Page 26 of Worse Than Wicked
“Where is she now?” Baron finishes.
“Don’t you want to know why she waited for us here?”
“There’s only one thing she’d want.”
Revenge.
I roll back toward Mabel and cradle her close, suddenly sure we’re being watched, even at this very moment. Selfishly, I’m glad I’m in the middle, that no one can creep up behind me from either side.
“What if she’s here now?” I ask into Mabel’s hair. I don’t want to see my brother’s face, to see his disappointment or scorn. He’s not afraid of Jane. Nothing scares him, not even death.
“We’ll leave in the morning,” he says, resting a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll stay up tonight. I want to look into some things.”
“You don’t have to,” I say, but I’m relieved.
“I can’t sleep anyway.” Baron stands and grabs a pair of sweats. “Besides, I have a connection to establish on the way home.”
When he’s gone, I lie in bed, unable to sleep even after the long, fucked up day. I think about going back. I think about my family, what’s left of it, back in Faulkner sitting around the tree, laughing and talking, telling the kids about Santa. I can’t stop wishing I was there, even though it wasn’t that great last year. Baron was gone and Dad was dead and Ma didn’t come home because she had some charity gala to go to the day before and she was too hungover to fly the next day. Besides, she said, wewere all grown up now and we wouldn’t want to spend time with her anyway.
She was wrong, but no one argued. It’s impossible to argue with her.
At least I had Olive. This year, I won’t be able to hang out with her. Harper and Royal wouldn’t let me near her after what I did, and it’s probably for the best. With all the Alice I take, I probably would get hard if she climbed in my lap this time.
I told myself I’d slow down over our time away, and the thought of not getting that break fills me with dread. At the same time, the craving intensifies at the thought of how close we are to going back, to being around all those shiny blue pearls all day long, able to pop them at will, any time, without anyone knowing. I can still slow down, though. I can limit myself to one pearl per day. It’ll be good for me to clear my head a little.
Mabel stirs against me, her lashes fluttering against my neck. “Duke?” she whispers sleepily.
“It’s me,” I say, relieved that it was my name on her lips when she woke. I wrap my arms around her, pulling her tight to me.
“Where’s Baron?”
All the good feelings sour. Of course she asks for him.
“I don’t know,” I say, rolling away from her. “Why don’t you go find him if you’re so worried about him?”
She’s quiet a long moment, and I think she fell back asleep. But then her fingers brush my side. “I’m worried about you,” she says quietly.
Some mean, selfish part of me is vindicated. It likes that she’s worried, that she noticed, that she cares. I think it’s my demon, but I can’t be sure anymore. Colt broke the barrier between us when he said what he did, that there’s no demon, there’s just me. Now we bleed into each other more and more often, so I can’t tell where he ends and I begin.
“You shouldn’t be,” I say. “I’m not a good person.”
She lets out a soft snort of breath. “None of us are good people, Duke.”
“You were,” I point out. “Before we ruined you.”
“I was ruined long before you came along,” she says quietly, her tone bitter.
“But we made you a monster like us.”
“That may be true,” she says. “But if I’m a monster of your making, that doesn’t make me less monstrous than you.”
It’s my turn to think that over, and then I say the thing that’s been tormenting me since last summer, the thought I try to drown with pills and booze, try to escape in Wonderland.
“I might be the kind of monster the Black Widow takes out.” My words come out flat, but suddenly I’m shaking, sick at having said the words aloud.
“Why do you think that?” Mabel says, her voice careful.
“I—I have a friend who’s a kid,” I say. “Isn’t that the kind of man you kill?”
