"Oh, Celia. I didn't know you were in there." I fake a sigh of relief. "Could you please call 911? It seems like your number one fan, BlueEyedCupid, has gone out of their mind."

She snickers, the malice in her cold eyes becoming clearer as she ignores me. Crouching behind Blake, she leans close to his ear and breathes, "Oh, my dear Blake. Do you actually believe what this filthy yellow peasant said?"

I slap a hand over my chest and gasp, feigning horror. Gotcha!

"W-what?" Blake's eyes widen in shocked incredulity as he turns his head to meet Celia's gaze.

"I never congratulated them," Celia says, venom dripping from her words. "Don't you see? Oliver and I belong together." There's bone-chilling madness in her eyes—the kind Norman Bates possesses in the original Psycho movies—as she trails her gaze to me. "She's standing in the way of true love. She must be punished."

"Y-you're . . . BlueEyedCupid?" Blake asks with a weak, shaky voice. The genuine heartbreak in his eyes makes me pity him a little.

"Of course, I am." Celia's tone is as cold as the graveyard air in the early morning, unsettling enough to prickle the hair on the back of my neck. "Now pick up the knife, Blake. Finish what you're supposed to do. Do it for your queen. You'll do it for me, won't you?"

My nerves shoot on high alert as Blake drags his gaze to the knife on the floor. His lips quiver in hesitation for a moment, but then he shakes his head heavily. "I can't. I'm sorry, my queen. I can't. It's not right."

A wave of relief sweeps through me. But it doesn't last long, for bloodthirsty madness begins to darken Celia's eyes.

"Ugh." She shoots Blake a bitch face and stands up. "I just have to do everything myself, don't I?"

As Celia sashays toward the knife, the years-old tiger-like instinct slumbering deep within me awakens at once. Without thinking, I grab her left ankle and yank her down. She tries to break her fall by catching the edge of the vanity, but her forehead strikes the countertop with a loud smack instead. "Ouch!"

Oops. I bite my lip hard, trying hard not to laugh.

Rubbing her bruised forehead, Celia growls over her shoulder at me. "You're going to pay for that."

Rage fills her eyes as she reaches for the knife a few feet away from her. On instinct, my hand shoots out to seize it first. My fingers are about to touch the pommel when an idea appears in my mind. It's a very dangerous one. But I figure I may be able to use this chance to expose her true self even more and get some answers.

Ollie is going to be furious at me for this.

In a split-second decision, I let Celia take the knife. As Celia spins around to face me with the knife in her right hand, Blake screeches in terror. He scrambles to his feet and bolts into the closest stall, locking himself in it.

I can't blame him, to be honest. The broad, eerie smile on Celia's face does remind me of Annie Wilkes' in Misery. Somehow, I can hear Moonlight Sonata playing inside my head right this very moment. Yes, it's the same song playing in the background when Annie smashes Paul Sheldon's ankles with a sledgehammer in the movie.

Still, Celia is not a clown.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." I raise my hands in front of me to make myself seem defenseless. "Celia? What are you doing?"

"Oh, relax, Vanessa." She twirls the knife in her bony fingers. "I'm not going to kill you if that's what you're afraid of. I'm just going to transform you into one of those horrible-looking horror movie characters you love so much."

If only she realizes she resembles a psychopathic serial killer in one of the greatest horror movies of all time.

"What?" I feign surprise, adding an edge of betrayal into my voice.

"I bet you didn't see that coming, did you?" A smug smirk twists her coral lips.

Her long blonde hair brushes against the floor as she crawls toward me. Unexpectedly, the scene in The Ring where Sadako emerges from the TV flashes in my mind. The similarity between the vengeful ghost and the woman before me is uncanny, and it brings a bubble of laughter into my throat—which I quickly suppress.

Creeping backward, I inject a dose of fear into my voice. "D-don't do this, Celia. Think about your reputation. Y-you can't get away with this. Everyone's going to find out that you're a psycho. You can't find an excuse for disfiguring someone!"

"Simple," she answers, her expression nonchalant. "I'll just tell everyone you've gone mad and attacked me first. I'm merely defending myself."

"No one's going to believe that. I can just tell the truth to the police," I say, emphasizing the last word to scare her.

