Toxic Part One (Celestra Series Book 7) (27 page)

“So it’s almost like your punishment is null and void. How cool is that?” Ha, we’ve totally outsmarted my mother and the kangaroo court she runs in the nether sphere. “You know, my mother won’t even talk to me. She totally knows I’ve been taken by the Counts, and she still gives me the silent treatment. Baffling, right?”

Right
. He twitches.
If you’ll excuse me, the mere mention of that woman makes me anxious for the nearest windshield.

“Oh, gross.” I’m quick to crank open the window a little wider for him. “Choose the red sedan,” I say as Nev flies off to relieve himself. Serves Chloe right to have a bird crap all over her buffed and waxed girl mobile. I should pay Nev in earthworms to follow her around all day and use her head as a target.

Speaking of heads, a dark shadow bobs through the yard. I squint and make out the shapely form of a woman, dark flowing hair—it’s Chloe. She’s holding a stick in her left hand, and something long and stringy drips from her right.

“What the?” I press in toward the glass and the world illuminates with a violent flash of lightning.

Then I see it—the hair—the ghastly pale face with a wash of blood at the base.

A scream gets locked in my throat.

The glint of the shovel in her other hand catches the light as she strides into the forest that borders the property.

Holy freaking shit.

Chloe Bishop just one-upped me in the decapitation department.

Chapter 38

Head Hunter

I waste no time dashing downstairs in order to conduct a rather spontaneous headcount of what remains of my family.

I knew Chloe was perfectly capable of chopping us to pieces in our sleep. She probably started with Ethan because he was within hacking distance. 

Mom and Tad are mulling over a bunch of packets and pills, counting them out and itemizing their cache of baby-making supplies, no doubt.

“What time did you get in?” Mom greets me with an expression that assures it was later than desired.

“I don’t really remember.” Honesty is the best policy. 

I turn to dart back upstairs and make sure Mia and Melissa are still capable of living out another bad hair day when I smack into the guillotine girl herself.

Chloe’s hair is matted on the side, mascara runs down her face creating muddied half-moons beneath each eye. She’s wearing a tank top and boy shorts, both of which are loose and ill fitting.

“You’re in your underwear,” I hiss.

“I’m in
his
underwear,” she corrects.

Disgusting.

“Skyla?” Mom calls out from the dining room. “Do you realize the girls were trying to
hitch
a ride home?”

“I’m so sorry!” I pause, trying to get my bearings on the lie I’m about to manufacture.

“You’re very lucky Demetri was there,” she snips. “If it were anyone else, I would have been beside myself. And, by the way”—she hustles over—“I have a very special surprise planned for you that I’m unable to cancel. Which makes me beyond livid because I don’t approve of rewarding bad behavior.”

“I’m really sorry,” I whisper in an effort to settle her down. “I think maybe someone slipped something in my drink.” More like Demetri slipped
me
into a drink.

“You know what?” Chloe’s eyes widen with a farfetched innocence. “I saw three girls passed out last night—heard some kids from East spiked the lemonade.”

As if my mother is going to buy that.

“It’s always the lemonade.” Mom tosses her hands in the air at the injustice of it all.

Chloe shakes her head. “Leave it to those yahoos from East to pervert the last piece of Americana.” She slinks across the room and checks out the array of foil packets strewn across the table in a semi-organized fashion. “What’s this?”

Of course, she’s interested in the ovarian super booster. Chloe is interested in procreating with Gage, so why not kick-start her body with Mom’s baby-in-a-bag kit? I’m sure she’ll fill her fallopian tubes with an entire bushel of ripe eggs in time for some afternoon inseminating.

“It’s a colon cleanse treatment.” Mom heads over and shakes one of the packets before tearing it open with her teeth. “It’s for the whole family. You’re welcome to it.”

“I hear that’s so healthy.” Chloe manages to assume a genuine stance on the aforementioned diarrhea enhancer.

“You should have some,” Mom insists. I’ll make enough smoothies for all of us. You just add yogurt and milk. It’s supposed to taste like heaven.” She snaps up a fistful of packets and heads toward the blender.  

“So what does it do?” I ask, picking one up then and tossing it back to the table unimpressed.

