucking arrow in her shoulder. She yanks it out, staggers to her feet, and charges at Fitch.
He’s too stunned to shoot her, so proud of himself for actually getting something right.
“I’m not letting you take me down," she hisses, and he frowns at her.
“That’s a little-”
She slashes his throat before he even finishes the sentence and his blood spurts across his face. She feels it stream from her shoulder, too.
“Fuck you, Fitch," she spits, grabs his crossbow, and runs. She loses wind and staggers to a stop under the shadows of the barn. Her breath comes hard and fast as she rips the tulle and lace off her dress, tying some kind of makeshift wrap around the blood. It feels sluggish, but maybe everything is sluggish. She might actually be dead. She's not sure if dead women bleed.
Fucking Fitch.
-
Though Grace is switching up the events of the night, it appears that Emilie is still a dumbass, and still shot at least one maid dead.
Grace can hear Emilie and Daniel carrying the maid’s body into the barn, bickering while Emilie sniffles.
“It’s all right, Em. Dad isn’t mad,” Daniel says, and Grace creeps toward the door.
“It’s just,” Emilie sniffs, “I really, really liked Clara. She never even flirted with Fitch!”
“No one flirted with Fitch,” Daniel says, and Grace holds back a snort. She lifts the crossbow as she moves closer and closer to the door, her shoulder killing her.
Slowly, Grace slips into the barn, just as Emilie catches sight of Georgie. Of course, that little shit came into the barn. Grace is relieved that she didn’t come in here, that’s for damn sure.
“Georgie!” She scolds, while Grace drops into the shadows behind some bales of hay. Clara’s legs slam to the ground.
“Mommy!”
“What are you doing out here?”
“Is that Clara?” Georgie asks, and Grace watches Emilie pause.
“Uh…let’s get you to bed, honey. Daniel, can you handle this?” Emilie says, and doesn’t wait for a response before scooping up Georgie.
Grace flattens herself against the ground, closing her eyes and holding her breath.
Emilie, dimwitted as ever, hurries right past her and into the night.
Grace waits until the barn door shuts, and then she rises to her feet.
“It’s just me,” she says before Daniel even spots her. He jumps, almost dropping Clara.
“Jesus Christ," he mutters, and Grace stares at Clara’s bloody face. It’s practically gone. She thinks she should probably feel queasy, but she feels nothing.
“No, just me."
"Jesus Christ."
"Need a hand?"
“You’re bloody.”
“Stabbed Stevens, got shot, killed Fitch,” Grace says, counting off the events on her fingers.
Daniel’s eyebrows shoot into his hair, and he stares at her for a long, long moment. Grace does not let herself wilt under his stare.
“You killed Fitch?”
“Slit his throat by the house. I left his body there.”
“You’re…ruthless. That’s what you are. Ruthless,” he says, but it isn’t unkind.
“I’m not ruthless. I’m just not letting myself die on my wedding night.”
He stares at her for another moment, then shakes his head, laughing a little.
“Give me a hand with Clara, please.”
-
They decide that she should go for the woods, so she does. Daniel boosts her over the fence, and she falls hard to the ground.
“Sorry,” he says, and she forces herself to her feet, groaning in pain.
“It’s all right. You going back to the house?”
“I’ll slip more poison into their drinks if they catch you. We’re breaking the loop here.”
“Wait, it’s actual poison?”
“Just run, Grace. I’ll see you soon.”
“Hopefully in real life, not…this.”
“Right.” Daniel nods, then smiles. “Godspeed, my friend.”
“Lame,” Grace says, rolls her eyes, and takes off running.
-
Stevens finds her in the woods, full of pure rage, his shoulder bandaged.
Grace stumbles to a stop, and he tackles her before she can even shoot him.
“Fuck you, you little bitch!” He roars, and Grace screams into the night. She manages to get her hands around his throat, squeezes tight, but he slaps her hard.
It stuns her to the point where he’s got the upper hand, and he uses the butt of his pistol to knock her out.
Three times in a row, she thinks, as she sees stars.
-
She wakes on the table, because of course she does.
“Oh, fuck you guys,” she groans, as the chalice is passed around. Daniel slips his hood down, spits out…whatever liquid was in that chalice, and helps her off the table.
“Daniel, what are you-” Tony cuts himself off, vomiting mid-sentence.
“Come on, come on,” Daniel mutters, hauling to her feet.
“Shoulder!” She warns, and he nods, apologizing frantically.
