Page 28 of Mostly Shattered

He drops his hold, only to drape his arm over my shoulders instead. “Please marry Peter. For me. The look on our mother’s face when you… bring him to family dinner…”

He starts laughing and can’t finish. I can’t help it. I try to hold back, but a small snort escapes me. The unladylike sound only makes my brother laugh harder.

Anthony stops. “In here.”

We’re outside of Conrad’s room. I feel my insides clench.

“Anthony,” I shake my head to stop him, “no.”

He reaches for the doorknob, not listening to my weak protest.

I must have been inside Conrad’s suite a million times, but I don’t want to make it a million and one. I expect Conrad’s ghost to be waiting as I watch the door open. Instead, the room is exactly as the servants would have left it.

The air is stifling, as if we’restepping into a tomb. Maybe it’s my imagination, but the musty smell is familiar.

“We shouldn’t be in here,” I whisper.

Time has stopped in the room. Conrad’s bed is made, and everything is in its place. The curtains are drawn as if to protect a shrine to his life. Little treasures line an antique dresser. I don’t think they’re magical beyond the meaning they carried for Conrad.

I feel guilty thinking about it, but I can’t help but wonder why Astrid kept the room as he left it. There was no love lost between Conrad and his adoptive parents. The only conclusion I can come up with is that she is resistant to change.

“Over here,” Anthony says, opening Conrad’s closet and stepping inside. I hear something sliding.

Still, I hesitate.

Light flashes from inside the closet.

“Tam, come here!” Anthony calls.

I step across the large rug, letting it pad my steps to keep me quiet. I wait for the chill that means Conrad is watching, but it doesn’t come.

The walk-in closet is crammed with clothes and has the lingering scent of cologne. My hands begin to shake as memories flood me. He wore the green jacket to an art gallery event and stole a tray of bacon-wrapped shrimp for us because I’d missed dinner. The yellow shirt was from when he refusedto hold a cab for me and left me alone on the sidewalk. Then there is the suit and long coat jacket that reminds me of the style favored by vampires. It’s laid out as if waiting. He wore that suit in the other timeline to our family’s funeral.

Seeing it here, now, waiting to be worn, I am struck with just how much detail Conrad planned his takeover of the Devine empire.

I don’t want to be in here.

“What do you make of this?” Anthony stands at the back of the closet in front of the flashing lights.

I go to see what he’s found. A secret compartment in the wall is pushed aside to show several security monitors.

“Who are these people?” Anthony insists.

The first monitor is the Turnblads’ kitchen in Kansas City. They were Conrad’s foster family before our parents adopted him. I’ve never been inside their home but recognize Larry in his barbeque apron. I met alternate-timeline Larry seconds before his house exploded. Toys litter the otherwise clean home as a couple of small blurs run under the odd angle of the camera. If I had to guess, the camera is hidden inside a smoke detector or something. No one appears to know it’s there.

The second monitor is a hallway in an apartment complex, watching for people to come up the stairwell.I can just make out the number 204 on the apartment door. I’ve been there too.

The third monitor is the dirty junkie’s den inside apartment 204. A half-naked woman is stretched out on an old couch, smoke curling from a cigarette. Graying brown hair is pulled into a scraggly ponytail. Her t-shirt rides up her waist, but she doesn’t seem to care. Liquor bottles and food wrappers dirty the already matted carpet. Lamplight shines from an exposed bulb, spreading over the couch like a spotlight. A bare-assed man comes into view and heads toward the couch. The smoking woman lying there is indifferent to his approach as he climbs on top of her.

“This is like the worst porn cam ever.” Anthony grimaces, even as he watches the dirty man’s ass begin to pump. “I knew our brother had issues, but this is just…”

I know that woman. It’s Conrad’s birth mother, a junkie prostitute. Conrad sent me to her apartment in an attempt to kill us both. She’d abandoned him as a kid outside a gas station to score some meth.

Even so, why would he want to watch the woman in such degrading positions?

“Turn it off,” I tell Anthony. “We should just…”

I wave my hand, wishing I could erase the images.

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