“I’ll get you some clothes,” she said. “You’ll need some if you’re coming to the party. That dress is ugly. Luca has no taste.”

  “What party?” Val said.

  “The theme is Midsummer Night’s Dream. After the Wild Hunt come the revels—but unfortunately,” she said, “the hunt has been delayed.”

  “You were… going to celebrate killing me?”

  “Well,” said Celeste. “You might survive.”

  With those reassuring words, she headed out. Val watched the door close and lock, glancing again at the broken computer with a sense of cold dread.

  This room had clearly been unused for years but Gavin’s presence was everywhere in it, suffocating her. She could almost make out the sandalwood and rose scent of his cologne. But maybe he’d just left traces of it on her when he’d touched her in the motel.

  With Celeste gone, Val felt freer to explore. The closet had clothes in it, but nothing she had ever seen him wear before or that would be likely to fit him now. The drawers were all mostly empty, save for some old and worn-out art supplies. She shut the one she’d been looking in and sat down on the creaky bed.

  His bed. He had slept here, in this very room. The sheets were a little musty but looked clean. She lay back and stared up at the watermarked ceiling, chilled from an unseen draft. Had he always been the way that he was or had he begun to go mad here, in these cracked and peeling walls with a view of dying flowers?

  Considering the rest of his family, Val thought she might know the answer.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Rhodonite

  Anna Maria studied her reflection in the glass. The woman who looked back at her would make any man or woman take a second glance—blonde, slender, and toned, with curves by the best cosmetic surgery money could buy.

  There was no one who could resist her.

  Well, she thought darkly, except for one.

  She pulled on her party dress, admiring the way her skin looked between the lace. She was beautiful. Everyone said so. She was her mother’s favorite, married and widowed tragically young, which only added to her mystique.

  Some had questioned whether she’d helped fate along, but only with the jaded curiosity of any other casual observer of a May-December wedding. There had never been an inquest.

  Her late husband couldn’t get enough of her. Disgusting pig. It had been all she could do not to show her revulsion when he touched her with those fleshy hands. When he fucked her, she licked to imagine that it was her gorgeous older brother pounding into her. She made her husband take her from behind, so she wouldn’t have to glimpse his face. It made it easier. She had a very good imagination but there were limits.

  She had bought this dress for him, but of course, he had never noticed. He ignored her with the disdain that he’d shown everyone else. Except for that murderous bitch upstairs. Her fingers clenched, red crescents biting into her palms. The cowardly whore.

  If Luca had been timely, the girl would be dead by now and she could be relaxing and enjoying her party, champagne in hand, without being tormented by thoughts of her dead brother being slayed by his traitorous bedmate like Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.

  Our very own House of Atreus, she thought. Tantalizing and cursed.

  “Frowning like that will give you wrinkles.”

  Anna Maria glared up at the man who appeared in the gilt frame of the mirror. “Fuck you, Luca.”

  “There’s an idea.” He wrapped his arms around her from behind, letting her feel the press of his hard cock at the base of her spine. “Why don’t we go do that?”

  Anna Maria leaned her head back when he cupped her breasts through the thin fabric. She smiled sharply when he began kissing her neck, studying him possessively in the glass. Luca looked so much like Gavin, although he was a year younger than her, but there were differences. Notable ones. Gavin was never quite so crude.

  But thinking of Gavin caused an unpleasant tightness in her chest, as if a cord linked from her thoughts to her heart and was being brutally yanked. She reached for her chest, half-expecting to feel the bloody organ, but encountered only her mother’s pearls.

  With an angry sigh, she extricated herself from Luca’s grasp, folding her arms over her breasts. He had changed for her party, dressed in black like a dark angel. His eyes, when they met hers, were hot with lust. He’s good-looking but he knows it, she thought absently, tilting her head to give him better access. He’s as foppish as a peacock.

  “Well?” he said, in a low voice just like Gavin’s. “You want to fuck or not?”

