“Three thirty?” Three thirty-three to be exact. Shit!
“That’s right,” Tad booms. “Imagine our surprise when the Paragon PD alerted us to the fact a serial killer added himself to the guest list of some wild party taking place at our home!”
“Oh dear.” Marshall escorts us out. “Don’t worry about the little one. He’ll be safe with me.”
“I really appreciate this.” Mom touches her chest. “I owe you something big. Oh, by the way, how did you like those invitations I had made for the party?”
“They’re perfect. In fact, if you’re available, I’m in need of a woman’s touch. I’m thinking masquerade ball.”
“That’s fantastic! Consider it done. Oh, I could think of a thousand ideas! We’ll get those little glittery masks from the party store, and paper top hats and streamers. We can have Tad dress up like a jester and have a piñata. It’s going to be wonderful.”
“Sounds thrilling.” Paper hats? Marshall looks over at me with disdain. Glitter? The sacrifices I make to please you are beyond reason and apparently far beyond the borders of good taste.
I reach over and grab a hold of his arm.
Where’s Michelle?
I assume at the station with the rest of the rebel rousers who were in attendance at the slice and slaughter. Do check on her incisions. I’d hate to see infection set in.
“Skyla,” Tad barks with the charm of a drill sergeant. I head over and jump into the minivan between Logan and Gage.
My bandaged wrist catches my attention and I suck in a breath.
Its back—Marshall saved my hand.
I glance up at Logan and Gage and give a weak smile. I’d rather hack off both my hands and feet than live life without one of them in it.
Then again. I’ll be gone in a month—so what does it even matter?
***
A crowd of bodies ten deep stand outside the Paragon police department awaiting instruction. Every teen on the island and at least one of their parental units sways in the fog as the crowd slowly migrates to an outdoor amphitheater under a bed of cleverly hidden stars.
Demetri strides up, confident and cocky. He’s decked out in a long black trench coat with a fedora slightly adjusted over one eye, looking very Dick Tracy minus the Tracy.
“Lizbeth.” He shakes his head as if he were apologizing for disrupting her vacation, like he didn’t relish interrupting the rut-fest that was probably taking place and in front of an infant no less. “We’re ready to question people who were inside the house at the time of the incident. If you would all follow me.”
He leads us into the warm station, lit up with an over-bright peachy glow.
Gage takes my hand. Don’t offer any information.
Logan takes my other hand. Don’t mention the knife.
I look down at our conjoined hands. That threesome dream runs through my mind in jags and an uncomfortable smile wavers on my lips.
Skyla? Logan rattles my hand with a look of horror.
“Oh, sorry.” I shake the image out of my head like an Etch a Sketch.
Just crap.
Demetri leads us into a conference room with a group of parents lining the back wall.
Carly Foster and her sidekick Carson sit on the end of the long plastic table. Emily, Nat, Lexy, and Chloe are on one side and Brielle, Drake, and Ethan on the other. You don’t need to understand quantum physics to know this isn’t going to end well. Conveniently Pierce—Holden, whoever the hell he is today, is mysteriously missing. Funny how he brilliantly evades the law when he, himself, is supposed to be incarcerated. Must be nice to have Counts in high places, unless, of course, you’re me.
I take a seat next to Brielle, and Chloe swiftly moves in on the other side, presumably to have some touchy feely conversation at my expense.
Chloe picks up my hand under the table just as I surmised.
You’re going to pay for everything, Skyla. I’m going to eradicate you before the Counts ever have the chance. You’ll be sorry you ever thought it was a good idea to chop my head off. Her entire person sparkles with revenge. A head for a head, she says, glancing over my shoulder at Logan and Gage. Or two, or three.
Chapter 81
Head Trip
I huff a laugh at Chloe’s threat of mass decapitation. I can totally picture her running around the island like some lunatic with an ax. The visual I had of her burying some poor unsuspecting person’s cranium in the woods behind the Landon house comes back to me and I sink a little in my seat. She was traveling from the future, and well, the future could very well be now.