He hustles her out of the room, and they hide in the alcove beneath the stairs until Charity’s heels clack away, then he grabs her and drags her towards the garage.
As they spill into the garage, Helene slips out with them. Grace sees her raise the rifle before Daniel does, but it’s too late to warn him. Helene’s already shot him in the back of the head, and Grace catches his body on the way down.
Quickly, she fumbles for the gun that she knows Daniel’s got in his waistband, and shoots Helene as quickly as she can in the face.
As she bleeds out, Grace stuffs Daniel into the backseat of the closest car - a Lexus - and thanks God that the keys are sitting on the dashboard.
“Hang in there, Daniel,” she mumbles, starts the car, and clicks open the garage.
In the rearview mirror, she sees the family spill outside and chase after her, but she keeps driving.
Daniel dies in the backseat the minute she’s off the property line.
Grace starts screaming, and suddenly, a hand is over her mouth, smoky and thin. Le Bail.
“No!” Grace cries, and Le Bail laughs a little as he snaps his fingers.
-----
In the game room, Grace yanks the card out of the box before it’s even done printing.
“Hide and seek." This time, she holds Becky's stare. Neither of them blink.
The room falls silent, and Grace rolls her eyes.
“It’s just a game, isn’t it?” She says. Becky, bless her, just smiles in response.
-
She goes straight into the study, crawls beneath Tony’s desk, and waits.
“Fucking fourth try,” Daniel mumbles when he comes in, so she crawls out.
“We need a plan,” she says and doesn’t even acknowledge the way he jumps as she frightens him.
“A plan?”
“Mhm.” Grace yanks the bottle of scotch from his hand and brings it to her lips. “I fucking hate this family.”
“Alex, though,” Daniel says, and Grace pauses.
“Daniel,” she says seriously. “Fuck Alex. He…he let me die the first time. He’s a monster like the rest of them.”
“Like me then, too,” Daniel says, and Grace slams the bottle down, grabs him hard by the lapels of his jacket.
She drags herself over the bar using his coat, staring dead into his eyes.
“You’re not like your family, dumbass.” She almost wants to kiss him. “You’re the only one that isn’t like them.”
“But-”
“You’re the good guy, Daniel. Face it.”
-
The plan is to commit as much murder, as soon as possible. Grace kills Stevens first, shoots him in the back of the head like he’s an animal. She grins when he goes down, and she isn’t afraid to admit it.
Daniel corners Fitch, and Grace kicks him hard in the balls before stabbing him straight in the chest.
Helene isn’t easy, but Grace gets her from behind, a quick slit of her throat. The old woman laughs as she falls.
Emilie is a mercy killing. Grace waits for her to do a quick line, tuck in her kids, and then Grace kills her. A shot to the head, as painless as she can muster.
Tony is Grace’s hands tight around his throat, draining his life. He claws at her wrists and calls her a money-hungry bitch, and Grace keeps choking.
Becky is blunt force trauma, again. Grace uses a vase and bashes her head until Becky’s a bloody mess beneath her.
The maids are largely ignored, and Charity is a shot to the throat. Grace leaves her to bleed.
Alex is the hardest. Grace knows he’s evil, knows he’s a monster, but…damn it. She loved him once, and she still might, and it’s…it’s a mess.
“Look away, Daniel,” Grace says, while Alex’s eyes widen.
“Grace, sweetie, what are you-”
“I wish it didn’t have to be this way,” Grace says, and shoots him dead in the chest.
Daniel won’t look at her after that, and Grace wipes blood away from her face with her wrist.
“Fuck,” Daniel whispers, once Alex’s body has gone totally still. “Fuck.”
She leaves him to cry, and goes off to smoke a cigarette in the study.
She can’t kill Georgie and Gabe, as shitty as those kids are. They’re children. They’re innocent.
She hopes Le Bail takes care of it, if they really have to die. She hopes it’s painless. Somewhat, because she still hates Georgie.
-
The night winds down, and the sun comes up just as it should. Daniel has joined her by now, and the two of them sit on the pool table and share the bottle of scotch in silence.
“Good fourth lap, partner,” Grace says, and then Le Bail materializes in front of them.
She almost rolls her eyes, but Daniel’s jaw slackens.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding,” Grace says, and Le Bail’s smoky form laughs.
Grace swings at him, hard, before the room goes dark.
-----
“You know what’s fucked up?” Grace asks, and Daniel barely lifts his head from his drink.
“Everything?”
“The fact that we’ve already spent a whole night killing every member of your family, and that dickhead Le Bail still isn’t satisfied.”