  Anna Maria ran her fingers through her hair, frosted to perfection. She wore it in a loose chignon and a few strands had escaped. “I’m not really in the mood after your fuck-up.” She bit her lip, scraping her hair back into place. “You ruined everything.”

  “As I explained to you after each one of your twenty phone calls, Sister, I can only drive so fast.” Luca turned to study her room, his eyes flicking over her belongings, but when he turned back to face her, his eyes darted to her mouth. “Besides, I got the little mouse here, didn’t I? It wasn’t exactly easy, you know.”

  “Did you have her, too?” Anna Maria demanded. “Your little mouse?”

  “She’s Gavin’s little mouse, not mine.” Luca gave her a cruel grin that sent a pulse of desire throbbing through her. “I may have had a taste, though. I couldn’t resist making her squeak for me.”

  “I hope you used protection. Mice are dirty.”

  “Don’t be like that,” said Luca. “I needed some entertainment and she’s such a cute mouse.”

  “Is that so.” She kept her voice flat, emotionless. “Cute, is she?”

  Luca laughed, to her annoyance. “Be careful, Sister. I think your jealousy is showing. She’s pretty, yes, but not as pretty as you. Not that it matters. You know our brother could never resist an opportunity to exert control—and this one is almost fatalistically passive. It’s positively delightful.”

  “I want to see her. If she was able to turn Gavin’s head, she must be something.”

  Luca shrugged his shoulders. “That could be arranged. I believe she’s getting dressed for the party.”

  “You mean my party? That’s strange. I don’t recall inviting her.”

  “What were you going to do, Anna? Keep her in her room so you could torture her a while? At least this way, we can keep an eye on her. Besides, where would she go? There’s no one around for miles. She’d die of exposure in the night and we’d kill her if we found her trying to get away.”

  I can’t believe it. He likes the bitch. Annoyance rippled through her. “Where did she get a dress?”

  “Celeste brought her one.”

  I bet she did. There was no lost love between her and Celeste. Celeste had been Gavin’s favorite sister and was not above lording it above Anna Maria. Fucking Celeste.

  Luca put out his arm for her to take and she gave him a sardonic smile as she accepted it. The carpet beneath her feet muffled the sound of her heels.

  They stopped outside a familiar door and she said, “You put her in Gavin’s room?”

  “Where else was she going to go? Knock, knock, Valerian,” Luca drawled.

  The photo Anna Maria had found online had been cached on a now-defunct school website. That girl had been gangly and freckle-faced, with a mop of messy red curls. A fresh-faced waif. The woman who turned around was slim and pale, with dark, dyed hair and facial piercings. Her eyes—a feline green—widened as she took a step back.

  Pretty eyes, Anna Maria noted with resentment. Her fingers itched to gouge them out.

  She pasted on a smile. “You must be my brother’s little whore.”

  The woman—Valerian—took a step back, folding her arms protectively over her chest. Classic defensive move, protecting the body’s vital organs. Maybe I’ll shoot her in the stomach and let her bleed out slowly—right after I get her in the leg so she can’t run.

  Anna Maria recognized the dress she was wearing right away. It was the same dress she had worn on her visit home three years ago, right after she’d gotten married. The dress had a lace bodice that invited one to look and soft silk skirts that invited one to touch—although, true to form, her brother had done neither.

  It had been the last time she’d seen him alive and if she had known that, perhaps she would have tried harder, would have demanded his attentions as her due. Seeing this girl in that dress—the girl Gavin had chosen as his conquest—sent anger and jealousy piercing through her like poisoned blades. It was a scathing reminder that this bitch had known her brother in ways that she never, ever would.

  Her heart broke again, and she thought, I’m going to get you for this, Celeste.

  Still smiling, Anna Maria said, “You’re not much to look at, are you?”

  Valerian looked at her like she’d been slapped. “W-what?”

  “Stupid, too,” Anna Maria said. “My, I really don’t see what my brother saw in you apart from being a warm hole to fuck. But anyone can be that. It hardly makes you special, does it, Valerian? Especially when you aren’t fit to lick the ground he walks on.”

