Page 16 of Darling Beasts

“This is a man who buys infected laptops for over a million dollars—” Talia stopped to clock Gabby’s expression. Her eyebrows inched ever so slightly higher. “Are you familiar withThe Bestiary of Chaos?”

“Um, I’m not sure?” Gabby said, her voice cracking. “We haven’t seen much of each other lately.”

“It’s ‘art.’ Apparently.”

“Huh. Fun.” Gabby polished off the rest of her coffee, which must’ve tasted like sludge. “I should get back to the yurt. Busy day ahead.”

Talia studied her sister. She’d struck a nerve with the Ozzie thing, but there was no point in pressing for more because Gabby rarely let anyone scratch below the surface. Maybe Ozzie on occasion, but never Talia.

Sighing, Talia slid off her stool. “Well, that was a bust.” She forced a laugh. On the drive up, she’d convinced herself that she could use Gabby’s people-pleasing nature against her.Don’t you want Dad to be happy?But Gabby was too clever to fall for it.

“I really thought I’d be able to coax you into taking a sabbatical or something,” Talia said, trying one last time. “A reset. A chance to get your ducks in a row.”

“I don’t need to get anyducksin a row,” Gabby said mysteriously. She grabbed her phone from the counter, and they proceeded to the front of the house. “Sorry you drove all this way for nothing. You’re welcome to stick around. We have some new plays debuting this weekend. One of them is practicing in the barn.”

“Thanks, but I’m allegedly working from home today and should bill a few hours.” Talia reached for the door. “And Ididn’t mind the drive at all. It was oddly liberating. I felt like a suburban kid who just got her license. Windows down, stereo blasting the whole way. Driving is fun. Who knew.” She smiled, pivoted on a heel, and stepped outside.

A small pause.

“What the fuck!” Talia screamed, jumping back.

Gabby peered around her. “Oh. No worries. It’s only a flamingo.” The bird honked.

“Iknowit’s a flamingo,” Talia said, a hand on her chest, heart thundering beneath it. “But it scared the shit out of me. Why is it here, anyway?”

“Oh, um, for a play.”

“Wild,” Talia said. Well, flamingos sounded better than one of last month’s shows, which billed itself to newsletter subscribers as a “true story of fetal cannibalism and male feasting, set to music.” Talia flushed, recalling how she’d somewhat meanly shared the link in a group text with law school friends.Craaaazy...one person wrote after an hour or two of silence. The others did not respond.

“The flamingos don’t attack, do they?” Talia asked. “Like geese?”

“I don’t think so? But you should get on the road in case one of them goes rogue,” Gabby said, pushing Talia toward the driveway. “Where’d you park? Geez, whose car is that? Someone’s grandmother is probably wandering the property again.” She lifted onto her toes, craning as if this was an effective way for a five-foot-nothing person to scan dozens of acres.

Talia walked around to the driver’s side of the silver touring sedan. “The car is mine,” she said. “Well, technically it’s Ozzie’s. When I asked to borrow one, he offered the most expensive car in his fleet, which is how I ended up driving Betty White’s Cadillac Seville, circa 2000.”

Gabby gaped.

“It’s a nice ride. Comes fully equipped with a six-disc CDchanger.” Talia started to get in and then hesitated, squinting against the sun. “Will you think about the California thing?”

“I don’t—” Gabby began, then immediately stopped as the phone lit up in her hand. “Fuck. Why is Ustenya calling me?”

“Probably the same reason she called me. Please tell her I was here and already tried.” Talia slid into the car. “Good luck,” she said, and slammed the door. She pressed Play and threw the car into Drive. I don’t want no scrubblared from the speaker as she drove off.

Chapter Ten

Gabby

Despite my better judgment, I answered Ustenya’s call. You didn’t mess around with someone who, at eleven years old, tried to sell her little brother to a local gang. She claimed it all turned out fine, and everyone found it hilarious, but this story remained the first and last we’d heard of any siblings, so who really knew.

“Hi, Ustenya!” I said, my heart skittering up into my throat. “What a coincidence! Talia just left. She says hello.” A flurry of expletives greeted me, but I caught very little, other than a line about a knife reaching the bone. Plastic surgery gone wrong was my guess, but I wasn’t going to put my life in jeopardy by saying it out loud. “What happened? Did Ozzie do something?”

I hated that Ozzie trouble was the first thing that came to mind, but it was Talia’s fault, because she’d put it there with talks of million-dollar laptops.Talia. It was bizarre she’d shown up on my doorstep, stranger still that she’d known about Ozzie’s new art piece and I hadn’t. A petty quibble, but they were never alone, the two of them, without me.

“This has nothing to do with Oscar!” Ustenya shouted. “You used your father’s credit card to charter a plane. What my dick were you doing?”

I blinked, racking my brain, until one of the flamingossquawked, giving me a hint. Right. Operation Flamboyance. The Pink Feather Sanctuary. “Oh, yeah, sorry,” I said. “It was an emergency.” Although I didn’t love getting berated in multiple languages, it was heartening to learn Dad was paying closer attention to his finances. Maybe he’d grown from the Uncle Doug debacle, after all. I felt proud of him.

“You tell us you’re too busy to work on the campaign, and now you’re flying down to South Beach to party?” Ustenya said.

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