Demetri chuckles and I step in, full throttle annoyed.
“What are you laughing at?”
The wily Fem struggles to frown. Figures. He can’t even do that right.
“I apologize, Skyla. But I’ve never seen anyone work Emma up quite the way you do.”
Mom pulls me in and combs her fingers through my hair. “And nobody works my baby up the way that woman does.”
I shoot Chloe and Gage a look. “Oh, she’s got competition that’s beating her out by a mile.”
Wesley comes out looking as if he just put a racecar together in his garage. His hair is mussed, his clothes are covered in grease, and I think there’s a tear in his sleeve.
He looks around at our motley crew. “Who’s ready for cake?”
Chloe pretends she’s mother of the year and herds the masses together and we sing “Happy Birthday” to Tobie. The boys help the little princess blow out the candle and she scoops up a piece of her cake and pelts them with it.
I can’t help but think that’s the way it is—a Bishop pelting a Messenger by proxy.
The party wraps up and Laken assures me she’ll be over tonight and that we’ll learn the results of her paternity test together.
Gage catches my eye from across the yard, and I can feel his hateful gaze piercing me as if it were a hot bullet.
I’m not done with you, Gage Oliver. I’m sending you straight to hell.
Night falls, and the island comes alive with a parade of trick-or-treaters. Logan and I take the boys up and down the street before getting ready to leave for Marshall’s. Logan maintains his jock from West costume and I put on a white lace gown that Bree lent me with a sparkling tiara and a banner strapped across my chest that readsMs. Teen USA.
Logan chuckles as he looks at me. “Do you know what I think?”
“I’m afraid to ask. You did laugh, after all.”
He picks up my hands and swings them between us, but only because I’m far too enormous for his arms to wrap around me.
“I think I should reprise my cop costume and handcuff you in the butterfly room.”
“Ha! Good luck getting me in there.” The baby gives a hard kick and my stomach tightens like a vise once again. I don’t dare tip Logan off as to how painful this is, so I try to remain motionless, lost in thought.
“Skyla? Why are you holding your breath?”
“No reason.” I inhale hard once it starts to subside. If I confess to Logan that my Braxton Hicks contractions have turned into a serious torture session, he’ll veto my vote to go out tonight. “At some point tonight, I’ll give Nev the go ahead and we’ll move the Viden youth to Arizona. Then he’ll call Raven’s Eye. Are you ready to raise some hell?”
“I’m ready to get out of hell and get our people, namely you, right where you belong.”
Logan kisses me long and hard with his hand over my belly and I hold back tears as another contraction comes harder than the last.
Oh God, it’s happening.
It looks as if tonight is going to be hell, after all.
Of all the years I’ve spent on Paragon, of all the parties my mother has thrown, this one is the goriest of them all—and I’ve only yet arrived and surveyed the outside of Marshall’s goliath home.
Four ten-foot poles sit staked along his walkway, and each one has a bloody head impaled over the top.
It’s dark out, the sun set well over three hours ago, the fog is hugging Paragon soil like two old friends visiting. The parking for this island-wide event is already at max capacity with cars parking catawampus and every which way in the field adjacent to the property. But Marshall and my mother have Marshall’s manor lit up with garish red lights, accentuating the fact that the windows, the doors, and the walls have all been splattered with blood. Bloodied handprints are slapped haphazardly all over the place as if the poor victim of this carnage were trying desperately to escape his final destiny.
But Logan and I are stuck on go. We stare up at those four heads set on stakes in awe, and a shiver rides through me because I know for a fact the owners of these replicas will undoubtedly notice them as well.
A choking sound emits from me. “Do you think my mother realized she was putting Demetri’s head on a spit?”
