Page 161 of Feed Your Fiends

A waitress saunters by, and Hale grabs her by the loop of her corset. One second a shot’s on her tray and the next they’re splitting it mouth-to-mouth and Zedd hits record.

“The king’s back,” Zedd suddenly hyped. “Get ready for his official inauguration at Beaulieu.”

“Concubine auditions are still ongoing at the club,” Hale says, pulling away from the girl and gazing directly into the camera lens. “If you don’t have a pussy, and you’re not auditioning, don’t fucking come.”

When Zedd ends the live, Hale says, “Think your little sister finally got the memo?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Good.”

“He’s crashing out,” Zedd says, ending the live as Hale follows the waitress to the living room.

“And you have the evidence?” I ask.

“All backed up.”

“Good.”Great.Bart needs that.

Bart emerges from the powder room in the foyer.

“Hale’s the life of the party,” Bart says.

How would he know from the toilet?

“It’s what Hale does best,” Zedd says, rearranging a tray.

“Everyone can be themselves here,” Bart says.

“You didn’t tell Alistair I was here, right?”

“As per your request, no.” Bart smiles at the trays. “Zedd, you’ve made everything exactly as I requested?”

“Precise measurements,” he says, arranging a tray of just three drinks that he hands off to a server. One with curly brown hair. The only girl with curls. The only girl who’d been serving Hale, me and Bart.

“Wonderful. And it’s been what?”

“Twenty-five minutes since his first. At the party anyway. He just came from Libellule.”

“All the better.”

Zedd motions for all the silver trays to go out onto the floor, while the golden ones follow Bart and me. Glass jewellery displays dot the living room beneath arched, sparkling white light bulbs that make the diamonds and emeralds sparkle.

“I want to make a toast,” Bart says once we reach the room’s centre, drawing everyone’s attention. “To family and friends. As many of you know, I haven’t been in town much since Marisol’s passing. Much less inside the penthouse. The memories were too painful, and while I don’t believe time heals all wounds, it makes the unbearable easier to tote around.”

Fingers touch my shoulder in support, and I smile back at Delphine. Those eyes are so much like my mother's.

“We all have our pathways in life, but this isn’t a detour I expected to take. Even still, knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t change the pathway I chose, the pathway Marisol led us down. She left me with so many memories. The greatest of which is embodied in my son, but there are others too.” He looks at Hale, who blinks back, a confused smile stretching his lips. “So many lingering memories. So many things left unsaid and undone.”

Delphine squeezes my shoulder. Her eyes are too light. Too much yellow in the green.Too reptilian.

“That’s my vow this year. To carry out the belated tasks that Marisol couldn’t.”

A serpent.

An imposter.

A Bart fucker.

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