Page 82 of Twice as Twisted

But it wouldn’t be like that. In every shot, if you panned over, you would find my brother watching. Baron, lifting his glass to toast with us, clinking his glass against ours. Baron, watching from the balcony when we looked up from playing in the water. Baron, wiping the smile from her face when she remembered that he was above such things, and therefore, she should be too.

“This isn’t your home,” I say flatly. “Your home is in Tennessee.”

“I stay here in the summer.”

“You did,” I correct her, grabbing her arm and dragging her up. “Now, you stay with us. I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, if you’re trying to make me look bad. But I’ve had a hard fucking night, so just cooperate for once and don’t make it harder on me if you ever want to see your cat again.”

“You’re hurting me,” she protests, prying at my fingers.

I loosen my grip. “Sorry. Can we just go home? I really need you to take it easy on me this one time. Can you do that for me, and for little Seeley Boots? Please, baby?”

I give her my most beguiling smile, and her shoulders sag. “Okay.”

“Thank you,” I say, pulling her in and pressing my lips to her forehead before tilting her chin up. “Now go out and wait in the car. Your feet must hurt from walking all the way here. I’ll get you all your favorite things at the store on the way home. What do you say, little fairy?”

“What are you going to do?” she asks, her gaze searching mine as she stares up at me.

“I’m going to make sure you don’t have anywhere to run next time you get that crazy idea in your pretty little head.”

After a long moment, she steps back. When the door closes behind her, I wander through the kitchen, the living room, bottle of vodka in hand. I close the drapes, then light a candle and sit before it, watching the flame dance.

I remember touching the blue-hot bullet of flame from the blowtorch to Colt’s arm, watching his skin bubble and peel and smoke. My demon cackling while I turned it, so it wouldn’t bore too deep, cook his flesh. Letting the flame shoot up the inside of his arm, where his veins bulged in the flexing muscle, until he screamed. Mabel screamed too—a lot.

The flame begins to lick the edge of the fabric curtain, and eventually, to climb. I tip my head back to drink and then just to watch it, a sense of awe settling heavy in my limbs, washing over me with pure, childlike wonder.

This is the fire I love. Not the one that hurt Colt. I would never have done that if my brothers hadn’t come up with the idea. They handed me the torch because they knew I loved fire, forgetting that I don’t love pain. Not like they do, anyway. That wasn’t what I wanted to do, but what choice did I have? I made the burns as shallow as possible. He should see that, forgive me for it.

The flames bend and lick when they reach the ceiling, as if trying to find a way out. I like to watch fire spread, watch it move. It’s so alive.

I remember lighting Devlin’s house with Mabel, how we danced on the lawn in the firelight, our shadows looming and ghoulish. I remember how she laughed when I spun her around, how she fought when I pulled her down in my lap.

Gasoline isn’t the only way to light a fire, though it’s the most fun. I could throw the last of the vodka on it, but it doesn’t need help. It’s breathing now, blooming, eating.

Feasting.

I remember sitting outside the mall and watching it burn, knowing Dad was in there, that he was burning to death. I would have stopped it if I could, but it was too late. Not just because the fire paralyzed me, but because the rest of the group wouldn’t have let me. I knew some of them had hesitations too, but you had to go with the group or risk being cast into the fire too. That’s how herd mentality works.

It was something we did together, a horrible thing that bound us, like all horrible things, like the day Dad brought home the two girls from our school, or the Wednesday nights at church with Dad and the priest and that boy. Is that how Mabel felt, a helpless witness to her brother’s torment? Is that what changed her?

“Duke!”

I look up, and Mabel is standing there, a waifish figure in the smoke, ethereal and ghostly as her memory that haunted me for the past two years.

“What the hell?” she demands, waving a hand in front of her face.

The smoke billows and swirls.

She bends, coughing, and races toward me. Grabbing my arm, she drags at it with more force than I’ve ever felt her use.The empty vodka bottle tumbles from my hand to the floor, rolling away and disappearing into the vapors, swallowed up like the curtains and the wall.

“What are you doing?” Mabel demands, her voice a mixture of fury and panic. “We have to get out of here before the ceiling caves. Get up!”

I look around, startled, and see that she’s right. The fire spread further than I realized while I was watching it, lost in thought and admiration.

I scramble around, then start coughing and end up on my hands and knees. Mabel joins me, her shirt pulled up over her face, and together we crawl for the door. The next room is hardly smoky, though billowing clouds are churning into that room too. We stand anyway, holding our shirts over our mouth and nose, and run for the front door. When we’re outside, we both devolve into coughing fits, tears running down our cheeks.

When we’ve recovered, we climb into the car and back out of the drive.

“Were youtryingto get yourself killed?” Mabel asks, sounding furious as she smacks my arm.

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