Page 77 of Tested
We hit the quiet streets of Montebello. “Smith said he’d go talk to Janet Edmond’s boyfriend and see if he knows what she wanted to tell us.” Connor says. “We just need to see if the elder DelMarcos remember her in any way.”
“If there are rumors floating around, I wonder if Stone or Lydia might have heard them.” I fish out my phone, looking for an errant text. “Lydia did promise she’d let me know.”
“I have a couple contacts out there too, and they’re not pinging.”
We pull to a stop in front of the DelMarco house. The porch light is burning, but the rest of the windows are dark. “You talked to Mr. DelMarco?” I ask doubtfully. “The place looks shut down for the night. I know it’s late, but they wouldn’t have gone to bed before we got here.”
“Yeah.” Connor reaches into his jacket and brings out his handgun. “Come on.”
Not at all sure I want to see any more dead bodies, I follow him out of the car. The front walkway is lined with the kind of low lights that run on solar power. Things are still, quiet; too still and too quiet for me. We reach the door and Connor raises his hand to knock.
The door swings open before he hits it and the younger DelMarco, Joey, stands there staring at us. “Shh.” He holds a finger to his lips, his face very pale and his eyes gold with a horizontal black line down the center.
Snake eyes.
“Mom and Dad went to bed already, but I’m happy to answer your questions.”
He didn’t look happy. He looked creepy af, and I say that as someone who can run on four paws when he wants to.
“Should we stay outside?” Connor asks. He’s hiding the gun behind his back.
“Probably.”
We stand aside and he leads us down the walkway in the direction of the Taurus. Connor holsters the gun and I hope we don’t live to regret that decision. When we get to the sidewalk, Joey stops. “Now what did you all want to talk about?”
“You’d be what, seven years younger than Donna?”
Connor takes the lead in questions and I stand there sniffing things. Snakes smell weird.
“Fourteen, actually.”
I can’t look at Joey’s eyes for more than a couple seconds at a time because when I do, it’s like he wants to hypnotize me and freeze me in place.
Connor’s either not bothered by him or too focused to notice. “So you probably don’t remember her very well.”
His answering laugh is equal parts pathos and frustration. “There’s a shrine in our living room. I might not have physical memories, but my spirit knows her well.”
Huh. File that bit away for future reference.
“You ever hear of someone named Janet Edmonds?”
A shiver passes through Joey’s body, as if he’s fighting the impulse to shift. “Yes, the evil elf bitch. She hated Donna, even years after my sister was gone.”
“She’s dead.” Connor speaks somberly and Joey gives off a burst of pheromones. I narrow my gaze, trying to tease out the threads of exultation and fear and…something else.
“Good,” Joey says, and I realize that whatever else I’m sensing from Joey DelMarco, surprise hasn’t made the list.
I’d intended to let Connor do the talking but can’t keep my big mouth shut. “Who killed her?”
Joey turns his snakes eyes on me and I wish to hell I’d stayed quiet. “I’m not sure,” he says, and his tongue flicks out like David Tennant playing Barty Crouch.
Yeah, he’s lying.
“Seems odd that Donna’s best friends and her worst enemy are all dead.” Connor speaks slowly, as if he’s tying the ideas together as he goes. “Can you tell us more about how Donna died?”
Another burst of pheromones, this time anger, no, rage.
“She and her supposed friends were down at the Santa Monica pier. They’d been partying there all day, and to hear Adaline tell it, Donna took some pills that she thought were quaaludes but they weren’t. Donna wanted to fly, they said, and went running off the pier.” He stops, his eyes closed, jaw tight.
“You two know nothing of biscione, do you?” He glares at us, his eyes even less human. “When you can only breed every seven years, every life is critical. Those girls let my sister drown. None of them tried to save her. There were no lifeguards. They didn’t even call for help.”
Another shiver shuts him up and for a flash, his skin shows the mottled gold and green markings of a snake’s skin.
“So why now?” Connor asks. “Why did you wait forty years to kill them?”
Joey laughs, a caustic, bitter sound. “You really do know nothing about biscione. We cannot kill. Never. Even when it means somebody gets away with murder.”