Demetri drones on over policy and procedure, while the ‘rents shake like a row of dogs at the pound on day seven. The police station isn’t the place any of us want to be at this ungodly hour. This is what happens when Ethan Landon and Chloe Bishop put in a collaborative effort to entertain the teen population of Paragon. Somehow, I should’ve figured that mythological creatures and murder would be high on the agenda.
I pluck my fingers loose from Chloe’s death grip. While we’re here I should press charges against her for being such a round-the-clock asshole and getting me into this debacle in the first place.
I lean into Brielle. “You have any insta-puke?” I whisper, eyeing the diet soda in front of her.
She reaches into her purse and gives a mischievous grin. She pulls the soda under the table and drains the magical foil packet into it. Brielle sets the can in front of me, glances at Chloe and smiles.
Chloe is way too astute to drink anything I offer. I’ll have to down the sinister syrup myself. I have a spectacular show planned in the event the bumbling detective’s line of questioning starts to grate on my nerves. Plan B is theatrical in nature, even if it is comprised mostly of regurgitating my dinner for divisive purposes.
Demetri rises like an onyx sphinx, his eyes nothing more than marbles full of smoke. “I gather you’ve all heard bits and pieces of what may have occurred at the Landon residence this evening.” He takes a seat about two feet away, then scoots in close to the projectile fun zone. I might actually get a twofer out of this and nothing pleases me more. “I suggest we go down the line and see if we can piece together what developed. Again, just to recap for those of you who aren’t privy, although there was blood at the scene, no body was recovered. There’s a manhunt underway in the woods for any kind of weaponry or God forbid, victim. We’ve received several calls of a vagrant roaming the area, an older woman, red hair.” Demetri looks down at me and casts the hint of a smile.
Hey, maybe I can pass this whole thing off on Ezrina?
“Vagrant?” Lexy coughs the word out while gawking at me. “Your perpetrator is sitting right here.”
Or not.
“Let’s not jump the gun.” Demetri tempers his words with those laughing eyes, always mocking, always believing he has the upper hand, which he totally freaking does.
Tad and Mom move into my line of vision and gape at me with matching bug-eyed expressions.
“Start from the beginning,” Demetri coaxes Lexy. “You arrived at the gathering.”
“I went with friends.” She shrugs. Her dark copper hair frames her chin and accentuates her bronzed cheekbones. “We walked in the door and Ethan was selling rubbers.” She says it sharp as if to alert the lot of us she’s not opposed to throwing anyone under the bus.
“What?” Tad gasps as if Ethan’s head just morphed into a snake. I don’t really mind watching Ethan writhe under the scrutiny of the truth, not that he even flinched. Instead, he’s adopted a smug expression that annunciates the fact he’s accepting of the title “promoter of the promiscuous.”
“They were glow in the dark, and he charged two dollars a pop.” Lexy continues in detail as if she were under the influence of a truth serum she accidentally ingested. “It turns out Skyla and her brothers spiked the lemonade they were serving, and then things got really weird.”
“For the record”—I lean in to give Lex a hard look—“I didn’t have anything to d
o with the condoms or the questionable refreshments.”
“Oh yeah?” She scoffs. “Then why did I see both Logan and Gage waving their condoms at you at the very same time? By the way, I find it sickening the way the three of you flaunt your fuck-fest in everyone’s face. It’s not natural.”
Oh God. She just said fuck-fest in reference to Logan, Gage, and me in the presence of Mom and Tad.
I doubt I’ll need the ipecac to vomit.
“That’s not true,” Gage says it deliberately loud, like he might be a tiny bit guilty. “I’m the one in a relationship with Skyla. Logan was just goofing off.” He looks over to his blond cousin. “Right?”
I suck in a sharp breath. Mom is so going to think I’m getting it on with Gage and his “condoms.” I shoot him a look.
Logan leans back in his chair and doesn’t say a word.
Mom covers her mouth while Tad tosses his hands in surrender.
Why do I get the feeling my ménage à trois nocturnal musing is playing out in real time right now in everybody’s imagination? Freaking Lexy Bakova. I should slaughter her just for sport—toss her head off Devil’s Peak and she could tattle all day long to the fish at the bottom of the sea as they gnaw off her flesh.
