Page 14 of Feed Your Fiends

“I don’t have time. I need him acting like a fucking human again even if it’s a degenerative one.” Of course, Bart would leave the hard shit to me. He broke him, and yet it’s my task to fix him. To make him normal enough to have a conversation. To get answers. “If positive reinforcement won’t work, then what about negative enforcement?”

“Gant—” Bae starts.

I stoop to his level so that I can peer into his eyes. Those eyes of spring.

“Get in that fucking seat now,” I hiss. “Or we’ll have another tea party.”

He whimpers but doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak.

“Gant…” Zedd trails, an unusual amount of concern in his tone. “Seriously, what the actual fuck has Bart done to him for two years?”

At the name, Jarett falls onto his ass before diving for the cage again. I beat him to it, shutting the door with my foot, and he crawls behind the couch instead.

‘I’m afraid I’ve broken him,’Bart had said.

“I wasn’t there, was I?” I ask. But I can imagine, even if I can’t sympathise. Even if I wish I’d witnessed it.

Jarett had tortured my baby, his own baby. I wouldn’t give a damn if he acted like the dog my father treated him as for the rest of his pathetic life if it weren’t for her. I need him to get to her. To keep her.

Bart thinks Jarett has the answers to find my mother’s little prince. But I know he’s the answer to opening Elle’s eyes to the truth once and for all.

“He trained him like a dog.” My eyes snap to Bae. “So untrain him.”

“We’re making progress,” Bae says with far too much patience as he takes a masala wing.

Zedd watches him with wide, crazed eyes, waiting for his reaction as he bites into it with a crunch.

“He doesn’t soil himself any more,” Bae says between bites. “And at least he’s willing to leave the cage now. But I told you not to expect leaps, just baby steps. Bart deprived him of any human considerations for years. Days won’t do the trick. Even if we had weeks….” He trails before whistling.

Jarrett follows the command timidly, scampering over to us as Bae grabs a bowl from the table and sets it on the floor with a wing. He transfers the beer from the glass to the bowl, and I watch in disgust as Jarett laps it up, clearly more comfortable. But there’s a small tunnel of light as something other than fear and primal instinct overtakes his features. Something I’d been hoping for. Familiarity. A blast from the past.

“He remembers the beer,” I whisper, mostly to myself, before grabbing a wing from Zedd.

“Does it taste authentic?” Zedd asks, watching me intently. “Like the masala we had in India last winter?”

I pause my chewing and eye Zedd with just as much interest. “You’ve been obsessing over South Asian recipes lately.”

Zedd’s expression drops, and the Zaddy Zedd I’m more familiar with settles back into place. The one that’s so stony, he can’t emote anything more than indifference. “So?”

“So I find that very interesting,” I say, tossing the bones. “Though I’m not complaining.” Thanks to Zedd’s experimentations, I’d eaten a fuck ton of pineapple yesterday. Hopefully, Etienne’s experimentations with fruits and releases were right.

“It tastes authentic to me,” Bae says, giving Zedd the approval he can’t get from her outright. “You know, one of my chefs in Korea is from Kerala, too.”

I can see Zedd hyper-fixating on the last word,too.

There are no secrets in our group. Just respect for unspoken truths that are so fucking loud it’s insane that we pretend we don’t hear them. See them.

Zedd nods curtly, seemingly satisfied with Bae’s approval, as he slips into the seat Jarett wouldn’t. Bae motions for me to do the same as he picks up the dark green folder embossed with golden letters. It’s been sitting on the table since I entered the flat, and I’d ignored it, not wanting to rush the hope that’s been blooming in my chest since I arrived.

“Did you find the car?” I ask evenly. “The driver?”

The driver who killed my mother and nearly killed me and Elle, too.

He was driving a dark green, nearly black vintage car. Somewhere around the nineteen forties, that’s what Elle said. That’s precisely what I remember, too, but she remembered far more. It had a tall hood ornament that punctured her side in three spots. She said it had some sort of tail. A flowing dress, maybe? The Spirit of Ecstasy. Maybe…

I try to find the answer in Bae’s expression, but the minute his sombre, honey-coloured eyes land on me, I avert my own, my jaw ticking.

Just like our progress with Jarett, we aren’t any closer.

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