Page 66 of Capitol Matters

“It appears I was right to put my faith in you,” Maximus said at length.

I gazed wearily at him.

“I’ll leave you to it from here on out,” he continued. “No need to bring any more… surprises to my doorstep.” With a rumbling laugh, he slapped my back again.

Leaving me to it apparently meant leaving me immediately. Maximus made a hasty retreat up the path to the porch then disappeared into the stately house. The double doors closed and latched, audible even from where I stood.

I waited several seconds without moving, but I couldn’t stand on Maximus Lyle’s front lawn forever. Donovan would be wanting his car back, and I needed to empty it first.

Did I have contacts? Ones who would help me deal with this? Not Ripley. He would run crying to Grimm, and I could imagine the earful Grimm would have forme about my inability to pull off what should have been a simple job.

I did know an alchemist with access to acid and the knowledge of how to dissolve a body. Failing that, Nash also lived on the edge of a bluff, where a corpse could be weighted then dropped into the depths of the ocean.

I climbed into the car, then adjusted the rearview for a glimpse of Sleeping Beauty’s legitimately lifeless form. Ruined was the word Holland used. An apt description of my plans. My life. Me. It should have hurt, but instead it made me feel hollow. Maybe that was the point.

Despite the Bitters’ Endbeing closed due to the plague, Nash hadn’t given up his vigilant security measures. I knew that because, after sitting in the parking lot for fifteen minutes blasting the AC onto my face in the hopes of freezing the tears that threatened to fall, the alchemist peeked out the front door.

Nash shouted something I couldn’t discern as he slowly approached the Bronco. His concern reminded me of myself when I arrived to save Donovan from his storage unit meltdown. It was too similar, and I was on the wrong side of it. Cursing, I killed the engine and threw the door open, stepping down onto the gravel lot.

I sniffled at the salty air, then wiped my nose as I made my way to the tail end of the SUV. I didn’t want to see the body again, but the sob lodged in my throat wouldn’t allow me to explain any other way.

Nash waited, similarly silent, while I flung open the hatch. I stood aside with one arm hugged across my chestand my other hand pressed against my mouth.

This was absurd. It was ridiculous to let these feelings steamroll me into the ground. It was like being fifteen again, when murder was a novel thing, and every crime felt like a knife stabbing into my gut.

I’d grown thicker skin since then, so the blows no longer penetrated me. Usually. But somehow this—or maybe it started with Yankee Doodle’s frosty corpse—had broken through my defenses.

In the Bronco’s back end, Sleeping Beauty lay face down, having shifted in transit. Her arms were spread, and her head was cocked to one side with her eyes as open as they’d been when she screamed. Before I silenced her for good.

Nash took the woman’s wrist and checked for a pulse.

I didn’t bother to stop him.

After a few seconds, he set her arm down, then looked over at me while I fixed my attention on the grit underfoot.

“I thought Grimm and Donnie were taking precautions so this didn’t happen again,” he said.

Given the unnatural slant of Sleeping Beauty’s broken neck, it was little wonder he assumed another suicide.

“That’s the rumor,” I replied, swallowing past the lump still lodged in my throat. “But no. This was all me.”

He arched a bushy brow, and I prayed he wouldn’t ask any questions because explaining the nonstop trainwreck that was today—or the past week, for that matter—would open floodgates I was barely keepingclosed.

To his credit, he didn’t press, and left me to fill the void by explaining, “Grimm can’t know about it, so I’ve gotta get rid of her.”

Nodding, Nash motioned toward the bar building. “Come inside.”

We closed up the Bronco, and he led the way through the entry and up the spiral staircase. We passed his bedroom and stopped at the end of the upper hall, where a door stood shut and locked. The mechanism securing this entry was elaborate, with bolts and bars that slid into place as the alchemist fiddled with a half dozen knobs and levers.

I waited like a child told not to peek until he pushed the door open and ushered me inside.

The laboratory rivaled only the bar area in size. It was longer than wide, with windows sheeted over on the far wall. Three tables divided the center of the room, one after the other as though laid out for chemistry class students. Wall racks held potion bottles both empty and full, sandwiched between overflowing bookcases. There was a certain whimsy here, controlled chaos with Bunsen burners lit and miscellaneous concoctions throwing smoke or bubbles into the air.

Nash moved ahead of me to open a tall cabinet and begin rifling through it. Neither of us had spoken since we left the parking lot. In that time, my melancholy mood had been replaced by an emotion I was more comfortable with: anger.

“I don’t know why I put up with this shit,” I grumbled.

Bottles clinked and paper swished as Nash rearranged the contents of the cabinet. “Because you’re a masochist,” he said.

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