“It gives you the shits,” Tad quips. “It’s going to turn our insides into the faucet of fire, and you won’t want to be three feet away from a toilet when it hits. Makes you crap your brains out for days.”

Lovely.

“Not true.” Mom pauses midflight with an industrial-sized yogurt container. “And I warned you of the dangers of filling your body with those carcinogens on a stick,” she reprimands Tad. “If we plan on trying again, we need to ensure a pure environment for the sake of our future child.”

Yes, God forbid he produce another breeder like Drake or a dolt who would sleep with his own killer like Ethan, and don’t even get me started on the twisted mind that hacks off the hair of her sister while she sleeps, which reminds me…

I pull Chloe aside by the elbow. “So what was with the early morning stroll? Needed to clear someone’s head? With a shovel!”

Chloe goes over to the window and gazes out at the dense woods, draped dark as a funeral. She tilts into the glass as if she were asking herself a question.

The blender goes off like a live grenade, drilling my skull with its intrusive whine.

I step into the window alongside Chloe and watch as the sky rips open—a deluge of rain bursts over the island like the breaking of a dam.

Chloe shakes her head and brushes the dewy glass with the tip of her fingers—an apology lingers on her lips.

“Who was it, Chloe?” I forget to breathe as I await an answer.

“More like who will it be,” she says it monotone into her reflection.

“You were traveling,” I whisper.

Chloe proves impervious to my prodding. Instead, she jockeys for favorite daughter and chugs down a third of my mother’s bowel blaster, side by side with Mom and Tad.

“Get dressed, Skyla.” Mom beams with a glossy milk mustache. “We’re going shopping on the mainland.”

“We are?”

“Tad has some quick business to take care of, and I thought this would be a great time to catch up.”

“Oh, perfect! Yes, we need to catch up on things.” I’m so going to squash Demetri like road kill and expose that yellow-bellied coward for what he really is—a monster. Once my mother hears how he’s been mistreating her baby—along with other people’s babies—she’ll be looking for the nearest millstone to tie around his neck.

“I’m heading that way to see my brother.” Chloe cuts the air with the lie like a ninja. “Can I catch a ride to the ferry?”

“I don’t see why not.” Mom twists me around and ushers me toward the hall. “We leave in a half-hour.”

“Half-hour,” I repeat as I traipse up the stairs. That gives me plenty of time to light drive back to this morning and see firsthand what poor, headless soul Chloe is responsible for killing in the future.   

***

Binding spirit.

Figures. Chloe has every dimension covered to ensure her wicked deeds can carry on undetected.

By the time we arrive at the ferry, the weather has tamed to its requisite thick layer of fog. The clouds have deposited their reserves and are ratcheting it up for an even greater display later in the day.

It’s not until I hit the warm, dry cabin of the ferry do I realize what quicksand I’ve just meandered into.

Darla and Demetri wave up at me. To the devil’s right sits Gage with his open face and pleasant smile. Crap. I totally forgot Mom mentioned she scheduled her demented double date for today. And it looks like she’s decided to include me in on the misery—shopping, my ass.

Of all the stupid shit to fall for. Forget my mother throwing Demetri into the sea by way of a millstone—it’s me she’s drowning with her misplaced good intentions. And Chloe is here no less.

Double shit.

The horn sounds, and the boat floats away from the dock, leaving me trapped on a glorified raft with an inappropriate number of my least favorite people. I suppose there’s no way out of this mess, so there’s that. A perfectly good summer’s day wasted in bad company and my mother.

“Surprise!” Mom rattles me by the shoulders as she pushes me down next to Gage. “I know the two of you haven’t seen eye to eye as of late, but believe you me, there is nothing that a change of scenery can’t cure. It’s been a really rough year on us all, and I think we’re just now getting the swing of things on the island.” She looks over at Darla in hopes the spirit of renewal, and sharing custody of grandchildren, is alive and well. If not, I suppose there’s always a legal team that will help Darla see things her way.

“You’re never too young for true love.” Darla gravels out the words as if she were the youth in question. She attempts to clear her throat, treating us all to a fun-filled mucus musical. “I’ve been up all night with that little brat.” She pounds her fist into her chest as if she’s trying to stop her heart—an action I might invoke upon myself in about five minutes. “He’s the cutest little shit, but you’d think sleep was against his damn religion.”

