Page 24 of Worse Than Wicked
Sinking onto the edge of the tub, I press my hand to my belly and swallow down the wave of horror that rises inside me every time I remember what they did that day. The day I lost it all and ended up at the hospital where I went before Cedar Crest, because Royal Dolce wouldn’t let me lose my life too.
You don’t get to take the easy way out. You get to suffer, just like the rest of us.
I shake the thought away and turn the water higher, then leave the bathroom, hurrying back downstairs. I don’t like bathrooms in general. Most of them remind me too much of the bathroom in my nightmares, so I tried to make this as far from that as possible, as welcoming, a place I would want to take a shower without having to recite the mantra they gave me to get me to bathe once I left Cedar Crest. The first summer, I could only use the outdoor shower on the back of Cecily’s house, the one meant to wash off sand from the beach.
I step into the kitchen to find Baron standing over Duke, coaxing him to drink something from a mug. When he sees me, though, he steps between us, blocking my view of his brother.
“Go to our room,” he says. “Don’t come out.”
“Let me help,” I say, not sure what’s going on, what’s wrong.
“He doesn’t want you to see him like this,” Baron says, hoisting Duke from the chair and dragging him out of the room. I hear them making their way up the stairs slowly, knocking into the wall a few times, Baron ordering him to take steps. Then I hear the bathroom door slam upstairs.
I swallow hard, trying not to think about what I saw—his hands black with dirt and blood, nails torn away, olive skin now an almost colorless grey-green; his eyes sunken and hollow, lips blue. I pick up Seeley and hold him to my chest, pressing my face into his fur. He purrs and rubs his head against my face.
Colt found him first, out behind the house in the woods, crying for his mother. He was just a kitten. My parents wanted to take him to a shelter, but I knew what they did to unwanted cats there. I hid him in my room and wouldn’t bring him out when they said it was time to go. I didn’t even care when he had an accident under my bed. Finally Aurora said I could have a cat if I wanted one so badly, but wouldn’t I rather have a Russian Blue or a serval or even a Maine Coon? But I didn’t want a purebred or a designer cat. I wanted the little orange tabby with his white paws and chest. He needed someone to look out for him, and I knew he was special, even if they couldn’t see it.
I sit with my back against the bathroom door for a long time, Seeley cradled in my arms, purring. Inside the room, I can hear Baron’s low murmurs, soft splashes of water, the faucet going on again a few times. After a while, Duke answers. I can’t make out their words, and I want to know what happened, but they don’t want me in there. There is always a line between them and me. I’m not sure if they put it there or if I did. Maybe it’s a twin thing, and I’ll never be able to cross it. They have their ownrelationship, independent of me, and I never minded, except when they used it against me.
But maybe once, I’d like to come first to someone. To not be an outsider looking in, a loner figuring out the shape of the other puzzle pieces so I can sneak into the box and pretend I belong. I’d like to be loved the most, not because I look a certain way or carry a certain name or keep the secrets of dangerous men. That’s where Baron got me. He made me feel like I was truly special, not for what he could get from me—he could get any beautiful girl, had his own name, and learned all my secrets, and he still wanted me. He made me think he saw what I was and valued it.
And then he destroyed it.
I should be happy that he’s upset right now. I should be glad that he’s suffering, that he’s feeling something he rarely gets to feel. But I can’t be, because Duke is suffering, and his hurting brings less satisfaction than it should. At first, it did. I thought he deserved it, that he was paying for what he did to me. But I think it’s like Royal said—living is paying. For someone like Duke, his conscience is his punishment. He’s done his brothers’ bidding, his father’s, but it’s taken a toll. He may try to blot it out with alcohol and drugs and sex, but he carries the weight of guilt that neither Baron nor I feel.
I can’t say I’ve forgiven him, but I can say that he’s paid.
When I can’t bear the thought of him not wanting to see me any longer, I set Seeley down, scoot up the wall and grip the knob. To my surprise, it’s not locked. I turn it and swing open the door.
Duke’s in the bath, his head resting back on the edge, eyes closed. The color has come back into his face, and his arms lay along the porcelain sides of the clawfoot tub. One of his hands is clean, and Baron’s holding the other one, painstakingly cleaning it with the kind of expert precision that he’ll need as a surgeon.One of Duke’s lids twitches, probably when Baron hits a sore spot. The fingers have more nerve endings than anywhere else in the body, and Duke’s are in bad shape, his skin shredded, his nails broken and torn.
I try to imagine how it happened, Duke in a closed coffin, scratching at the lid and screaming while dirt rained down on it. Trying to slow his breathing and not panic so he can conserve oxygen in the small box until Baron got there. Does he know to do that? Is that a thing normal people know?
And if he was buried alive, who held the shovel?
“Can I come in?” I ask.
“Refresh the water,” Baron orders. “Then you can wash his hair.”
I step into the room. Baron kneels on one side of the tub. Water has sloshed out, creating puddles on the tile floor, but for once, he doesn’t seem to notice that everything is not neat and orderly. His knees are soaked, the water creeping up the legs of his pants, splashed down one side of his shirt. His glasses are folded neatly a few feet away, the lenses fogged over. It’s disconcerting how much they look alike when Baron’s a little unkempt. Even the DOLL scar on Duke’s chest doesn’t set him apart anymore.
I move to the other side of the tub carefully. If I slip on the water, that could be the end. My feet will slide out from under me, my head hit the side of the tub just so. My neck snaps, and my body seizes, convulsions wracking it, my head flopping limply on my broken neck. My spinal cord is severed, and my body goes still on the floor in a lifeless heap. Baron buries my body in the grave that he dug for Jane, the one she buried Duke alive inside. But not before he finds the angel of death in my pocket.
Baron hands me the shampoo, and I sit on the step stool at the head of the tub. The film in my head rewinds, the darkpuddles of blood turning clear again, changing back to water. I pick a few pine needle shards from Duke’s thick hair before massaging the foam into his scalp.
“Are you okay?” I ask finally.
“Would you care?” he asks.
“I would,” I say, my fingers sliding under the back of his neck, where his skin is gritty with dirt. “I do.”
Baron said Jane was gone when he went back for her.
I examine my feelings around that. I don’t like that he still feels enough connection to her that he had to go see her. I don’t like that he went to kill her at all. I told him to have Duke do it, if not directly, then to plant the seeds of the idea. That was Duke’s punishment, but it was also her best shot at escape, especially when I told her what to say to him, how to get to him the way I got to Baron. I had to try, after what I saw. After what she told me. I hadn’t anticipated Baron following his brother, though, finishing the job.
My throat tightens at the thought. My only solace is that maybe she somehow survived them both, and that’s why Baron couldn’t find her. Maybe she found Duke instead, when it was his time to go back and see her, and she got her revenge. She doesn’t know him like I do. She doesn’t know that life itself is painful for him, that he’s paid for his part in her fate every day since we left her here. And if she did, maybe it still wouldn’t be enough for her. Sometimes, it’s not enough for me, when I remember all they did to me, that he’s the reason I lost everything I never knew I wanted. He was there. He didn’t just witness. He participated. He reveled in the chaos, the madness, the pain. He caused it as much as Baron did.
I tighten my fingers on the back of his neck.
