A Murder Victim Unexpectedly Resurfaces In This Excerpt From Rory Power’s Kill Creatures

Rory Power is known for her complex explorations of identity, desire, and the darkness within. That trend is set to continue with her latest psychological thriller, Kill Creatures, a gleefully twisted story about friendship, jealousy, and betrayal. 

Set in the small town of Saltcedar, Utah, seventeen-year-old Nan is reeling from the disappearance of her three best friends during a nighttime hike in a local canyon. But when one of the missing girls reappears a year later, it’s a complete shock to Nan, who’s certain she killed all three of them. Described as perfect for fans of Yellowjackets and Saltburn, Kill Creatures is a captivating psychological thriller featuring an unreliable narrator, a pair of complex anti-heroine leads, and a story that’s full to the brim with shocking twists.

Here’s how the publisher describes the story. 

Last summer, Luce, Edie, Jane, and Nan took a boat out for one final swim in the river. It was a perfect summer night.

But the only one who returned that night was Nan. Edie, Jane, and Luce disappeared, and Nan’s story has always been the same: She has no idea what happened. The girls went ahead, and it was as though they vanished into thin air.

Now, one year later, all of Saltcedar has gathered at the river for a memorial. Nan even recreated the outfit she wore that fateful day last summer. And when Luce climbs out of the water, no one is more surprised than Nan.

Because Nan killed her. Right before she killed Edie and Jane.

Kill Creatures won’t hit shelves until June 3, but we’ve got an exclusive first look for you right now. 

NOW

The vigil should have started by now. It’s been an hour since I arrived at the lake’s edge, since a volunteer herded me up onto the deck at Bullfrog’s and left me to wait with all the other VIPs. That’s what we are, really. That’s what this is. A fucking luxury box for family and friends, set apart from the rest of the crowd that’s jockeying on the beach for the best view. I lean against the deck railing, try to count the people gathered below. It’s more than I’ve ever seen in Saltcedar before, and that’s not including everyone watching from the boats dotted across the lake. They’ve been out there since the sun came up. Swimming, Jet Skiing. Having a perfect summer day before dropping anchor for the night’s entertainment.

I check behind me, searching for the Bristows or the Gales. Nothing yet. They’re probably still waiting inside the restaurant. Bullfrog’s dining room is cramped and the whole place smells like stale beer, from its uneven floor to the life preservers hanging on the walls. But at least it’s private. Quiet too. If only they’d invited me to join them.

Instead I’m out here listening to the crowd, to plastic scraping across the deck as a volunteer sets up rows of white folding chairs. To the feedback shriek from the microphone as someone plugs it in. I won’t be using it. I won’t be standing up there, telling everyone about my best friends. They didn’t ask me to speak—

No, they asked me not to speak. What were they afraid they’d hear?

“Nan? Has anyone seen Nan?”

I turn in time to see my dad cutting across the deck. Tall, broad shouldered, and still wearing his park ranger uniform. He must’ve sped the whole way from Bryce to make it in time.

“Dad,” I call. “Over here.”

His eyes find mine, and he smiles. Too wide to be appropriate, but nobody will care. Everybody loves Don Carver.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he says, joining me at the deck railing. “There you are.”

He gives me a hug. I go loose, let his body hold mine up. Mom’s been busy at the lodge all day, and I don’t mind being alone—I can handle myself—but it’s a relief to see him all the same.

“Hi,” I say. My arms tight around his waist, his badge digging into my cheek. “I’m really glad you’re here.”

“I said I would be, didn’t I?”

Yeah, but that’s never meant much. Especially not this past year.

I pull away. Will myself to stand tall. “How’d you make it in time?”

“One of the officers coming down escorted me. Put on his lights and told me to stay behind him.” Dad laughs. “I think we did about ninety-five the whole way.” He shakes his head, staring past me to the lake beyond. “God, this is something, huh?”

