Page 29 of Freaks
I’d regretted not doing so ever since.
I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.
One day, and one day soon, Sixsmith Lafferty and I were going to have a little fucking chat.
THIRTEEN
SERA
The house was grand on a Victorian scale, but Colonial in design. Six white columns braced the front of the building, supporting the deep overhanging eaves that wrapped around the property. There was no porch swing here, but rather an expensive set of garden furniture, three and four-seater rattan sofas and armchairs complete with tasteful floral cushions that created a vibrant slash of color against the stark, bright white paintwork of the house itself. The tall, arched windows on the upper floor were all in darkness, but three of the six ground floor picture windows glowed a warm yellow, lit up against the night.
Fix grunted in displeasure as we pulled up outside the vast mansion. “No one’s supposed to be here,” he muttered under his breath. Silencing the engine, he got out of the car, a stony expression marring his features. I got out after him, my legs complaining as I stretched them.
“Are you going to tell me wherehereis?” I asked.
Fix displayed an uncharacteristic level of discomfort as he faced the house, shoving his hands into his pockets. “This,” he said tightly, “is my parent’s house. Or rather it was. It’s mine now.”
Ho-ly fuck.
I didn’t want to be that girl, gawking in shock over someone’s surprise wealth, but this was just fucking ridiculous. In a city where space was at a premium, the penthouse back in Brooklyn was huge, so I’d known he had money. But this wasn’t money. This wasrich.My-ancestors-were-founding-members-of-the-country-and-made-billions-during-the-oilrush-of-eighteen-sixty-sevenkind of rich.
I tried not to react, but my surprise must have been all too obvious.
“You can say it.” Fix’s eyes were hard as flint. “It’s fucking obnoxious.”
“It’s not obnoxious. It’s just… it’s…”
“Obnoxious. It’s bigger than a department store.” He began walking to toward the front door.
“Shouldn’t we wake Monica?”
Fix bent down and looked through the window at the sleeping woman, the bridge of his nose crinkled. “She’s dead to the world. I’ll send Richard out for her in a little while.”
“Richard?”
Sighing, Fix rubbed at the back of his neck. “My father’s man.”
I must have been pulling a face, because Fix clarified. “His butler. My father had a butler. Before he went into the church, we lived here, and he had a butler called Richard.”
He was snappy, but I gave him a pass. He was exhausted, and something about coming here made Fix very edgy. If we hadn’t had our backs to a wall, I suspected he would never have brought us here, to this sprawling pile of brick and stone in Upstate New York. Following after him, my eyes caught on a flash of wicked metal at the base of Fix’s back—the gun he’d pulled on Rabbit.
This was so surreal.
This was so fucking surreal that I was beginning to question my own sanity now. How the fuck had any of this happened?
I’d left Seattle over a month ago now, with only a small suitcase containing a week’s worth of clothes. I was supposed to have an interesting cross-country adventure on my road trip, celebrate Amy’s over-the-top wedding, and then I was supposed to get back to work. Instead, I was walking up the sweeping staircase of a twelve-room mansion behind a man who’d just committed murder, and—
A bar of light fell across my face, and I looked up. The monstrous double doors to the house swung inward, and the silhouetted, dark shape of a man appeared.
“Master Felix,” a voice called down to us. “I didn’t know you were coming. I nearly called the police.”
“You’re meant to be at home,” Fix growled.
As I climbed the final step, I found myself standing in front of a tall, reedy-looking man with eyes that might once have been brown but were now clouded and milky with cataracts. His wrinkled skin looked paper-thin and was a beautiful dark bronze color, and his top lip was capped with a snowy white moustache. His hair was short, salt and pepper curls. It was just after four in the morning, which explained the red, worn dressing gown hanging over his shoulders, but not the crisp white button-down shirt he was wearing beneath it, or the neat black dress pants. The old man’s hands shook a little as he gestured to Fix, beckoning him to step into the light.
“Thisismy home,” he replied churlishly.
“Your home’s four miles away. Remember? That three-bedroom villa by the water? With its own private dock?”