“Maybe it’s a lesson," Daniel supplies, unhelpfully. Grace stops her pacing of the study, stares at him for a long moment. She’d come here straight away, pissed that they were on their fifth go of things.
“A lesson.”
“Mhm. The true demonic ritual was the friends we made along the way.”
“You’re a dumbass, Daniel.”
“Probably,” he agrees, almost cheery. She rakes her hands through her hair, ignoring how bloody they are.
She killed Stevens on the way, so, hence the blood. She figured she might as well get one kill in, and she fucking hates Stevens, and he was easy to stab.
“You think you’re right, though?” She asks, and Daniel laughs a little, looking at her over the rim of his glass.
“You sound delusional,” Daniel says, and she nods.
“Maybe.” She rolls her eyes. “I’m going to go see how long it takes them to catch me.”
-
They catch her quickly. Helene swings her axe into Grace’s leg, and drags her kicking and screaming into the game room.
In the fifth loop, she’s the sacrificial lamb. It isn’t enough for Le Bail.
-----
She spends the sixth loop asleep in Daniel’s bed, with him standing watch by the door. Le Bail snaps his fingers again, just as the morning dawns.
-----
In the seventh loop, they do everything as it was the first night. Everything. Down to every movement, every breath, every thought.
She lets herself look into Alex’s eyes, and forces herself to believe that he’ll keep her safe.
She goes into the study, and forces herself to have the same conversation with Daniel, forces herself to pant in fear.
There’s a look in his eyes, clearly sad, as she plays out the script she’s somehow memorized.
She’s stumbling away when she hears, “She’s in the study!”, and she smiles.
It’s all the same in the kitchen, down to her using the gun that she knows has fake bullets. She swings the teapot hard against Stevens’ face, and resists the urge to break it over his head.
Georgie shoots her in the hand, and Grace tries not to take pleasure in knocking him out.
She has to literally force herself to be scared by the goat, but she still pukes when she falls into the pit.
The nail pierces her hand, though she knows it doesn’t have to. She still screams.
The gate, the car, Stevens, Justin. Grace is almost bored of it, except for the feeling that this could be the last time, and Daniel will well and truly be dead.
When the car flips, she feels herself start to cry. She’s changed a little bit of the script.
Oops.
-
Charity shoots him, he bleeds in Grace’s arms. She runs as fast as she can, and she knows what comes next.
She gets shot at by Becky, then bashes in her head.
Grace knows exactly what Alex will do, but it still hurts when he betrays her. And then hurt is replaced with rage.
“Hail Satan,” he says, and Grace almost doesn’t want to roll.
She does, of course, and she feigns confusion with the rest of them as the sun comes up.
The ring bounces off Alex’s chest, and she sobs and laughs at once as he explodes all over her.
-
Outside, on the steps, the mansion burning behind her, Le Bail settles to sit down.
“Aren’t you fucking tired yet?” She asks, tossing her burnt-out cigarette behind her into the wreckage.
He shakes his head, and she breathes in the smell of smoke and flame before his fingers snap.
-----
In the eighth, Grace goes out to the woods and hides behind a tree, waiting for Le Bail to come. He does, and tuts as he snaps his fingers.
-----
In the ninth, she and Daniel barricade themselves in the study and get so drunk that she can barely see straight. Le Bail appears out of the fire this time, which is sort of cool, but it’s sucky of him that he still snaps his fingers.
-----
In the tenth, Grace steals Charity’s gun, and then she and Daniel continue to barricade themselves in the study.
This time, there’s no drinking. She’s laser-focused, and so is he, as they tear through documents of Tony’s, searching for something.
There’s nothing, just a shit ton of tax fraud and offshore accounts.
“You guys are criminals,” Grace says, tossing various documents over her shoulder and into the fire. Who gives a shit? Everything will be normal in the next round, anyway.
“Did you expect anything less?” Daniel asks, sitting beside her, leaning against his father’s desk.
She watches him for a long, long moment. His curly hair, his nice eyes. The curve of his jaw, the way he taps his fingers on his knee as he reads the documents.
And then she leans forward, takes him by the collar of his shirt, and kisses him with all the energy she’s got left.
“Grace,” he says when she pulls away, and she leans forward again.
She kisses him with everything she’s got left, which isn’t a lot. She’s so tired, and Daniel’s cheeks are so warm beneath her hands, and she thinks that maybe she loves him. Maybe she doesn't. Maybe, probably, likely, it really doesn't matter. She lives in a bubble now, in a place between two worlds where she could do anything she wants. She can go out and have sex with Aunt Helene - the loop will still reset. Nothing ever changes.
