Page 13 of Sick Like Me

But her smiles, those tiny curls of her pout, these secret things that are just for me, it makes my heart hammer inside the cavity of my chest.

My wife.

“His leg,” Ozzie’s sister says, suddenly slapping at my cheeks. “You need to stay awake, get up, you need to get up, I need you to help me with your brother.”

She’s tiny, this tall, slinky, stick of a girl, flushed cheeks and wide eyes, she reminds me so much of her sister even with brown replacing Ostara’s blue.

“Hey!” she says again, making me blink and suck in a sharp breath, my lungs burning with the first real, clean inhale. “Help me, you need to get up.”

Together, we drag Emilius out of the car, his huge, broad, muscular body twenty-stone of dead weight. He groans and heaves for breath, but he says nothing as we keep trying to free him from the mangled vehicle.

“Come on, Em,” I pant, “help us out a little, mate,Jesus Christ.”

My arms shake the entire time. Ozzie’s sister’s cheeks blown out, she huffs and puffs as we each pull on an arm, Emilius’ fingers curled loosely around each of our forearms. Knees bent, we pull steadily, and finally, as sirens blare in the distance, we get him out.

Right trouser leg shredded, the exposed expanse of my brother’s thigh is painted crimson, a deep gash running down the length of it, revealing a sharp white piece of bone sticking out just above his knee.

“Fuck, Em-” I start, but he cuts me off.

Snarling at me through gritted teeth, “Go get your girl,” he orders, “go get her, and bring her home.”

Chest heaving, I stare down at him, Ostara’s sister helping him straighten into sitting. Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I unlock it, dial my youngest brother, and then toss the device to Ozzie’s sister.

“Romulus will answer, tell him to come and get you both.”

Chapter 8

Ostara

All of my life I have been subjected to the darkest parts of the world.

I remember when I was only six years old, my father beheading a man on our dining room table. Zoe was two. She had red splatter across her chin and bib, and she smeared it all through her white-blonde hair with chubby fingers, giggling as she did. Our mother was still here then, and I remember hearing Amelia telling Naomi that night that the man was someone Mother was having an affair with.

When I was ten, I killed a girl.

She was a few years older than me, a friend of Naomi’s. The girl would constantly pull my hair, yanking on it, making my scalp sore, my neck ache. So I put crushed peanuts in a chocolate milkshake, offered it up to her with a striped paper straw and watched her suck them up. She was highly allergic and went into anaphylaxis. I left her fitting on the ground behind the brambles at the rear of the garden. They found her the following day, stiff and very dead.

When my father asked me about it, I said nothing and stared at him, unblinking, unbothered. He smiled, patted me on thehead and told me what a clever girl I was, rewarded me with a lollipop and sent me out to play with Zoe.

As I got older, he had me do more, always poisons, toxins, druggings. I never got my hands dirty, I never had to bludgeon anybody, never had to learn martial arts or self-defence, not like my sisters did. But I liked it, the killing, watching the different concoctions rush through a body, fizzing and frothing and popping. I went too far, killing his favourite chef, just because I wanted to.

Colin Stone told me that day, when I was fourteen years old that I was sick.

‘You’re a sick, sick girl, Ostara, you’re not beyond my control, little girl, and it’s about time I taught you that lesson.’

That was when I was locked up. I didn’t see the sun again until I turned eighteen years old and I was sent to Blackgrave Academy. That night, wandering through the woods my family and the Carnells were at war over, I met Caelus.

And even though it was night, the moon a silver sliver in the sky, stars hiding behind black rain clouds, I saw the sun.

In him.

And now I’m here, naked, strapped to the same metal table I’ve been laid on too many times to count, leather straps locked over my throat, forehead, chest, waist, wrists. Feet spread, knees bent, ankles bound, I am completely and utterly defeated.

“This won’t take long, Miss Stone,” Doctor Butler coos mockingly from between my legs, sending a shiver down my spine.

Goosebumps prick my skin, my nipples peaked from the icy chill of the room. I can hardly keep my eyes open. The thought of Cal being killed, only feet from me, in an explosion set by my father makes me want to die too.

He’s the only one to ever see me, toloveme.

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