Page 22 of Worse Than Wicked
Of course Baron wanted sex when he saw me like that, and it was worse than usual, since I’m already so torn up, and Duke wasn’t there to soothe me in the aftermath of his brother’s torment. In light of his strange behavior since we got here, though, the fact that he still wanted sex is a normalcy that offers a small comfort as I sit here alone, untethered for the first time in months. It sets me on edge, that he just took my word so easily, believed I wouldn’t leave. What is he planning?
He might want me to leave, having come up with a particularly gruesome torture as punishment if I do. If I leave, he’ll have an excuse to employ it. If I don’t, he’ll have proof for Duke that I stay because I want to, that I could have left, but I chose not to.
Or maybe he was simply distracted, as he seemed. That’s so unlike Baron, though, it makes me even more ill at ease.
He could be toying with me, trying to make me question everything like he did before. If that’s the case, he’s succeeding.
But where is Duke?
Is that part of the plan, or did he run away this time? He’s been subdued lately, so unhappy that even Baron noticed. And he wanted to go back to Faulkner so badly. Maybe he used the opportunity, cuffed me to the bed and left while Baron was away. I debate whether Baron would tie his brother up if he tried to run, or if he’d try to fix things. Is he a captive too?
I pace the hallway, and after a minute, Seeley joins me, looking as distraught as I feel. When he reaches the woodenstaircase at the end of the hall on our fourth pass, he perches on the bottom step, watching me. I join him, and he bounds up the stairs, so I follow.
We all slept in the master bedroom downstairs, but there are two more bedrooms up here, a bath, an office. The house is nice, and set up well, with almost everything to make it a home. I use the restroom and wash my hands, then open the medicine cabinet. A generic assortment stares back at me—rubbing alcohol, bandages, antacids, painkillers, antibiotic ointment. A small perfume bottle is wedged into the corner, dark smoky glass in the shape of an angel with a polished, round golden head as the lid. With shaking fingers, I move aside the box of aspirin and take it out. When I turn it over, the back of the lid features a tiny black spider, its legs thin as threads of silk, the hourglass like a dot of blood in its center.
Men don’t kill with poison.
I tear open the other drawers, the cabinets, rifling through them recklessly, searching for something, anything, though I can’t say what I’m looking for. A sign she was here, that it wasn’t Baron or Duke who placed the perfume there, that I’m not crazy. I stop when I find a black tube of lipstick with gold trim in one of the drawers. I take it out and pull off the cap, rolling up the stick of hot pink wax, the end blunted and smeared from where it was used.
I stare at it a long moment, then pocket it and go back downstairs. I sit at the kitchen table with my phone and dial.
For a minute, it only rings, and I don’t think she’ll answer. At last, the call connects.
“Cecily,” I say, sinking back in my chair in relief. “You picked up.”
There’s a long silence, long enough that I have to tap my screen and check that the call is still going.
“Are you still with those two monsters?” she asks at last.
“Yes, but—”
“Do you need help?” she asks. “Are you trying to get away from them?”
“No, but—”
“Then I have nothing to say to you.”
“Please,” I blurt. “I just need to know.”
“I told you, I don’t know anything about it,” she says. “It was there the last time I checked. I don’t know how long it was before you came over. I didn’t want to see it, so I didn’t look at it again. If it was gone, one of those…Boystook it.”
“But you just left.”
She sighs. “I’m sorry, Mabel. Maggie was coming for the summer, and I couldn’t have her in a house where those monsters had access. God knows what they’d do to her. I couldn’t live with myself if they got to her the way they did you.”
She doesn’t say the other part: the way they didher.
“I’m sorry,” I say, dropping my forehead into my palm. “I know you don’t understand, but—”
“No, I don’t understand,” Cecily says. “After everything they’ve done to our family… To be honest, I understand your mother more than I understand you.”
“Aurora is not my mother,” I say stiffly.
No, my mother wouldn’t swallow a bottle of pills rather than face another day of seeing her daughter destroyed by the Dolces.
My mother fled with her husband in the dead of night, leaving me to fend for myself.
Don’t worry, Mom. I always did.