He keeps talking, but I’m not listening. One of the officers coming down, he said. Down here? To Saltcedar?

The police haven’t had much presence in town since they called off the search. A February press conference, the old sheriff working hard not to say what most people had decided was the truth by then—that if the canyon hadn’t killed them that summer, the winter certainly had. After that, the cruisers stopped parking at the foot of my driveway. I slept through the night without police lights waking me up. And then Sheriff Perris retired, and the new sheriff took office, and I figured it was as over as it was ever going to be.

But sure enough, now that I know to look for them, I can spot at least two police boats out on the lake, bobbing side by side. Glistening white hulls, each one marked by a pair of small blue flags.

What the fuck are they doing here? More questions, more poking and prying. They’re no better than the reporters, rats picking through the leftovers of my girls and their lives. Didn’t they get what they needed last summer? I told them the truth. As much of it as they have a right to, anyway.

Anger simmers behind my ribs, but I tamp it down. Step back from the deck railing so abruptly that Dad raises his eyebrows.

“Sorry,” I say. “I just . . . I think I need a minute.”

His smile falls. His sympathy is too soft; it sets a phantom itch across my skin. “You know I’m happy to hang out with you. We can talk about whatever you want.”

“Actually, do you mind checking on Mom?” I dig my nails into my palm. “I’ve barely seen her all day, and I think she was supposed to help with the families.”

“The families?”

“Just the Bristows and the Gales,” I say before Dad can get started on Mr. Allard. He won’t be as nice about it as Mrs. Bristow was. “Please? She might be inside.”

“Sure,” Dad says after a moment. “I’ll check. See you in a minute.”

He squeezes my hand and heads toward the door. He probably won’t find Mom there, but he might be able to tell me what the holdup is with the vigil. Has one of the parents broken down? Or are they arguing about the program? Fighting over who’ll read what poem in what order, as if what they say matters? We know by now how it’ll play out. We know whose pictures the news will show when they mention us at the bottom of the hour. Always Jane, sometimes Edie. Almost never Luce—nobody can find a shot of her smiling. And when they need to fill time, they’ll play that clip someone got of me on the lakeshore last year, a foil blanket wrapped around my shoulders while I stand there looking like shit.

I wonder what they’ll get of me this year. I practiced for it. Learned how not to smile for the news crews and their cameras. How to keep from staring at the people in the crowd pointing their phones in my direction, blocking their own eyes from view.

What if it isn’t enough? What if I can’t give them what they’re after?

I bite down hard on the inside of my cheek. Let the flash of pain pull me back, bring me home to my body. Everything will be fine, Nan. Everything will be just fine.

At last the sun slips behind the canyon ridge across the lake. A crystal hush over the crowd as I sit between my parents, three rows back from the microphone. All of us waiting, hanging motionless in that last, luminous blue hour before dark. If it were any other summer, I’d be calling Edie, saying, “Let’s go for a ride.” Edie and me and the bike she stripped the brakes off, just to see if she could.

Some things you have to give up.

Mom rests her hand on my leg, her fingertips digging into my thigh. “You okay?”

I nod. “Are they starting soon?” I’ve been dreading this for weeks. The faster we’re through it, the better.

“Just a minute. See?”

She nods toward the door leading off the deck where the Bristows are huddled shoulder to shoulder with a man I don’t recognize. He must be someone they know from Salt Lake, which makes me hate him a little, the same way I hate all of Jane’s friends from home. They hoarded so much of her. Winters and birthdays and early school mornings. Meanwhile, here in Saltcedar, we’d have traded half our lives away to have her for the rest of them.

I face forward again. Slouch against Mom, my arms folded across my chest. “Why did they have us sit down if they weren’t ready?”

“Try to relax. It’s only a little delay.” She kisses the crown of my head. “At least this way your dad and I could both make it in time, right?”

