Page 36 of Worse Than Wicked
It’s my attempt at a joke, but my gaze sweeps over her, searching for a gun. She couldn’t have hidden even a small one in the scant clothing she’s wearing, though.
“You wanted to come,” she reminds me. “I would have come out here whether or not you joined me.”
“Or maybe you knew I’d want to come if you told me you were walking alone. Especially if there’s as killer still out there, stalking you.”
Stalking her better than I can. That thought keeps me up at night far more than Jane.
“We’re on Delacroix land now,” she says, stepping over a pile of rocks on the invisible footpath she seems to be following through the woods. “Arkansas is a stand-your-ground state, so technically, they could shoot us if they saw us trespassing. They would never harm a Darling. Do they have a reason to want you dead?”
“No,” I say, scowling at her. “I fit into society better than you do. The Delacroixs like me.”
“All of them?”
I remember publicly humiliating Walker Delacroix in the café at Willow Heights, but he’s only a teacher. We made Gideon fuck Gloria, and he left school afterwards, but that was his choice.
“The important ones like me,” I say, annoyed by Mabel’s perceptiveness.
She smiles, that secretive smile that makes me question everything, that makes me love and hate her in equal measure.
“What?” I demand.
“Who decides which ones are important?”
“Society,” I say flatly. “Robert Delacroix is our lawyer. He’s important.”
“And Dr. Delacroix?”
I swat a mosquito on my arm. “You know I don’t believe in psychology.”
“Did you find anything about Dahlia?”
“No,” I say. “If she’s still alive, she’s invisible. Probably going by another name.”
“Another ghost,” Mabel says, sounding vaguely pleased.
“She’s not Ingrid, is she?” I ask.
Mabel would know that, but I wouldn’t. Ingrid doesn’t resemble the photos I found of the kid Mabel was friends with, but I can’t be certain she hasn’t had work done to disguise herself or simply changed dramatically since childhood.
“No,” Mabel says. “But I was thinking I might go see my parents and ask them about her. They don’t like me bringing it up, but… I remember once after I started asking about her again, my stepmom was talking on the phone to Grandpa, saying, ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do with her.’ When I walked in, she shoved an envelope in a drawer and pushed it closed like she was trying to hide it. She looked guilty. Maybe she was hiding her letters back to me.”
“This seems like a distraction,” I say, watching her closely. “We have a missing girl who has a lot of incriminating evidence about me on her body, and a ghost who might be following you and killing people for you.”
“And Duke.”
“And Duke.”
We walk in silence for a few minutes. “I need to know,” she says at last. “You can focus on the other girls. I don’t find them important.”
“And Duke?”
“He’s important,” she says quietly. “Do you know what’s wrong with him?”
There are too many answers to that, and too many of them he wouldn’t want me saying to Mabel. At last, I choose the one that covers all of them. “He’s too sensitive.”
“What can we do about him?”
“We’ll figure it out.”