But a conscious choice like this could change the game. So Grace decides that she wants this. She and Daniel, for as long as she can get it. Fuck Le Bail, fuck the Le Domas, fuck the stupid box. They revere the damn thing, and the damn curse, for reasons even she doesn’t understand.
And then she gets an idea.
-
She kisses Daniel until she hears footsteps in the hallway, then grins as she pushes herself away, his lips sliding from her neck.
“What are you-” He starts, but stops short as she shoves the door open, reaching up to wipe the lipstick smeared on her chin. His eyes are dark, and she laughs.
“See you next time," she says, and runs right in front of Becky’s arrow.
When Le Bail crouches beside her as she dies, she smiles a bloody grin, waiting for his fingers to snap.
-----
All right, eleven loops. It ends on eleven loops. That’s the promise Grace makes to herself, that’s what she knows will happen.
Daniel doesn’t even bother to look frightened when she pulls the card, but Grace knows something is different. She knows she’s ending it here tonight.
-
She plays everything the same as the very, very first time. Except, when she runs into Daniel in the study, she grins at him. He hasn’t touched alcohol since loop nine, and his eyes shine sober and bright.
“Do you have a weird tunnel entrance to the game room?” She asks, and Daniel nods his head.
“Yeah, why?”
“And the box is in there?”
“Always. Grace, what are you planning?” He asks, and Grace shakes her head.
“Stay with me, and don’t you dare get shot,” she says, and he kisses her, hard, before taking her by the hand and pulling her toward the entrance.
In the tunnel, she tells him to go faster, faster, until they’re running towards the game room.
On the table, just where it was when she ran away, sits Le Bail’s box.
Grace ignores Daniel’s question, runs to it, and smashes it as hard as she can against the floor.
Over and over and over she brings it down, screaming and screaming and screaming. The wood of the box splinters as she swings it onto the ground, and she’s satisfied. She grabs the Hide and Seek card that she drew, the box, and tosses them both into the fireplace.
Le Bail emerges from it, smoky and half-solid, and sits down in his chair.
“What the fuck?” Daniel manages, and Grace storms toward Le Bail.
“Okay, Mr. Le Bail." Grace can barely breathe. "I don't believe in your stupid curse. But that's what you need, right? Someone to believe in it?”
Le Bail tilts his head forward in a nod.
“Right," Grace sighs. Jesus Christ, she's tired. There is no Jesus Christ in the loop, though - only Le Bail. “And I don’t. I don’t believe in your curse, and I never will.”
“Grace,” Daniel warns, but she shakes him away.
“I don’t believe in your curse, and I don’t believe in your power,” Grace says, and reaches into the fire. Her hand doesn’t burn, and it should probably freak her out.
She sets the uncharred box on the table, frowning at Le Bail.
“But I believe in you. I believe in the box. I believe you want something from me. You want something, don't you?" This time, Le Bail doesn't respond. "Okay, here's the box. See? I'll keep it, and... and, honor you, or whatever. But I have terms, okay?"
“Don’t make a fucking deal with him, Grace!” Daniel scolds, and she turns and glares at him. It shuts up right up.
“I’ll preserve your box, but you have to let Daniel and I walk away free and unharmed. No more games, no more curses, no more hide and seek.”
Le Bail laughs, deep and distinctly not human. It should frighten Grace, but she's gotten enough of his face right now. A lot of things should frighten Grace, but she's talking to the gossamer version of the devil to strike a deal. She thinks she probably won't be afraid ever again.
“Deal or not, Le Bail?” Grace asks, clutching the box. “Time’s ticking.”
The ghost laughs again, and Grace doesn’t let herself shiver. Daniel is beside her now, his hand ghosting across her back, and she steels herself as she stares at Le Bail.
“I won't destroy the box, okay?" She feels like she's talking to an unruly customer at work. "I'll let you be tethered. But the fake rituals and the fake curses end now. We live. It ends. You leave me the fuck alone."
“Grace-” Daniel starts, but stops when Le Bail holds up a hand.
“It's now or never," Grace says. Her voice doesn't waver. She doesn't blink, not even as the box catches fire and flames lick up her arm.
Le Bail is smiling, all smoke and ash and flame. He extends his hand forward, and Grace extends hers, to shake, but the door slams open and Becky fires an arrow straight into Grace’s chest.