  The girl went blotchy with what could have been either fear or anger. It made her freckles stand out. A muscle in that pale throat twitched and her hands tightened into fists. Anna Maria glanced at Luca, who was watching this scene play out with interest.

  “I know what you did to Gavin. Luca already told me everything.”

  The girl’s eyes went to Luca, still standing behind her. Luca clicked his tongue at her and winked, studying the girl with far more interest than the situation called for.

  “Do you have any idea,” she hissed, “any idea at all what I’d like to do to you right now, you conniving little slut? Why, I could just skin you alive. I loved my brother more than you or anyone else would ever understand and you killed him.”

  She shook her head, rattling her diamond earrings.

  “I have half a mind to shoot you right now, hunt be damned.”

  “Anna,” Luca said warningly. “Compose yourself.”

  “No,” Anna Maria spat. “I’m the eldest now, and what I say goes. If you couldn’t deal with him,” she said to Valerian, “you should have left well enough alone. He was so angry with you. Furious. He was going to kill you—he told me so himself. But it wasn’t enough that you changed his mind, you had to kill him, you bitch. What, you couldn’t take him, so you decided to destroy him? You’re nothing. You’re weak.”

  “Oh my God.” The girl took a step back. “You really did want to fuck him.”

  Fuck. It was a crude word, ugly, made even more disgusting by her sweet, high voice ringing with judgment.

  She dared.

  Anna Maria hadn’t realized she’d taken a step forward until she felt her brother’s hands wrap around her wrists. “It’s not worth it,” he murmured in her ear. “We’ll kill her tomorrow—together. It’ll be more sporting that way.”

  “I hate her,” she gasped, hot with anger. “I want her gone.”

  “I know, Sister.” He let his hand settle on her hip. “I know.”

  Valerian was pressed against the wall as if she could melt through it. Her face had gotten paler and she looked to be shaking. Anna Maria let her eyes rake over the girl’s figure in a scathing once-over. The dress, so flattering to her own endowments, only called attention to the girl’s utter lack of them. She was as thin as a boy with freckles covering every inch of exposed skin, and beneath those piercings and the tacky hair, she was still the same ungainly, awkward moppet from the photograph.

  Somewhat mollified, Anna Maria relaxed an inch. “I don’t know what my brother saw in you,” she said coldly, “or how you managed to ensnare him, but you’ll be easy enough to dispose of when I’ve gutted you like a fish and tossed your remains into the river for the wildlife to pick at.”

  She flicked out the hem of her dress, admiring the sparkling threads, before turning over her shoulder just in time to see the horrified look on the girl’s face.

  Anna Maria smiled.

  “See you at the party.”

  ▪▫▪▫▪▫▪

  Avoid Anna Maria.

  That was what Celeste had blithely whispered to her before slipping a glass of champagne into her hand. Val, having learned her lesson, emptied the champagne into a potted plant. She wasn’t about to touch any food or drink here.

  Not after what Luca had done to her water.

  Maybe that was a mistake. Maybe she should be building her strength. But she couldn’t quite shake the thought of Anna Maria poisoning her.

  She would, too. She wants me to suffer.

  The way she had looked at her in Gavin’s room was proof enough of that. The woman had been a heartbeat away from taking her by the throat and strangling her—or worse. If Luca hadn’t been there to intervene, Anna Maria might very well have followed up on her threat to kill her where she stood.

  Anna Maria, with her cool eyes and icy coloring, had been a study in the cruel perfection of genetics. Gavin was attractive so it made sense that his sister would be, too, but his feral grandeur was far less conventional than his sister’s paralyzing beauty.

  Val looked around the massive living room. It was filled with people dressed in varying degrees of formality, all with idiotic masks covering their faces. Where did they know these people from? She couldn’t tell which were relatives and which were friends.

  At least, she assumed they were friends and not victims, like her.

  Dorian was in the corner, talking to an attractive red-haired man in a fox mask. Luca was seated in an armchair with Anna Maria sprawled over his lap. One of his arms was draped around her waist and they looked more like lovers than siblings.