Instead of cowering, she smirks at me. "Who do you think people are going to believe? A saint like me? Or an infamous backstabbing whore like you?"

The shining arrogance in her eyes tells me she's got everything planned to a tee. But two can play this wicked game.

"W-why are you doing this? I thought you said you wrote your new songs for Ollie and me."

"Oh, I deserve an Oscar for that, don't I?" she replies with an evil chuckle, having no idea I'm pushing her further into the trou-de-loup I've prepared for her. "Vanessa, Vanessa. I wrote them from Oliver's point of view, yes. But it serves as an apology letter for me, of course." Rolling her eyes, she mutters, "Moron."

And look who has fallen straight into my trap. Biting back a smirk, I add a little desperation to my voice. "What? What do you mean apology—"

"He owes me a huge apology for choosing someone like you over me, don't you think?"

Well, if by someone like me you mean kindhearted, funny, and not a total psychopath, then I'd say Ollie made a damn good decision.

As I fight the urge to clap back at her, she continues, "Besides, do you seriously think I would put myself in his shoes and write a song for someone like you?"

"Yeah?" I give her my most annoying grin.

She narrows her eyes and curls her upper lip in disgust. "I hate you, Vanessa Hayes-Wong. I've hated you ever since I saw you singing that stupid song in that stupid bar."

My eyebrows snap together in surprise. "I thought we were friends."

"Friends?" She cackles like a witch, tears leaking from her eyes. "We were never friends, Vanessa. It was just the oldest trick in the book. Keep your friends close, your enemies closer. I've always hated you. You're brash, you're savage, you're uneducated—"

"Hey!" I snap. "In case you forget, I graduated from Sunnyville University with a four-point-oh GPA. I don't see any academic credentials next to your name."

"True." As she wipes the tears with the back of her hand, the tip of the blade grazes her ear. I'm not going to lie, it scares me a little how she can laugh when a knife is so close to her face. I guess psychopaths are different, huh? "But you act like The Flintstones, for goodness' sake. Do you know you look like a pig when you eat?"

Do you know you look like a freaking ghost crawling out of the TV right now?

I resist the desire to roll my eyes and continue playing the role of the naïve victim. "B-b-but you were always so nice to me. You even invited me to the premiere of Cupid's Arrows!"

A raw, dark chuckle tumbles from her throat. "You still don't get it, do you? I did that to prove to Oliver that you didn't belong in our world. Who do you think told that leech Jessica and her friends to ridicule you, huh?"

Oh, you bitch! I fight to stay in character. "But you stood up for me when your fans mocked me!"

"If I didn't, then would Oliver even think of dating me?"

Meh. She has a point. "Please don't do this, Celia. Even if I become disfigured, there's no guarantee Ollie would leave me and magically love you again. Are you really willing to commit a crime because you're still in love with someone who doesn't love you back?"

"Love?" She lets out a derisive laugh. "Love is for idiots, Vanessa. And to answer your question, yes. Oliver will return to me once you're out of the picture."

A prickle of annoyance tickles my chest. "Hold on a second. You're telling me you've never been in love with Ollie in the first place?"

"Of course not. He's just a real-life Disney prince and I'm a real-life Disney princess." She pauses for a quick moment before correcting herself, "Queen, actually. We belong together. The attention people gave me when we walked into the room . . ." A twisted smile spreads across her face as she closes her eyes and sighs, "Oh . . . we were like a king and a queen."

So she was only using him to fulfill her twisted fantasy all along? Anger rises deep within me, and I mutter to myself, "Ugh. You are a clout monster."

Celia flicks her eyes open and knits her thick eyebrows in suspicion. Uh-oh.

I jump to my feet and try to run toward the door to distract her. Just as I've expected, she mirrors my action and stops me mid-way, pointing the knife at my face. "Where do you think you're going, hmm?"

As the madness in her eyes grows, I swallow the small constriction in my throat and take a careful stance. "So your plan the whole time is getting Ollie back to . . . rule the world together?"

"Of course, what else?" The lack of emotion in her expression sends the hairs on the back of my neck bristling. "Henry doesn't want to get back together with me after I cheated on him with that loser Hickinbottom, so I have no other choice but to settle for Oliver—ha!"