Lexy sneers into me. “You were also in charge of entertaining us by making body parts disappear.” She continues her quest to initiate my homicidal fantasies.
That bitch.
“After the lemonade.” Demetri verifies before motioning for another volunteer to continue. Emily raises her hand.
Thank God. Em is like way more level-headed than Lex. Lexy practically has an all-out vendetta against me because her twisted mind is under the impression that I stole Logan out from under her.
Em shifts in her seat. “We were in the backyard because a bunch of kids kept puking inside—”
“What?” Tad grips his hair at the temples and stagers a moment like he might pass out. I take it eau de vomit isn’t his preferred bouquet.
“It was dark out.” Emily gazes off into space. “A group of girls started screaming and this thing came out of the woods. It was like the size of a bear and had five heads.”
A choir of voices breaks out in an effort to correct her. A sheep with ten dicks, an overgrown rabbit with antlers all become viable options.
“It was dog.” Drake interrupts with a boom. “It was the same dog that West uses as its mascot. It had three fucking heads.”
The room quiets down to nothing.
Who knew Drake had the ability to maintain lucid?
I watch as Tad buries his face in his hands, and for a minute I think he’s laughing, but I gather weeping is a workable possibility.
“A three-headed dog?” Demetri leans in, amused at the idea as if he didn’t secretly have one of his own. “Someone else, please take over from the—three-headed dog.” He wrings all the sarcastic inflection he can out of the situation. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he were steering this conversation, making it all seem totally laughable, out of bounds from reality—which will totally come in handy when they get to the part about me.
“I’ll go.” Nat slices me with a look that says eat shit and die. “We all ran up to Messenger’s room, well, Chloe’s room—whatever—we were going to have a sleepover so our stuff was there.” She clears her throat. “Then we hear this thunder coming up the stairs and Michelle got up and started to tell us to get in the closet—that’s when the door opened and Skyla whacked her head off in one clean slice. It was right out of a horror movie.” She cuts me a hard look. “So fucking gross.”
The room erupts in a murmur.
“The body just stood there.” Nat clutches at her throat. “Her arms were reaching out like some freaking zombie then she collapsed.”
“What happen after that?” Demetri asks with a solemn expression.
Nat pulls a bleak smile. “Gage picked up the body, handed Skyla the head and they both disappeared.”
“They ran off with the deceased?” Demetri doesn’t waver his serious stance.
“No.” Nat shakes her head and sinks in her seat. “They just evaporated right there in front of our eyes.”
A nervous titer of laughter ignites from the peanut gallery. Glad to know I can provide a little comedic relief to the parental units lined up against the wall since they’ve been crapping their pants as if they expect a firing squad.
I glance over at Logan and Gage. Nat obviously isn’t in the know about Levatio and their magician-like capabilities.
An officer comes in and hands the dork detective a sheet of paper. Demetri nods as he pretends to read the report.
“Just as I suspected,” Demetri sighs. “The lemonade was tainted with a powerful hallucinogenic. I’m afraid shared hallucinations are common in these kinds of cases.”
“What about the blood?” Chloe sits up ready to kick the take-down-Skyla show into high gear. “We all know Skyla has killed before.” She glances past me at my mother. “Accidentally, of course. And it’s no secret she’s been locked up in a mental hospital. We all know she’s done terrifying things to people ever since she’s been here. The entire cheer squad is afraid of her.”
“I’m not.” Brielle is quick to interject.
“Skyla?” Demetri states my name like a question. “Anything you’d like to say to for yourself?”
“Yes.” I look down at my wrist still heavily wrapped in gauze. “I thought I might need to defend myself from that three-headed monster, so I grabbed a knife out of the kitchen and went upstairs to join my friends. I wanted to hide in my room and I accidentally cut myself.” I hold up exhibit A. Who knew Ezrina’s act of terror would come in handy? No pun intended. “You’re right, the lemonade must have been tainted. It was probably just a wild dog that strayed into the yard. You’re a brilliant detective, Mr. Edinger.” I so enjoy placating Demetri. I bet I jumped up a few rungs on the approval ladder with my mother as well.
