“That was stunning!” Mom marvels.
“Technically he didn’t say thank you,” I’m quick to point out. But knives and forks start flying as the hungry brood dives into dinner, and with Emma preparing most of the meal, I can’t say I blame them.
After the dinner, which I accurately predicted would last all of ten minutes, Chloe volunteers to help me slice the pie and make a pot of coffee.
“Don’t you have a family?” I’m so irritated by her presence. I’ve finally figured her out M.O.—vex Skyla until she’s certifiably insane. Crap, Chloe is so winning.
“We do brunch.” She slits her wicked eyes to the family room where the party has reconvened. “My family couldn’t care less about stupid shit like this.”
“Nice.” I’m betting with Chloe as a member of the Bishop clan, her family couldn’t care less about a lot of things. Chloe is bitter as night without any of the inner beauty the moon and stars can afford. It’s a wonder her parents are still voluntarily taking in oxygen, but, then again, Chloe is here more than she is home, so I suppose they have something to be thankful for. “So, you ready to enter into negotiations?” I blink down at the pendant still secured to her neck.
She belts out a laugh as if I had told the funniest joke in the world, but with Chloe that joke would have to be intermingled with cruelty for her to truly enjoy it, and I suppose withholding the pendant is just the right amount of cruel.
“What did you do that had Emerson up to her eyeballs with ammo?” I ask, and instantly her features darken.
“Emerson never lived to blackmail me Skyla, and neither will you.”
I shove a couple plates full of pumpkin pie in her direction, and she spins to deliver them.
“Girls.” Demetri blocks Chloe from leaving the kitchen. “I have a gift for you—the
two
of you—come by next week,” he growls it out with one of his ludicrous smiles. “I do hope you’ll both enjoy it.”
“No thanks.” I’m quick to reject a “gift” from the enemy. “Take it back, get a refund, shove it high up your ass—I really don’t care.”
He bleeds his wicked grin at my catalog of suggestions.
I go to walk past him with a steaming cup of coffee in each hand, and he catches me by the elbow.
“You will love this gift, Skyla. But you and Ms. Bishop must
both
be present for me to gift it properly.” He snaps a piece of pie off the counter and an additional one, for my mother no doubt.
Mia and Melissa help pass out dessert while I take a seat at the bar with Marshall and Logan. Gage has been quiet, standoffish, all night.
Mom flicks her wrist into the crowd. “Did you know the Gas Lab can’t pay its rent this month?” She opts to air out our dirty financial laundry in an effort to enliven the conversation.
“And this shocks her because?” I whisper. I’m betting it won’t be able to pay its rent next month either until they run Ethan and his flatulence all the way off the island. Why would she spend my money on something so ludicrous? On second thought, I doubt I’d want her to answer that.
Brielle comes sailing up with her lips pressed white. “They’re going to do it!”
“Who’s going to do what?” There are so many possibilities it boggles the mind.
“All right.” Drake waves a hand in the air, the other one wrapped snug around Em’s ever-thickening waist. She’s got that I-can-kill-everyone-in-this-room look in her eye, and knowing Em she really could take us all if she wanted. “My girl here and me have something to say.”
Crap. I’m sure Tad wants his son to follow in his footsteps, but not quite this literally—not when it entails diapers and breast milk that will run him into the thousands.
“My old lady and me are gonna hatch a chick by graduation. Dig it?” Drake flings his arms behind his neck like he’s flashing some gang signal. An oafish grin settles on his face as the room falls silent.
It would have been much clearer if he drew out whatever the hell he was trying to say in hieroglyphics across the expanse of the living room wall.
Mom blinks into the two of them. “You’re going to raise chickens? That’s fantastic!”
“Oh, hon!” Darla claps up a storm. “Do it in my backyard. Nothing tastes better in the morning than getting something ‘fresh laid’ inside of me with a strip o’ bacon on top.”
I hold back the nervous laugh ready to bubble from my throat. God knows Darla can make breakfast sound like a dirty sexual encounter that somehow involves bacon. I shoot a glance to Gage. For some strange reason, bacon plus sex has always equaled Gage Oliver to me. He looks over at me, and my insides light up like a flare.
“Is this like 4-H?” Mom touches her hand to her chest. “I used to love 4-H! We had an entire petting zoo by the time I was through.” She chortles into her coffee.