She swings the knife toward my face. I draw a sharp breath and jump backward in reflex, avoiding the tip of the blade by a few inches. My pulse races, my chest heaves up and down, and cold sweat trickles down my temples. As she lowers her knife, her mouth curves into a maniacal grin.

This is just a sick game to her, isn't it?

I should probably run.

I really should.

But I don't.

"Wait, wait, wait." I hold both palms out, stopping Celia in her tracks. "That doesn't make any sense. You were the one who left two years ago. You broke up with Ollie. If you want to rule the world together with him so much, then why did you leave?"

"That was a bit of a mistake. I didn't mean to break up with him. I just wanted him to crawl on his knees and beg for me to come back. But then you . . ." Her lips contort in a scowl. "You. Ruined. My. Plan." She punctuates each word with a thrust of her knife toward my face.

I manage to avoid each one of her attacks by jumping sideways and backward, but my heart starts to bang against my chest. Should I stop this already?

While the sane part of me tries to convince me to cry out the emergency codeword to the two men secretly watching my performance, my curiosity pushes me to ask, "And how exactly did I ruin your plan?"

"Oh, stop pretending you're not a backstabbing whore, Vanessa. You pretended to be my friend, but you stole Oliver from me the first chance you got. Do you honestly think I wouldn't find out about you and Oliver's Valentine's Day plan two years ago?" Before I can even register what she's talking about, she glances at the locked bathroom stall. "That dummy right there posted on the IHateVanessaHayesWong forum about everything."

Confusion fills me for a moment. But then my mind reminds me of that distinct feeling of being watched the night Ollie invited me to dinner at Le Royal two years ago, and I quickly figure out that Blake was eavesdropping on our conversation that night. Oh, I'm gonna kill that gossipmonger!

"But even without it, do you think I wouldn't have known?" Celia asks.

"Know what?"

A distinct edge of rage sharpens Celia's tone. "That Oliver wrote Love Spell for you."

I gape at her in stupefaction. Ollie wrote Love Spell for . . . me?

"You didn't know?" Celia cocks an eyebrow at me as if I was the dumbest person on Earth. "Gosh. You are stupid."

A pang of exasperation stabs me as I put the pieces together. "You're saying you sent a bunch of teenagers to slushie me, humiliating me in front of the whole world, just because Ollie wrote me a song?"

"He never wrote me a song, and I'm a goddess!" Celia snaps, her voice reverberating in the small room. While a terrified whimper escapes the man inside the locked stall, she regains her composure. "Everyone in the whole wide world should write me a song. So why did he write a song for an ugly yellow peasant like you instead of me?"

This woman belongs to a mental institution. "Okay, I get that. But what about Kiki? What did she ever do to you?"

"Who?" She tilts her head, frowning in genuine confusion.

"My cat," I growl through gritted teeth as anger begins to boil in my veins. "The one you almost killed, remember?"

"Oh. That filthy ugly creature. Ugh." She shudders in revulsion.

My breathing gets heavier as my anger escalates into a rage. "You chopped off her leg before you and Ollie even broke up. Why?"

"It was supposed to be a warning to you. Leave Oliver alone or else," she answers without an ounce of remorse in her voice. "But she scratched me and ran away before I had the chance to take a photograph of her. I thought she was going to die, to be honest. You should've seen the blood. But that zombie had to survive and ruin my plan instead."

I ball my fists and gnash my teeth, restraining the urge to punch her perfect face by reminding myself that this play isn't over yet. "You're a psycho."

"We're all psychopaths for love, Vanessa—ha!" She lunges her knife at my right cheek, but I spin on my heel and catch her forearm just in time, narrowly escaping the tip of the blade.

As we struggle for control of the knife, I realize I need to do something before she scars my face for life. Remembering the tons of self-defense lessons I learned in my teenage years, I slam my head back into her nose and jam my left elbow into her stomach.

"Fuck!" Celia staggers a few steps backward, a rivulet of blood trickling from her nose.

It's the first time I ever hear her curse, and a sense of pride washes over me for eliciting such an unladylike word from the supposed saint.