Is that relief I hear, or something bitter? I’m not sure. She was one of the last to come down from the lodge, and I could tell by the flush of her cheeks as she burst onto the deck that she’d hurried the whole way. Afraid, I think, that I would have to do this all alone. Except there was Dad standing next to me.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she told him as he hugged her. And then, pitched low enough that I know I wasn’t meant to hear it, “You could’ve called.”

A stir of movement draws my attention. The Bristows are coming to take their seats, led by a volunteer. The Gales trail after them, Edie’s mom clinging to a mascara- blackened tissue.

“Here we go,” Mom says. “Don?” She reaches across me. Tugs on Dad’s sleeve. “Don, they’re about to start.”

Dad’s been twisted around talking to someone in the row behind us, the two of them chatting like they’re at someone’s retirement party and not the closest thing we’ve had so far to a funeral for my best friends. Now he sits back, looking embarrassed.

“Sorry,” he says. “Oh, are we in the wrong row? Should we move up?”

With the Bristows and the Gales settled into their seats, it’s clear that they’ve left the row in front of ours empty.

Mom shakes her head. “It’s for the Allards,” she whispers. Like it’s supposed to be kept secret. “In case Kent shows up, or…”

Or Luce’s mom. Maggie Allard, who’s somewhere on the East Coast, according to the goodbye letter she left behind. Finally free of this town the way Luce dreamed of being all her life. If she didn’t come back to help with the search for her daughter last summer, why the hell would she come back for this?

It’s funny—I never used to think she had the right idea leaving, but today I wish I’d followed in her footsteps. Wherever she is, it must be better than this.

I grit my teeth, gather every piece of myself until I’m pressed down to diamond, to pure will. In a few hours the vigil will be over. I can get through anything; I can do whatever I have to.

Up at the front of the deck, the head volunteer takes the microphone and switches it on. Everyone sits up straighter. It’s time.

“Thank you so much, everybody, for coming,” the volunteer says. I half expect a cheer from the crowd, but then, this isn’t the Saltcedar I know, loud music on the lake- shore and fireworks set off by someone too young to be that drunk. “I’ll turn it over to the families in just a minute, but before we begin, we’ll have a moment of silence in honor of the girls.”

Around me, people bow their heads and clasp their hands. Silence, the volunteer said, but I know for almost everyone here it will be prayer too. I get it. I’ve done the same thing. Knelt by the edge of my bed, waited for a voice to thunder down from the sky. But the girls were all I ever heard.

Wind buffets the microphone, its whistle carrying from the speakers on the deck until a volunteer remembers to turn the volume down. Behind me, someone’s stomach growls. I almost burst out laughing. This is just so ridiculous. All of us gathered here wearing our most solemn faces, when really Luce hated Bullfrog’s after they didn’t hire her for that job bussing tables. Jane refused to swim at this beach—she said it smelled like motor oil and rotten leftovers. And Edie would’ve died all over again before she let them use that picture they’ve plastered everywhere.

“Nan.” Mom draws me in close, our heads bent together. “Deep breath, honey. You’re getting a little worked up.”

Worked up? No, I am not worked up; I’m out of my fucking mind. We all should be. To mourn them like this, to wish last summer back to life when it was such a mess to begin with? It’s a knife in the back, a betrayal too big for me to hold with both hands.

So I won’t try. I sag against Mom. Shut my eyes, count to ten, but it doesn’t do any good. Even in the dark I can still see us. Single file, climbing up one of the slots that branch off the main canyon passage. Black desert varnish striped across the red rock walls, and that ring of white high above our heads, left there when the water levels dropped.

Did the girls know what would happen to them that day? Did they see it coming somehow?

A shout from out on the water, loud enough that Mom gives a little hum of disapproval. I sink farther into her arms. Probably some tourist who came to gawk at the dead girls.

But then there’s another. And another, and the rumble of an engine starting up. The speakers crackle as Mrs. Bristow turns the volume back up. “Please try to be quiet,” she says into the microphone, her voice thick with tears. “It’s only a moment we’re asking for.”

