Bad Blood
Page 61

“Can we sit down?” I asked Ree.
Once we were ensconced in a booth, I laid a folder on the table between us and removed the picture that Celine had drawn. “Is this Sarah?”
“Sure is,” Ree replied steadily. “She looks a bit like Melody there.”
I nodded. My mouth wasn’t dry. My eyes weren’t wet. But I felt those words, all the way to my core.
“Sarah didn’t leave Gaither,” I told Ree, taking her hand. “She didn’t leave her kids. She didn’t leave you.”
“Yes,” Ree replied tersely, “she did.”
I amended my previous statement. “She never left Serenity Ranch.” Knowing in my gut that Ree wouldn’t believe me without proof, I withdrew a photograph from the file—Sarah’s body.
Ree was smart. She connected the dots—and abruptly rejected the conclusion. “That could be anyone.”
“Facial reconstruction says it’s Sarah. We’ll do a DNA test as well, but a witness has verified that Sarah was killed ten years ago by a man named Darren Darby.”
“Darby.” That was all Ree said.
You never looked for her. You never knew.
“Melody is home now.” Ree stood abruptly. “I suppose I have you to thank for that.” She said nothing, not a single word, about her daughter. “I’ll get you some coffee.”
Watching as Ree busied herself with the task, I pulled a picture up on my phone, one I’d taken months before of a locket that Laurel had worn around her neck—and the photo inside. In it, my half sister sat on my mother’s lap.
How many times had I looked at this picture?
How many times had I wondered who—and what—my mother was now?
“Mind if I join you?” Celine slid into the booth across from me.
“Where have you been?” I asked, my gaze still on my mother’s picture.
“Here and there,” Celine replied. “Bodies don’t creep me out. Murders do. I decided pretty quickly that Creepy Serial Killer House probably fell closer to your expertise than mine.”
Ree returned with two cups of coffee, one for me and one for Celine. “Here you go.”
Ree didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want this—any of it—to be real. I could relate.
“Who’s that?” Celine asked, craning her head to get a better look at the photo on my phone.
“My mother,” I replied, feeling like that answer was only half true. “And my half sister.”
“I see the resemblance,” Celine replied. Then she paused. “Mind if I take a closer look?”
She took the phone without waiting for a reply. I closed my eyes and took a long drink of my coffee. Instead of thinking about my mother, about Kate, strung up like a scarecrow and burned alive, about Nonna and what this would do to her, I fell back on an old game, profiling everyone around me.
Behavior. Personality. Environment. Without looking, I knew that Dean was facing away from me. You want to come to me, but you won’t—not until you know that I want you to.
I switched from second person to third, playing this game the way I would have when I was young. Michael is reading me. Lia is next to Dean, pretending that she’s not worried. Sloane is counting—the tiles on the floor, the cracks in the wall, the number of patrons in the room all around her.
I opened my eyes, and the room swam around me. I thought, at first, that there were tears in my eyes, that thinking of the family I’d found in the program had broken the dam inside of me and let in the grief for my family of blood.
But the room didn’t stop spinning. It stayed blurred. I opened my mouth to say something, but words wouldn’t come. My tongue felt thick. I was dizzy, nauseous.
My right hand found its way to the cup of coffee.
The coffee, I thought, unable to form the words out loud. Even my thoughts were scrambled. I tried to stand up, but fell. I grabbed for the booth, and my hand hit Celine’s thigh instead.
She didn’t move.
She’s slumped over. Unconscious. I fought my way to my feet. The world kept spinning, but as I stumbled forward, I realized—the room was silent. No one was talking. No one was coming to help me.
Dean and Lia, Michael and Sloane—they were slumped in their booths, too.
Unconscious, I thought. Or…or…
Someone caught me under my armpits. “Easy there.” Ree’s voice came to me from a great distance. I tried to tell her, tried to make my mouth say the word, but I couldn’t.
Poison.
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate what you did for Melody—or for Sarah.” As the world went black, Ree leaned down. “But all must be tested,” she whispered. “All must be found worthy.”
 
 
I woke up in darkness. The floor beneath me was cold and made of stone. My head hurt. My body hurt—and that was when I remembered.
Ree. The coffee. All of the others, slumped over…
I tried to push myself to my feet, but couldn’t stand. My body felt heavy and numb, like my limbs belonged to someone else.
“It will wear off.”
My head snapped up as my eyes searched through the darkness for the source of that voice. I heard the strike of a lighter, and a second later, a torch flamed to life on the wall.
Ree stood before me, looking every bit the woman I remembered. No-nonsense. Warm.
“You’re one of them?” I meant it as a statement, but the words came out a question.
“I was retired.” Ree obliged me with an answer. “Until my former apprentice got himself killed.” She gave me a look. “I understand I have you to thank for that.”
“You recruited Nightshade.”
She snorted. “Nightshade. Boy always did have notions—but I owed his grandfather, and the old man was insistent that I choose him as my heir.”
“You owed Malcolm Lowell.” My brain whirred. “Because he was the one who brought you to the Masters’ attention.”
Ree smiled fondly. “I was younger then. My no-good husband had left me. My no-good daughter was already showing signs of being her father’s daughter. Malcolm started coming by the diner. Never was a man as good at seeing secrets as that one.”
Secrets. Like the fact that you had a homicidal streak.
“Malcolm saw something in me,” Ree continued softly. “He asked me what I would do if I ever saw Sarah’s father again.”