“We wouldn’t know.” Tad wastes no time in ruining the trip before we break three feet away from land.

Darla sways in her seat like she’s just been cold clocked. “If you bothered to walk next door, you might get to see the little demon for yourselves.”

Darla isn’t one to take crap from too many people. Zero to be exact.

“Excuse me?” Mom’s voice bustles to unnatural levels. “I’ve made repeated efforts to see that baby, and every time I knock on the door, I hear footsteps scuttling in the opposite direction.”

“I’m only following my daughter’s wishes.” She punctuates the spontaneous confessional by jutting her head out like poultry. “Y’all got your heads tucked so far up your rears, she’s petrified the kid’s gonna need a shrink before he can shit in a dish.”

“Speaking of which…” Tad makes a mad dash for the restroom.

You can feel the tension, the fatalistic hum of the lawyers and social workers drumming in the background as Mom and Darla start in with the death stares.

A bloom of lightning quakes through the portholes, followed by an intense growl of thunder.

“You know, I don’t think it’s that bad outside,” I say. “I think I’ll get some air.” I bolt for the stairs before my mother pulls a knife on someone.

“I’ll come with you.” Gage offers, appearing by my side.

“I would love some air.” Chloe grins her signature wicked scowl.

I can’t think of a better time for Gage to explain everything than with Chloe Bishop by his side.

Chapter 39

Nothing but the Truth

The sky fills in with charcoal—spastic and jagged like a picture being colored in by an angry child. Hard swirls of onyx—all-out aggression explodes on the canvas up above, leaving knife-sharp streaks as he colors outside the lines. It’s a garish display carried out by the wind and the storm, both equally determined to bombard us with their pent-up frustration—like Nev bursting over Ezrina in an all-out erotic detonation, centuries in the making.

A royal blue canopy is erected on top of the ferry in hopes of keeping us free from the elements. We take seats near the back, away from a group of women huddled together sipping their morning coffee.

“So where were we?” I say to Gage. “That’s right. You were going to tell me everything.” I blink a quick smile at him as Chloe sits across from us.

“Oh!” Chloe squeals with delight. “I was so hoping I could be privy to this conversation. Go ahead and dish, Gage—tell her everything.” Chloe’s entire face glows at the prospect. “Nothing but the truth.”

His jacket falls between the two of us, and he touches my hand beneath it.

I want to take you there. I want you to see for yourself what happened
. He nods into me before readjusting himself as if we had never touched.

“Let’s talk about Logan.” Gage spears me with a look. “My dad’s ready to call the police. You know anything about his disappearance?”

“Not really.” It’s true. I don’t understand why the hell he can’t leave the Transfer. He could sleep at home for God’s sake. Ezrina is just being greedy. I touch the base of my neck, marveling at how well it’s healed overnight. “Let’s talk about Chloe running around my backyard with a shovel and a severed head.” I toss the spotlight of truth in Chloe’s direction and watch the smile bleed from her face.

Her cheeks turn an ashen grey. She clutches at her stomach and lurches.

“I need to use the bathroom,” she croaks, evicting herself from her seat and smacking into a wall of women congesting the stairwell.

Coffee flies in the air, and two older women are flattened in Chloe’s attempt to break through the bottleneck. Chloe doubles over and groans as her jeans darken down the back. She darts a horrified look to Gage and me before diving down the stairs.

Wow—who knew Chloe’s kiss-ass routine would yield such impressively amazing results. I hope she craps a kidney.

A flock of pelicans sail by. Their smooth flight, their precision-like formation transforms the ever-darkening sky into a thing of beauty.

Gage lifts my hair with his finger, examines my neck for a sign of puncture.

“He looks like you,” I say, gazing out into the dull grey ocean. “The boy they gave me to. He has your face, your hair, although that’s where the similarities end. He really loves his girlfriend. She’s all he ever thinks about.” A swell of tears try to fight their way to the surface, but I won’t let them win.

“You’re all I ever think about. And I do love you,” he says it low like a well-kept secret.

“Is that what she programmed you to say?” I turn to look at him in full. “Just answer me this. Did you have to turn in your balls when you agreed to play along with her stupid game? I did believe you, by the way, up until I was apprised of the fact we were nothing but a lie. You really went all out.”