“I’ve got nothing but time on my hands, Lizbeth. In fact, I might even take up gardening, or golfing. The leisure activities I’ll have time for now areendless!”
Two tiny bodies run past me, naked—covered in what looks like chocolate—but holy hell that smell gives it away. That ain’tchocolate.
Lizbeth screams at the sight. “Misty and Beau Landon! I have had it up to here with your pottyshenanigans!”
Misty dives in and wraps herself around Tad’s legs, and he lets out a yelp while hobbling toward the back. “Open the door, Lizbeth! We’ll clean the little shits off with thehose!”
Shit, indeed. I lean in to Skyla. “Tad lost hisjob?”
“That’s right.” Her nose wrinkles with her growing irritation—and perhaps the stench. “That three-headed, zero-hearted father of yours swiped it right from under him. Tad is persona non grata at Althorpe. Maybe you can put in a good word for him, now that you and Daddy Dearest are playing on the sameteam.”
There’s a strange sexual connotation there that I’m not touching. “I’m pretty sure your mother has more pull with him than I do.” Especially in thatarena.
“What?” both Skyla and Chloe shout in unison. Skyla and Chloe doing anything in unison is unnerving on just about everylevel.
“It’s true.” I’m pained to think that she’s taken it as a slight. I lean in and whisper, “In a single conversation, your mother could sweet talk my father into just aboutanything.”
“Holy hell.” Skyla tosses up her arms. “Just when I thought you couldn’t sink any lower, Gage Oliver. Okay, playtime is over. Go and head back to the cave you crawled out of.” Her finger darts to the door. She might as well have socked me in the gut—I couldn’t feel worse if Itried.
“That’s not what I meant.” My eyes never stray from hers. “I love you, Skyla. I will always loveyou.”
I take off for the living room where the boys finally look to be resting, sleeping peacefully in the swings. They’ve either been hauled back downstairs or someone yanked out the new set from the garage. No sooner do I get out the door than Chloe appears by myside.
“Whatever it is, you can save it,” I toss it out there before she segues into her head games. Chloe is a master at justthat.
“Aren’t you in the least bit interested?” She blinks those spider lashes atme.
“No.”
“Know this. I’m always on your side, Gage. I’m a lot of things, and one of them is loyal to a fault—toyou.” Her finger curls under my chin, and I turn myhead.
“Don’t think for a minute that Skyla doesn’t know that.” I head to my truck, jumping down the stairs two at a time. “And I don’t need you on my side,Chloe.”
Every damn side she’s on is the wrongone.
* * *
Other than Skylaand the boys, there is just one more person I’m anxious to see today—my brother. I park the truck back at the house and don’t even bother leaving the driver’s seat before teleporting to the Transfer. I land on solid ground in this dark, hellish nightmare of a pit. The Transfer is a plane that belongs to the Counts. With little to no light, a perennial darkness seeps over the landscape in tones of violet and navy blue. There’s a jagged line in the sky that looks as if it were ripped open then stitched back together again, and I marvel at it because I’ve never noticed it before. A battered and bruised countryside appears with cobbled roadways, weed-riddled hillsides. Everywhere you look dozens of long dead spirits tread transparent yet not forgotten with their old-fashioned dress codes, men in dapper suits, women in full hoop skirts, ghostly pale tits out to there. A group of them scuttle by without bothering to go around me. And a mean shiver runs up my spine as a robust woman walks right through mychest.
“Nice,” I muse. “Happy New Year to you, too!” I call after them, annoyed as I iron my shirt with my palms, and the entire group breaks out into a cackle. They’re a jovial bunch, I’ll give themthat.
I glance back and spot a dull blue light emanating from the cave-like entrance that leads to Ezrina’s old stomping grounds. Ezrina was once bound to the Counts for hundreds of years, no thanks to Candace and her linear march for justice. Too bad for Ezrina, Candace sees justice through an unforgiving lens, but Skyla managed to talk her mother into giving both Ezrina and Nevermore another chance, and that’s precisely why Nev is wearing Pierce Kragger’s dead body like a sports coat, and Ezrina is tooling around in Chloe’s old hauntedshell.
Chloe.
Just the thought of her makes my stomach boil in its own acids. I stalk down the road past the old—original—mansion with its haunted White House appeal. It’s cavernous inside, dark as crap, illuminated with the dim light of a thousand dusty candles. There’s a piano set in the formal living room that some old coot is constantly bouncing on, and for whatever reason, the entire phantasmic estate holds the scent of fresh apples. Skyla and I exchanged our wedding vows there last September. September thirteenth to be exact. It was a day to remember, with both the living and the dead present, and I would do anything if we could rewind time and go right back to that magical moment. I wouldn’t have missed the birth of my firstborn son—Logan cut Nathan’s cord. I would have had a minute to think on how I might have escaped the covenant I had entered into, but, in reality, deep down inside, I realize there was no escaping my true destiny. Demetri had sown the seeds to my destruction the moment he ejaculated me intoexistence.
I grimace at my raw and rather disgusting analogy as I enter through the gates of my brother’s estate, an exact replica of the one down the road but bigger, newer, and all around better. Not that living in the Transfer is anything to boast about. Surely the fact he’s raising my niece in this haunted hovel is something we will most certainly have to address. The child needs sunlight for God’s sake. She’ll wither down here physically, and with Chloe Bishop as her mother, who the hell knows what she’s up againstemotionally.
“Wesley?” I bark as I enter the massive foyer. The entire mansion has a medieval appeal. It’s clear he’s taken the décor into a whole different era. The OG mansion down the road is Victorian through and through. “Wes.” My voice roars in duplicate before my brother comes bounding from the hall. A tiny pink bundle in his arms screws her tiny fists into her eyes as if struggling to rouseherself.
“There she is.” I give her foot a soft pinch as Wesley lays her down in a playpen and tosses a blanket over her waist. Tobie is a dark-haired, bright-eyed beauty, plump and happy despite the fact her mother neither cares to feed her nor cares for her in general. Chloe has left all the work to my brother, which he in turn has relegated all the work to Ezrina. “The boys havecolds.”
“So, you’ve come to share your germs?” His dark brows arch with something just this side of fury, and a dull smile twitches on my lips. Wesley Edinger is my exact representation. It’s odd because he was only vaguely that in the beginning, and as Demetri’s sinister scheme laid out, it became painfully clear he was a Johnny one-note when it came to propagating his genetics. I’d say I was the mold, but Wesley is slightly older by a year, I believe. I don’t really care at this point. As far as I’m concerned, we’re both equally impotent when it comes to defying our wickedfather.
“Don’t worry. I won’t kiss her. I won’t kiss you either, sweetheart. Where’sRina?”
“She’s not feeling well.” He kick-starts a dying fire until the room lights up with the inferno-likeblaze.
