Page 62 of Rot

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t get home sooner,” she was busy saying. “I’m so sorry, honey. I’m so…” Elias must’ve told her the gist when he called her, so she knew exactly what dwelled within her house.

After the death this house had seen, she’d probably want to move. Luckily for her, now that the police could investigate my grandmother’s disappearance, I’d inherit a hell of a lot of money, so I’d be able to buy her a new house, if she wanted. Really, it’s the least I could do for her, seeing as how I’d be living with her for the foreseeable future now. I had no one else.

Once the hug was done, the police wanted to question her, so she went off to speak with them. Aunt Maggie had nothing to hide. She had no part of this. She had no idea, of course, that her mother had been missing, seeing as how she’d been estranged from the Karnagy family for years now.

The whole house turned into a crime scene. We weren’t allowed to take anything inside, not until they did what they had to, so we went to a local motel for the night. It was a good thing Elias had moved the arrow to the trunk of his car, where the cops wouldn’t see it. Obviously, both Elias and I skipped school for the rest of the week.

The police came to ask more questions once they investigated my grandmother. They wanted to speak to me, asking me if I knew what my mother had done. I liked to think I played the confused, sad daughter well enough. Emotions were easy enough to portray once you knew what to do with your face.

In the end, my mother’s death was ruled a suicide. They had enough to get a search warrant for the Karnagy mansion. They didn’t find my grandmother’s body or the knife; the ones who were hired to clean it up had done that much. But they did find her bloodied bed, and there was enough blood there to indicate a murder. They pinned my grandmother’s death to my mother, just like I hoped they would.

Everything went swimmingly.

When Elias and I returned to school, news of Jordan’s death was overshadowed by my mother and her crimes. Blackrain was a small town; news traveled fast. Some people might’ve thought I had something to do with it all, but others just felt sorry for me. I could tell by the way they looked at me, as if they pitied me.

And as for Dana… let’s just say she divided her time between being depressed and full of rage. That rage was directed at me, to the girl she swore killed her brother. She didn’t want to believe Jordan had tried to push himself on me, but she managed to hold herself back from going crazy on me.

Still, I walked through the halls of Blackrain High with eyes on the back of my head, just in case she did try something.

I started to sit with Elias during lunch. I figured it didn’t matter if people saw us together anymore. Now it was common knowledge that we were cousins. We both had backgrounds no one would understand, we’d both done things none of our classmates would comprehend. We were different from them, but it didn’t matter.

My eyes surveyed the cafeteria. It seemed quieter than usual, and unless I was mistaken, I swore everyone was looking at us. Me and Elias, the two outcasts of the school. The social pariahs. The daughter of a serial killer and the son who’d survived his father and watched him die.

Beneath the table, Elias’s hand found my knee. We sat side by side. “Let them stare,” he spoke, causing my eyes to turn away from the rest of the tables. His dark gaze was fixated on me, as if I was the only person he saw. “They don’t know anything.”

At that, my lips curled into a smile. I’d never heard anything more true. “You’re right,” I agreed. “They don’t know shit.”

The rest of the school could go fuck themselves. The students, the teachers, every single one of them. They didn’t matter, and they never would. Most people in this world would never know what it was like to stand above the rest.

All that mattered was that Elias and I were together, and nothing in this life would tear us apart.

Epilogue

I could hear my aunt’s voice as I walked down the stairs, “You look so handsome, Elias. Oh, I’m just so glad Sloane convinced you to go to prom. You don’t need a date to have fun!” She and Elias were in the living room, and I could imagine her preening over him like the mother hen she was.

She loved her son, she did, even if she was scared of him at times. It was much more than my mother had ever loved me.

I went down the stairs slowly, holding my head high. I wore strappy heels which made me seem a bit taller than I was, along with a black dress that clung to my body tightly everywhere, then fanned out around my calves. No sleeves, strapless, but there was some padding built into the dress, so I didn’t need to wear a bra.

The dress was paired with a diamond necklace—fake, of course. I might have the Karnagy fortune finally in my bank account, but Aunt Maggie didn’t like to see me waste it. It’s why, despite my offers, she’d refused to sell her house. I did help pay for a remodel of the kitchen and living room though, so at least the rooms felt different.

My blond hair had big, gentle waves. I wore dark red lipstick to match my nails and shoes. All in all, I think I looked pretty good. The real test would be when I turned into the living room and Elias saw me.

I hadn’t shown him the dress. I’d just told him to wear black. A black suit for my black-hearted devil.

My heels clicked on the floor once I was down the steps, and I walked into the living room, seeing Aunt Maggie fretting over Elias’s tie, redoing the knot in it to make it straighter. While she was focused on the tie, Elias’s dark eyes spotted me immediately, and since he could easily see over her head, he let his gaze drop to my feet and slowly rise, taking me in with a sly smirk on his face and a flash of desire in his heated stare.

Let’s just say it was a damned good thing Aunt Maggie still worked crazy hours, because it gave us a lot of time alone with each other.

Keeping it cool while in front of Aunt Maggie was pretty hard, especially on special occasions like this. She finished re-tying his tie, and then she turned to face me, beaming. She swept over to me, a proud smile gracing her face.

“Oh, Sloane. You look so beautiful,” she gushed.

“Thank you,” I said.

“It really is so sweet you two are going with each other,” she went on. “Now, let’s get some pictures.” She pulled out her phone and guided us where she wanted us: in front of the new mantle. “Smile.” She held up her phone, grinning ear to ear.

Elias and I stood side by side, a few inches between us. We gave her an awkward smile, and she took the picture, but then I decided to close the distance between us and lean against his arm, holding onto it in a way that looked sweet and innocent to Aunt Maggie.

---