Oh, they’ll have a petting zoo all right, one brimming with unsupervised children that no one with any hygienic desire will ever want to lay their hands on. Only it won’t be in Darla’s backyard. And instead of a
pigpen,
there will be a
playpen
right here, smack in Mom and Tad’s living room. I can see it now, an entire exhibit of screaming babies in caskets. Social services is going to have a field day when they discover what 4-H stands for in this house—hooking up, horny, home run, and half-witted.
“No, no,” Drake raises his voice in annoyance. “A
kid
. She’s squeezing out a kid at prom like Brielle did last year.”
Well, at least he hasn’t forgotten about Brielle entirely.
Bree’s cheeks grow a severe shade of pink, and, for a minute, I think she’s going to cry or shove the entire leftover pie up Drake’s nose. I would so help her do that.
Tad sprays his coffee in the vicinity, pegging Isis in the double D decollete. He’s quick to pick up his napkin and dab her bouncy porcelain skin until she’s giggled herself into a Tadgasm.
Gah!
Note to self: scour brain out with icepick for even thinking such things, let alone witnessing them.
“A human baby?” Mom asks, unbelieving that Drake would have the gall to utilize his weapon of mass insemination upon the world and so soon after the last misguided missile.
I have a feeling Drake is just at the starting line of the baby mamas he’ll amass in a lifetime.
Tad gags. “What kind of job are you going to get to support two kids while hitting the books in college?”
Ethan lets out a whoop of a laugh. “Drake’s not going to college. He’s going to be a pipe layer. He’s just interning right now.”
Suddenly everyone that’s not a Landon has the pressing urge to leave.
I bite down on my thumb and stare at Logan as the guests quickly disband. He goes over and offers Drake and Em a congratulatory hug that looks more sympathetic than joyous. No one will ever congratulate Logan for having a child. My heart breaks for him—it selfishly breaks for me.
Logan Oliver will not stay dead. I won’t let him.
I want Logan. And I’m going to do whatever it takes to have him.
Gage comes up, and I shiver back to reality.
I look from Logan to Gage, and my heart breaks all over again.
The sky above Paragon breaks out into pustules—large black carbuncles that beg the hand of God to lacerate them, so they can rain down their fury like an infection, covering us with the disease of heartbreak like it already has a thousand times before.
A week sifts by, and I’m no closer to saving Marshall or Logan, and yet, ironically, the only one I feel I’m truly losing is Gage.
I lie on the grassy field of West long after practice is over and give Cerberus the stink eye as he appears and disappears between the cotton stretched fog. I’m really sick of cheer. Every muscle in my body aches, and for what? The only thing we’ve left to practice for is tomorrow night’s senior rally.
The football team catches my eye in the distance. They’re just finishing up a sprint around campus with an entire train of lean, mean legs traversing their way into the boys’ gym. I spot Logan and Gage holding up the rear, the blond Adonis and the dark-haired knight. The world spins haphazardly as I track them into the open mouth of the gym. It swallows them whole without reservation, sort of the way death swallowed Logan.
A hard kick to my shin startles me to attention.
Chloe drops my backpack next to me and gives another kick to my shoe.
“Get the hell up. It’s time to pay my supervising spirit a little visit.”
***
Chloe insists I drive, so I do.
The sky shakes out its wrath on us by the time we hit the Paragon Estates. It looks sexual, erotic as it gushes over us in bursts. A thin violet bruise lies over a silent patch in the sky where the sun is supposed to be.
“I liked you in the beginning,” I volunteer the odd fact as the guard waves the Mustang through. “Of course, I was insanely jealous that you slept with Logan. I wanted to sleep with Logan.” Still do but I keep that part to myself because I want Gage just as bad.
“That’s nice.” She averts her gaze out the window, perturbed as if I were trying to get on her good side in order to get that pendant. “I wanted to like you, too. But I came with too much knowledge, too much premeditated angst and now here we are, one of us ready to die and the other willing to
lie
. I’m sure Gage could write an encyclopedia of poetry on the subject.”
“You sure think a lot about Gage.” I’m not sure I like Chloe accepting the fact she’s going to die. I straighten in my seat. Maybe Chloe’s the liar, and I’m the one who’s going to eat some fresh Paragon soil before midnight? Now that wouldn’t surprise me. Maybe that’s how Logan and I will live to a ripe old age—on the
other
side.
