Page 21 of Worse Than Wicked
I step into a low spot and pitch forward, almost falling before I stumble back upright, catching myself on the trunk of a pine. The big sections of bark are smooth, their edges rough against my fingertips. I stare for a second, sure if I lift my hand, I’ll see blood. That it will bubble from the cracks, running down the trunk in thick, sticky rivulets.
I yank my hand back and stare at my clean palm.
Then I turn back to the ditch I tripped on. My heart is beating all crazy and fucked up, and I’m not sure if the shakes are still from coming down. I’m suddenly so empty, so ravenous, and so fucking tired I don’t think I can stumble back to the car.
That’s when I notice the disturbance in the surface of the ground at my feet. All the pine needles and sticks and leaves have been swept back, leaving a stretch of bare dirt. It’s an indentation, about five or six feet long, too deep for an animalpath, too short and shallow for a natural gulley or even a dry streambed. The way it’s been cleared tells me all I need to know.
I fall to my knees, forgetting the weakness in my limbs, and dig. The ground is hard packed and unforgiving, and I feel my nails peeling back, breaking and tearing, but I don’t stop. It seems impossible it could have been packed down this hard in six months, but that’s all I can think. It has to be her grave.
I have to stop after a while. I sit back, my head swimming, my stomach churning. I step away to get sick, only then noticing my fingers are black with dirt and blood, my nailbeds caked with it. I stumble back to the ditch, now about twice as deep as it was, which is only maybe a foot deep. There’s no way Baron dug into this. He didn’t even have a shovel.
If this is her grave, she’s not in it anymore.
I sink slowly down, down, onto my knees, my hands, and then onto my side. The scent of dirt and pine invades my nostrils, stings until my eyes burn and blur, until hot tears trickle from the cold corner and drip into the dirt.
I wish I’d found her, even if it meant she was dead.
I wish I’d saved her, even if it meant Baron hated me for it.
I wish I could take her place, even if it meant I’d be the one who never made it home.
I didn’t do it then, but maybe I can now. Maybe I can finally make everyone happy. That’s what I’m always trying to do, but it’s impossible when everyone wants something different, so I always fail. I’m tired of failing, tired of being a loser, tired of being wrong and not realizing it until it’s too late to make it right. This time, I can make it right. No one can blame me anymore if I’m not there to blame. No one can hate me if I don’t exist.
Not Harper and Royal, who might forgive me but never forget.
Not Mabel and Colt, who can’t forgive me or escape me.
Not Olive and Blue, from whom I could never ask forgiveness.
Most important of all, I couldn’t hate myself anymore.
six
Mabel Darling
“Do I need to cuff you to the bed again?” Baron asks. “I’m going out.”
I scowl at him, cuddling Seeley to my chest like a shield. “How are we ‘equal partners’ if I have to be tied up every time you leave the house?”
“How are we partners if you try to escape when we leave the house?”
“I’m not going to escape,” I grumble.
“Good,” he says, coming over to the table where I sit. “Because you’ll never be able to. Run to the end of the earth, and I’ll be waiting when you get there.”
He grips my hair and tugs my head back, planting a kiss on my forehead that’s more possessive than any forehead kiss has the right to be.
“I’ll be back soon.”
And then he’s gone, phone still in hand, door banging shut behind him.
Seeley slinks from my arms and strolls over to lie directly in front of the refrigerator, like he’s trying to place himself in the most inconvenient spot in the house.
I shake my head and watch the door for a minute, considering whether to follow Baron.
He’s acting strange. He wouldn’t tell me where he was going last night, and he didn’t explain at all just now. He never goes out for a run more than once a day.
I woke up when he got home from his run earlier, only to find that Duke had tied me to the bed. That was upsetting, though not wholly unexpected. After my one half-hearted attempt to leave from school in October, they rarely let me out of their sight, and they’ve tied me up every time they’ve had to leave me alone at home. That was my punishment, right up until now.
