“Sure, babe.”
The endearment makes my skin crawl, but regardless, I step forward and grab the top two boxes. When Lavinia sees me, she stops short and swears under her breath. The grimace on her face says everything about how she feels about me. I’m not offended. It’s mutual.
“Christ,” she mutters, glaring at me as if I personally offended the air by breathing it, “it’s creepy how much your voices sound alike.”
“They do?”
“Disturbingly.” She shudders dramatically. “It’s all I could think of during your horror show wedding.”
Ignoring the jab, I ask, “Where do you want these?”
She jerks her chin toward a room at the back of the building and says flatly, “Back here.”
She pushes open the door, and I step in. The smell hits first—old paper and ink, dry and metallic, with an undertone of dust that clings to the back of the throat. The overhead lights buzz faintly, washing the cramped space in a sterile glow. Boxes identical to the ones I’m carrying crowd the room, stacked in uneven towers. Hundreds of old newspaper articles are spread across the tables, edges curled, headlines faded to a dull sepia. It looks like someone tried to organize chaos and then gave up halfway through.
“Over here,” she says, dropping her box onto a long table with a thud. I set mine beside it, trying not to breathe too deeply; the scent reminds me of crypts, old air sealed in too long.
“Well then, I’ll leave you to…” I glance around again. It’s not quite a mess, but it’s definitely something. “... whatever this is.”
I’m reaching for the door when she calls out, “Wait. You were there.”
I stop. Turn. “I was where?”
“Here,” she says, folding her arms across her chest. “In Forsyth during the spree.”
“Still not following.”
“The Carver,” she continues, leaning her hip against the shiny counter’s edge nonchalantly. “You must remember it.”
The Forsyth Carver. His reign of terror kept the city on edge for a long time, not dissimilar to the fear weaving through our town now. “I remember.”
The Barons had been busy then, answering the call for the many families who wanted their dead given rites and buried in the crypts, safely tucked away. Not all that different from how things are right now, with the kidnappings.
“Did you know him?” she presses.
“I did—vaguely. He was East End, but no one of importance,” I say, as if that’s enough. And it is. She nods in understanding. Frats don’t intermingle, and I was a Royal. A basic PNZ pledge at the time wouldn’t have been on my radar.
“Was it a surprise?” she asks, voice tighter now, less defensive and more… searching.
“Absolutely. No one had a clue who was behind the murders. They were vicious and brutal. Barbaric.”
He’d taken his time, slicing into the victims, causing intentional pain.
“You believe in legacy and bloodlines and shit,”she continues. This may be the longest conversation we’ve had. No, I’m sure of it. “Do you think that kind of trait passes down from parent to child?”
She’s asking about the Carver; it was known at the time that he had a child, but I can only think about Remy. He inherited more than the color of her eyes and artistic abilities. The troubles he’s had with his mental state started when he hit puberty, although if I’m being truthful, I saw signs long before that. What I brushed off as sensitivities or eccentric behavior… it all led to Remy slipping into a dark crisis. The fixations and obsessive habits, the slips into dissociation. Later, the self-medication. Watching him struggle the same way she did was intolerable.
And unacceptable.
To this day, I have to hope and pray that the true evil in her didn’t carry over.
For all of us.
“Why are you asking me this?” Digging up the past in Forsyth only leads to damage.
“The police mentioned a child,” she replies, her tone clipped, as if she’s trying to sound offhand, but can’t quite pull it off. She turns toward the table and skims a hand across the scattered papers, fingers brushing headlines like she’s hoping one of them will speak back. She plucks up a particular sheet, its edges softened by time. The bold headline stares back:Forsyth Carver Dead in Murder-Suicide.And beneath it, smaller, but somehow louder:Toddler Found on Scene.
“A child that would be in his early twenties now,” she says quietly.