“Gage is worthy of my thoughts.” She closes her eyes a moment, and her beauty magnifies tenfold. In any universe, on any planet Chloe could have whoever the hell she wanted, but not Gage—he swore himself to me. My stomach pinches with grief as I revert my focus back to the road.
I park close to the stairs that lead to Demetri’s haunted estate and pluck a jacket from the backseat to use as shelter as I run up to the door.
Chloe lets us in without knocking, and I half expect her to belt out,
Honey I’m home.
A swarm of male voices emit from the palatial sitting room to the right. Our tennis shoes squeak in turn as we head on over to the home of all things gilded.
Marshall glances our way, speaking to the infamous Fem himself. I give a little wave as they finish up their heated tete-a-tete.
“Ladies.” Demetri plasters on a smile. It would have been more convincing if he drew it on with lipstick. “So glad you could make it. Mr. Dudley and I were just finishing up our conversation.”
I so can’t wait until Marshall fills me in on all the dirty deets.
“What’s with the visit?” Marshall pulls back his cheek disapproving of the fact his spirit wife is in enemy territory, no doubt.
“Demetri was kind enough to give me a belated birthday present.” It takes all my willpower not to roll my eyes.
“A gift?” Marshall’s chest expands as he glares over at his nemesis.
“A shared treasure for the girls to enjoy equally.” Demetri squints into his words.
“The two of them?” Marshall is suddenly amused by Demetri’s apparent philanthropic faux pas. “How very clever of you.” His features sharpen. “I look forward to hearing a full report.” He takes a few steps in my direction. “Ms. Messenger, may I see you a moment?”
I dutifully follow Marshall to the door.
“Insane, right?” I whisper. “As if I would share anything with that flea bag.” I shoot Chloe a dirty look.
“I’m sure you’ll hold your own.” He strokes his finger down the side of my face, and my entire body enlivens for Marshall. “Not to be outdone, I’ve a belated gift for you as well.” And with that he evaporates to nothing.
Huh. I’m not sure I should be so enthralled by the idea of both a Sector and a Fem gifting me with anything at all let alone, on this, the very same day.
“Shall we?” Demetri leads us up the opulent marbled staircase and onto the second floor, which expands in girth with creamy limestone flooring, the walls covered in the same dull vanilla. It’s as if the Acropolis had vomited, and out came Demetri’s house.
“This way.” He holds out a hand and Chloe enters the arched doorway that leads to the decapitation station of all things Fem.
“No way, I hate that room.”
He presses out a dissatisfied frown, and, for the first time, I think I managed to invoke some sort of emotion out of him.
“I promise”—his lips twitch unnaturally over his face—“this bids you well.”
“Are you trying to help me?” I say it so low I’m not sure he heard.
His black eyes meet with mine, and he holds my gaze hostage for a solid minute.
“We’ll see.” He nods into the room.
I step in gingerly as though each footstep has the power to crack one of the massive stones beneath my feet.
A complete row of mounted creatures span the periphery of the colossal viewing room—the severed heads of beasts, of hideous creatures, the bears, the lions with their mouths locked in a silent roar. I spin around taking it all in and jump when I see the one just above the entry, the one I had just a moment ago walked beneath so freely.
“Shit!” I jump next to Chloe as if she wouldn’t voluntarily feed me to the thing.
High up above the door, the head of a clown stares back at me with his tuft of deep fried orange hair, his pasty face, its nose more like a snout, and the sharpened knives jetting from his opened mouth.
“You’ve gone too far.” It trembles from my lips. Barron and those weird clowns he thinks of, the one he keeps around in his car bounces through my mind.
Demetri yanks a tablecloth off a round table and flings it toward the horrific anomaly, covering it perfectly. The fabric pulsates in and out as if it were breathing and forces me to look away.
“What the hell do you want?” I’m ready to get out of Dodge. I can’t stand to be here with either Demetri or Chloe who amount to nothing more than demonic clowns themselves.
“This is for you.” He walks over to the shelves lining the walls and plucks one of the haunted trinkets from off the shelf. He presents us with a long-handled mirror, ornate and gilded like everything else in this tacky slaughterhouse.