Somebody calls back in response. Too far away for me to understand and half drowned out by another engine sputtering to life, but I can hear the urgency in it. The panic.

“What is it?” I say. Mom’s arm goes tight around me. I shrug it off and get to my feet. “What’s going on?”

No one answers. The nearest volunteer is already making a phone call, and the others just stare at me, open-mouthed, as I push past my dad. Mrs. Bristow has backed away from the deck rail to talk to the Gales, giving me a path past her. I take it. Squeeze between two Bristow family friends and in front of the microphone until the deck rail is pressed to my ribs.

From here I can see what broke the moment of silence: one of the police boats is moving out on the lake, cutting left into open water.

I squint into the distance. Follow the line they’ve taken, until—there. A dark spot bobbing in the water.

My breath catches. A chill, a shiver as the hairs on my arms stand up. What is that? Somebody’s outboard motor, or a drink cooler fallen overboard. But nothing like that would’ve required the police. None of that would’ve brought the vigil to a halt.

“Let’s sit down,” Mom says, coming up behind me. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

I don’t think so. Not when the second police boat is moving too. Mrs. Bristow, the volunteers, their faces ashen and their eyes wide—I’ve seen all this before, haven’t I? Which means there’s only one thing it could be out there. A body.

“No,” I say. “No, that can’t be right.”

 “Nan, please. You shouldn’t look.”

Mom keeps talking, but all of me is there in that first police boat, bent low over the side as it eases closer and closer to the shape in the water. Which of my girls is it? And what’s left of her? Will there be enough to bury?

The boat reaches the body. Two figures emerge from under the hardtop.

“Okay,” Mom says. “That’s enough.” She grabs my shoulder. Angles me away so I can’t see anything else, and at her touch, my will breaks. The fight in me gone like a candle blown out.

She leads me back to my chair and sits me down. Heart hammering, legs trembling. I want to look for the Bristows, the Gales—I want to know how they’re taking it, see which of them has dissolved into tears—but I can barely see past my own knees.

“Is this happening?” I say. “Is it actually happening?”

Mom’s crouched in front of me. Her face is creased with worry as it ripples into view. “We don’t know anything, okay? There’s something in the water. That’s all.”

“Who is it? Which one?”

“We can’t even be sure it’s a person, honey.”

“It has to be.” Fear creeps up the back of my neck, cold and clutching. This isn’t how it was supposed to go.

“Excuse me,” I hear someone call out. When I look up, a volunteer has her hand raised. A phone held to her ear, her eyes wide. “I have it.”

Everyone on the boat is watching her. The parents, the other volunteers. We know what’s coming. I think of Edie and Jane, running ahead of me into the dark. Edie and Jane, waiting for their turn to rest.

“Okay, it’s secondhand, so I don’t—”

“Fucking spit it out,” Mr. Bristow says. I’ve never heard him swear before.

The volunteer clears her throat. “They think it’s Luce Allard. They want to know if her family’s here.”

Someone lets out a muffled sob. Disappointment rushes through me, an emptiness behind it. If I had to see any of them again—if the canyon only gave back one body to bury—

“Wait, hold on,” the volunteer says as people start to interrupt. She’s still got her phone to her ear. “Just a second. I think there’s something else.” The air drum-tight as she listens. Finally, she starts to smile. “They’re saying she’s alive. Luce is alive.”

It slips into me like a needle. Alive. She said alive. They pulled a body from the water, but it wasn’t a body. It was a person.

“Nan,” Mom says, smiling. “Honey, did you hear that?”

No, I didn’t. Somebody else is at work in my muscles, my bones, while I slip beneath the surface—crumble to ashes—harden to stone. This is impossible. Luce is dead. The girls are all dead. And I should know, because I’m the one who killed them.

Kill Creatures will be released on June 3, but you can pre-order it right now. 

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter and Bluesky at @LacyMB