Grace screams, feral and raw and broken, and then belatedly realizes that it doesn’t hurt. She feels nothing, in fact, but the arrow is in her chest. Embedded straight through her dress. She thinks that if she concentrates very hard, she can feel the muscles of her heart constricting around it. Beside her, Daniel sways on his feet, a redwood about to go down.
When she glances up, Le Bail is raising a flaming eyebrow, waggling his hand. Becky charges forward, but Daniel catches his mother by the arm. She strains against him, shouts, but Grace doesn't hear a word she says. She's staring at Le Bail.
“Deal, then, I take it?” Grace asks, and shakes Le Bail’s hand.
At once, Becky drops dead, blood blooming across her chest. She slumps against Daniel, and he takes a step back, watching his mother crumple to the ground. His face gives away nothing.
Grace reaches up, removes the arrow, and stares down at herself. She’s soaked in blood, too, a culmination of the ten loops before this, all of her wounds fresh and bleeding but miraculously painless.
Daniel is the same, and he’s staring at her in blank confusion while Grace looks from the arrow clenched in her fingers to the bullet wound in her palm.
Le Bail pushes the box across the table, and Grace laughs. She thinks that there’s blood in her teeth, maybe.
“You’ve won,” Le Bail says. She's not even sure his mouth opens. She's not even sure Daniel hears him. His voice booms around Grace's head, rattles in her skull, nips at her bones. She doesn't fucking care. She doesn't care about any of this. She's never been so tired.
Grace watches him disappear, a gust of smoke and flame that sweeps itself back into the fireplace.
“Daniel." She picks up the box. It's so unremarkable. “Go set the curtains on fire. We’re done with this shit.”
-
Outside, Daniel sits with her on the steps while the mansion burns. Grace is grateful that she didn’t have to see Alex again, and quietly thanks Le Bail in her head.
She turns the box over in her hands, unsurprised to see that it’s clean of splintering wood or fire damage. It looks immaculate, in the way little wooden boxes can.
“Are we going to talk about how you made a deal with the devil, or?” Daniel asks, and Grace turns to smile at him. Blood gushes down his neck, staining the collar of his shirt.
“It was hardly a deal. I don’t believe in the games or the curses.”
“How do you not?”
“Le Bail needed us to believe in it, but it was all superstition. Do you believe that you’ve got to throw salt over your shoulder when you spill it, or that breaking a mirror brings you seven years of bad luck?”
“Grace. We repeated the game eleven times.”
“I know. Because I didn’t stop believing in it until the tenth loop. I realized how stupid it was. How dumb is it that I’ve got to play a game on my wedding night, or else I’ll die?”
“Well-”
“It was dumb, Daniel. All of it. When I stopped believing in his smoke and mirrors shtick, we got out.”
“Suppose I still believe in it?”
“First off, you don’t." The look he shoots her affirms that she's right, but she continues. "Second, I think it had to do with me. I was the sacrificial lamb, Daniel, not you.”
Daniel watches her, and then leans forward and catches her in a kiss. She can feel the blood on her face staining his, and she laughs against his mouth.
“But,” he starts, breaking away. He’s grinning. “You told him you’d honor him. If you don’t believe in him, why would you do that?”
“He’s self-absorbed. I doubted he’d let me go if I didn’t agree to honor him.”
“You’re so smart, Grace,” he says, full of wonder. She attributes it to the sobriety.
“Mhm. And you’re the good guy. Congratulations, big winner.”
Despite the way he rolls his eyes, she knows it's true. He repeated the night for a reason. Alex didn’t, Becky didn’t, Tony didn’t, Helene didn’t, Fitch didn’t, Emilie didn’t, Charity didn’t.
Daniel did, because he was the only good guy. He was the only one who helped Grace, and he was more than cynical about the games. He didn’t really believe in them, not fully, and Le Bail had to have known. In a way, she has to hand it to Le Bail. She wouldn't expect the devil to respect people who won't buy into his game. Maybe this was all a fucking joke to him.
Grace grins at him as the ambulances and cops speed up the walk. When the firefighter leans beside them and asks what happened, Grace and Daniel answer in unison.
“Family.”
-----
Le Bail is true to his word, despite his being, you know, the devil. He doesn’t repeat the games or the curses, and Grace honors his stupid box.
She and Daniel are still royally fucked up, but, hey! Therapy exists for a reason. And she's got mountains of money, so.
Above all, she’s alive, and so is Daniel, despite the scars that mark them. They’ve made it out, they made their deal, and they’re done.
She still fucking hates Groundhog Day. Fucking Bill Murray. He was a dick for complaining about his loop.