“Case closed folks.” Demetri sets down the papers in front of me and they’re noticeably blank—findings my ass.
Just as the room starts to come to life, Michelle Miller walks through the door wearing a thick-cabled scarf with her frazzled mother by her side.
“There she is!” Lexy shouts.
Nat and Em look like they might actually pass out at the sight of her.
“Take off the scarf,” Nat pleads. “Show them what Skyla did to you!”
Crap.
I pick up the soda in an effort to create a distraction and down the entire can without stopping.
A hot burst explodes in my stomach as Michelle reveals her unblemished neck and my mother sighs with relief as though I had just escaped the guillotine myself.
In hindsight, it might have been a bit rash to digest the toxin-laced beverage. In hindsight, I hadn’t really thought of how excruciatingly embarrassing it might be to puke my brains out in a room full of friends and relations.
A loud, rather unattractive belch, that could quite possibly be heard fifty miles out at sea, expels from my digestive tract. In addition to warning ships of false danger, I’m pretty sure I’ve managed to freeze the muscles of every living creature on the island.
Not one to waste a good vat of boiling vomit I turn my head and do my best impression of a girl possessed, projecting my insides all over Chloe Bishop’s hair and chest.
She jumps out of her chair, on fire with screams, and runs retching from the room.
I continue the marathon upchuck spree for the next several minutes. It’s not until Mom mops me up with a burp cloth, that she just so happens to keep handy for such occasions, do I even notice I managed to spread a little regurgitated love in Demetri’s direction as well.
Looks like I got my twofer after all.
Chapter 82
The Sector and the Snake
Summer melts like butter on an L.A. sidewalk. I watch the fog parade outside my bedroom window as afternoon gives birth to evening, its twin in light and shadow. I remember summer days back in California
when my father was alive and the sun would puddle in the ocean in a vivid display of tangerine and magenta. The bright red sky was alive with a pallet of amber and crimson, married with that lustrous shade of Hollywood gold we bathed in right before dusk.
On Paragon the world obeys one master, the grey dense fog and his damp cool presence. Only one climate exists here. The landscape is subdued with lamp-lit shades that the forever-dull sky allotted. It’s just one long monotonous pull with the exception of night. Paragon glows in the midnight hour like a lantern filled with oil. She is forever the virgin awaiting her groom. The evergreens shake out their branches and dance in the breeze. The ocean explodes with passion over its shores like a love story—its erotic poetry is written in the breeze.
It’s been a week and a half since what is referred to as “the shared hallucination” at the Landon house. Demetri employed his black magic elves to clean up the disaster and restored the tiny house back to its former indelicate glory, save for removing the scent of vomit from the carpet. The stench is not a far stretch from Mom’s cooking so we’re pretty much all used to it.
The faint sound of a man’s laughter echoes through my bedroom wall. Tonight Mom is playing matchmaker for Marshall. It’s her way of thanking him for pinch-hitting baby duty while she watched her oldest get accused of an outrageously gruesome beheading.
I trot downstairs to the kitchen and find Marshall whiffing out of the expensive cast iron cauldron Demetri gifted my mother with. The aforementioned Fem is intent on buying my mother’s affections through pricy culinary devices these days. I would cheer him on if the quality of the meals increased to at least a palatable degree, but no such miracle has transpired.
Demetri seems to be a friend with benefits in more ways than one. Ever since the night of the vomit-rama, he’s been sending a steady stream of cash and prizes to the Landon household and his generosity doesn’t stop at cookware. There has also been a steadfast deluge of the latest and greatest baby contraptions that Beau isn’t old enough to appreciate yet, like rockets he can bounce in and play yards as big as the living room. He even sent a gift certificate for the local grocery store because all the food in refrigerator was destroyed when it accidentally got left open on the night of Ethan’s brothel fiasco. That well thought out maneuver managed to wipe Demetri clear off Tad’s shit list in the process. Hell, by the looks of things, Tad might even offer him a free pass with my mother if the exchange rate is right.