The grin on my face falters as tiny stabs of pain prickle my right palm. That's when I realize Celia managed to slice a cut along my palm earlier. I hiss a little at the throbbing pain, quickly pressing a hand on the shallow cut as fresh blood seeps out of it. I should've just used a toy knife, should I?

Celia wipes the blood off her face and spits some more on the floor. As she glares at me, uncontained madness gleams in her eyes. Uh-oh. Time to bring the curtain down.

"Sorry to disappoint you, but my oh-so-adorable chubby dumpling will never want you back," I say, slipping the emergency codeword as smooth as possible.

"Well, there's always Plan B."

"And what's that?"

"Making you look bad." She stomps one foot forward, forcing me to take a sudden step backward. "In front of everyone." She extends her arm and thrusts the knife toward my chest as if it's an épée, barely missing the top button of my blouse had I not jerked backward. "And me a saint instead."

A cold chill of dread trickles down my spine now that I realize she's a much more skilled fighter than I expected. Still, I won't let her beat me at my own game.

"So you paid the paparazzi to follow us and write those absurd rumors?" I ask.

"I only lit the match. The public was the one who stirred the fire into a blaze." She gives an unapologetic shrug. "Now, enough chit-chat."

Celia clutches the knife in a reverse grip and swings her arm over her head. She's about to bring the blade down on my face when I try to buy some time by holding out my hands and blurting out, "Say cheese!"

As she holds the knife mid-air, a confused snarl contorts her mouth. "What?"

"Say cheese."

"Say . . . cheese?" Her forehead scrunches in confusion.

I pull out the tiny camera recorder I've disguised as the top button of my blouse and show it to her. "We're live on TweetyTube. Plus, if Ollie's doing his part correctly—which I believe he is—everyone outside is watching us on the big screen."

A series of expressions sweeps across her face: shock, disbelief, rage. "What?"

"You see, Blake told me all about your plan to turn me into Leatherface. So right now, you are just a little mouse in a huge rat trap." I step closer to her, feeling a rush of victory as her mouth falls open and her lips tremble. "Who's the moron now?"

"Y-you bitch . . . You tricked me . . ."

"Rule number one of being a horror movie villain, Celia. Gloating is a huge no-no." I put a hand on my chest and mock, "Oh, you didn't know? Gosh. You are stupid."

The sound of footsteps rushing through the hallway tells me my backup is here. But just as relief starts to swell inside me, Celia roars in fury and charges toward me, blindly swinging the knife.

Adrenaline pumps through my veins, and I arch my upper body backward to avoid the blade. As she tries to slash my cheek with her knife, I pivot on my heel and grab her right forearm. My breath hitches in my throat when she circles her left arm around my neck and redirects the blade toward my face. Letting go of her forearm, I use both hands to grip the knife-wielding hand.

But this time, her rage gives her almost superhuman strength.

Horror balloons in my chest, suffocating me as the tip of the blade inches toward my left eye. I squeeze my eyes shut, struggling to stop her from turning me into Mad-Eye Moody.

Ollie's right. This is a bad idea. This is a terrible idea!

Just as I'm about to give up, the loud banging on the door startles both of us. Celia glances at the door, and I use the chance to stomp my heel into her right foot.

"Fuck!" she howls like a wolf in agony, stumbling backward.

Ooh! Twice! I spin out of her grasp, the beginning of a grin forming on my face. But my celebration is short-lived, for Celia regains her footing and prepares to launch another attack on me.

This time, though, I'm determined to get revenge for my best friends.

As she advances toward me with the knife held high, I clench my fist as tight as I can. Right when she brings the knife down with all her might, I duck to the side and deliver a hard blow to her perfect nose. A surge of fierce satisfaction explodes inside me when the sound of bone cracking—hers, not mine—reaches my ears.

"Fuck!" She drops the knife onto the floor with a loud clang, her hands shot up to her nose. Blood streams down her chin, oozing between her perfectly manicured fingers.

She's going to need a nose job after this. The irony, right? And for that, I almost feel sorry for her.

Almost.

"And that?" I pant, my chest heaving. "That was for almost killing Kiki and playing with Ollie's heart."

Falling onto her knees, Celia breaks down into tears and whimpers, "My nose . . . My perfect nose . . ."

I bend down to pick up the knife, flick the blade closed, and put it in my clutch. Now, gloating is