  If what Luca had said was true, they were.

  Luca was wearing a skeleton mask, the shadows making his face look positively demonic. Anna Maria’s mask was a gilt butterfly with gold wires curling into sprays of yellow, glitter-spackled roses. Val’s mouth twisted in amusement and she looked away.

  Yellow roses. Well, that was funny, in a sense.

  Jesus, I have to get out of here.

  She turned, looking for an exit, and saw Celeste. The dark-haired woman was wearing another one of those light, summer dresses. This one was sleeveless and lace-trimmed like a nightgown, revealing a generous amount of décolletage. She was dancing with a man who seemed older, but it was impossible to tell because he was wearing a mask, too.

  Dorian’s gaze kept flicking from the red-haired man to his sister, but he wasn’t looking at her the way Luca looked at Anna Maria. Something in the set of his mouth reminded Val of a disapproving chaperone keeping an eye on his young charge.

  And though she wasn’t sure, Val thought the brooding woman in the silver gown sitting next to Luca might be Leona. She had taken her mask off and it was resting in her lap, shedding feathers. There were dark, smudgy circles beneath her bloodshot eyes, which were a familiar shade of gray. Her ash blonde hair had been braided into a long rope that lay coiled on her lap like a serpent.

  Leona—if it was Leona—was looking at Luca and Anna Maria with an expression of poorly concealed disgust, her cigarette held loosely between the two fingers that weren’t resting on the mask. When Val edged around them, she caught a whiff of it. It wasn’t a cigarette.

  I need to get out of here, she thought. I can barely breathe.

  She slipped into the dark hallway, setting her empty champagne glass down on one of the end tables in the hall, walking as quickly as she dared.

  Her footsteps carried her out into a small dining room, clearly unused from the smell of it, and into the greenhouse. It was warmer out here, filled with long tables of curling dead plants. They were so dried-out, it was impossible to tell what the husks had been. Val looked up at the clear glass ceiling dubiously, and then out at the porch.

  It was windy and cold. Ice had formed whorled patterns on the other side of the glass, the wind whipping up leaves in spiraling eddies over the tile. Her eyes met one of the statues’ and she felt her heart stop because for a moment, it seemed to blink.

  A hand closed over her shoulder, warm and real, and Val screamed.

  “It’s just me,” said Celeste. “You shouldn’t wander. If my brother and sister think you’re trying to escape, they’ll shoot you where you stand.”

  Val drew in a ragged breath. “What’s with the statues?”

  “Our grandfather commissioned them.” Her eyes flicked disinterestedly to the statue. “He used our grandmother as the model. She was his muse. There are several old sculptures and carvings around here, all of her. He was obsessed.”

  Yeah, thought Val. Obsessed. That sounds about right.

  Celeste took her firmly by the arm and led her back to the living room. Someone had put on a record and now moody rock was starting to play as a backdrop to the bacchanalia. “Don’t wander,” she said again. “If you must go somewhere, go upstairs.”

  With that vague warning delivered, she threaded back into the crowd.

  Val hugged herself, looking around the room for somewhere to hide.

  That was when she saw him.

  At first, she thought it was one of the friends. A tall man in red and black, wearing the face of a wolf. She recognized the wolf mask; it had been on the same table of masks where she had drawn her own. Celeste had foisted one on her, along with the champagne: a rose gold mask, covered in flowers.

  I’ll see you tomorrow, Gavin had said to her. Val glanced at the large grandfather clock, which chimed the hour even as she watched.

  Midnight.

  She looked back at the man, who tilted his head in unspoken command.

  Follow me.

  No, she really didn’t want to do that. But—

  She glanced at Anna Maria, who had turned in her direction. As Val watched, she leaned in to say something to her brother, who also looked at her and laughed. God only knew what they were planning to do with her.

  Staying down here is worse.

  And apparently, she was permitted to go upstairs.

  Better the devil you know.

 

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