Page 30 of Worse Than Wicked
“I made a deal with Harper.”
“What kind of deal?”
He pulls up at our place and turns off the car before meeting my eyes in the mirror. “I told her I’d help her track down her missing friend.”
“What friend?”
“You know which one,” he says, holding my gaze. My heart lurches, and I wonder how long he’s known. We never talked about it. I hoped he didn’t know, hadn’t put it together, connected her with Olive. I didn’t until I was about to kill her. But of course Baron’s always three steps ahead. Maybe he knew the whole time. Probably he did.
“She’s dead,” I say, because she has to be. She would have gone back for Olive if she were alive.
“She doesn’t know that,” Baron says, swinging open his door. “And for that matter, neither do we. I’d like to find out what happened to her too. So we all win.”
Inside, we pack our things. I scour the apartment for pearls, searching every nook and cranny, every spot I’ve taped them in case I need a boost when the others aren’t looking. By the time I’m done, the stash I’ve put together is pathetic. Despair thrums inside me, and I resist the urge to pop one right now.
Maybe this will be a good thing. Time to dry out a little, so when we come back in the fall, I won’t need so many to reach Wonderland. Besides, I won’t be sitting around all day in a dark warehouse going out of my mind. I’ll have lots of other stuff to do, so I probably won’t even need them.
We take my Lexus because it’s the biggest and most comfortable. Baron drives, and I sit in the back, thinking it’s funny, because in high school when Royal drove, Baron always sat in the back. But he never felt less important like I do. I’m sure of that.
“I thought you’d be more excited to be going home,” Mabel says to me as we cross the bridge into Arkansas.
Only a few hours left. My stomach tightens, and I lay my head back, refusing the nagging urge to reach in my pocket and take one of the pearls. I don’t want to be high when I get home.
I don’t want to see disappointment on Crystal’s face. Judgment on Royal’s. He was always too strong to get addicted to anything. He’d never let a substance control him. And I don’t either. I’m the one in control. I’m not a junkie like fucking Colt Darling, who’s been in and out of rehab since graduation last summer.
Suddenly I’m back there, outside the Slaughterpen, the last time I saw him. His fist around my cock, his fingers in my mouth, the taste of my own cum on my tongue. I shove the image away. That was the night I hurt Olive. That’s why I let him do that, to punish myself. That’s all it was. That, and being fucked up. And he was probably as fucked up as me, if not more. He probably won’t even remember. And if he does, he’d never say it aloud. Hopefully he’s back in rehab and I won’t have to see him at all, and we can both pretend it never happened, that none of it happened.
I wanted to go home so badly at Christmas, but maybe that’s because I couldn’t. Now that it’s not only an option but a reality, everything comes crashing in. Not just Colt, but Olive. What I did to her. What will she do when she sees me? Will she run away scared? Will Harper even let me see her? And then there’s Harper, who I got used to, but it was always there, the guilt of what I did following me like a dark cloud over my head, always lurking, waiting to drop reminders like acid rain when I forgot for a moment and laughed with her or noticed how hot she was. Then it would dump onto me, burning away my skin, eating away at me like fire.
Crystal wasn’t there for that, so at least she can look at me without seeing a monster. But even she was there the night we left Dad to die. She left him too, and that shared knowledgedoesn’t just bind us together, it weighs us down. The more of us who are in a room together, the heavier it gets, the burden magnified by the weight of each person’s guilt. We are all murderers, not just me. We all made the decision together.
Getting away from that, being with only Mabel and Baron, who weren’t there that night, has let me put it out of my mind for hours, sometimes days at a time. When I’m back in Faulkner, it will be all around me—not just Dad’s vengeful ghost, but the people who helped create it.
Crystal, Devlin, Royal, Harper. Even my old friends from high school, who I never talk to anymore. That’s probably why. None of us want to remember, to go back to that night.
Suddenly I can’t remember why I ever wanted to go back to Faulkner.
But we’re already passing the city limit sign, and it’s too late to turn back.
nine
Mabel Darling
The minute we open the doors and climb out of Duke’s SUV, a gangly child with her hair swinging around her shoulders comes bounding out of the house, across the gravel, and flings herself at Duke. He catches her, stumbling back, and she wraps her arms and legs around him like a monkey and clings on tight.
“Dukey,” she screams. “You’re back!”
“Olive,” he says, his face buried in her shoulder. “You’re not mad at me?”
“Why would I be mad?” she asks, pulling back and frowning up at him.
He tries to pry her off, and I’m sure he’s thinking about what he asked me. It makes me mad that someone let their own inappropriate thoughts color his opinion of himself, though I don’t blame him for asking. If someone told me I was a pedophile, I’d be self-conscious around children too, and I’ve never even wanted to be around them. They’re messy and unpredictable.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Miss Darling…
“You look different,” Duke says, finally untangling himself and setting her down. “You’re all tall, and your hair…”
“I know,” she says, grabbing his hand for balance and swishing her hair dramatically back and forth. “Royal took me to a place called asalonwhen he found out only my sister had ever cut my hair. It costmore than a hundred dollarsto cut it!”
