Chapter 29
HATCH
My heart aches as I watch Lucy’s carefree smile widen from across the Sweet Tea Bakery.
It’s been half an hour since she finally stopped throwing up, and now she’s sitting with Duchess at a white-painted iron table that looks like it belongs on a garden patio instead of indoors, which is fitting because the rest of the shop feels like someone trapped spring inside a living room.
Faux vines climb the walls beneath clusters of white roses, their petals too perfect to be real.
The furniture doesn’t match, with floral armchairs beside iron and wood tables, antique sideboards displaying grainy photographs of two strawberry-blonde girls.
Mismatched teacups crowd every available surface, and an old cream-colored sofa rests beneath a window framed with lace curtains.
Small crystal chandeliers hang from the haint-blue ceiling, casting faint rainbows over glass pastry cases and stacks of books that look both decorative and well-loved.
At the moment, the lights are dimmed per Chef’s suggestion. Apparently, once Smoke finally wears off, the world comes back like a rock concert. Too bright, too loud, and every unpleasant smell vomit-inducing.
A.K.A. a hangover from hell.
But to help stave that off, we came here. The bakery smells like warm sugar, and the honey-ginger tea is probably the only reason Lucy didn’t spend the remainder of the hour over a trash can instead of licking cherry filling from a tart.
She laughs at whatever Duchess just whispered, and the tinkling sound slams into me. I press a hand against my chest and rub the ache there.
“She’ll be okay,” X says quietly beside me.
My fingers curl into a fist.
“It’s true,” Chef adds from behind the counter. “Fresh air. Food. Sleep. She’ll be good as new by morning. My wife’s tea even prevents headaches.”
Fun fact, everyone in this goddamn building except me and Lucy knew that “Smoke” is just another variant of Pining. A drug that behaves completely differently depending on the method and quantity of how it’s absorbed.
In The Rabbit Hole’s case, it causes euphoria and heightens your senses while lowering your inhibitions until you’re spilling pieces of yourself you never meant to share. The perfect drug for a strip club owned by a man who’s obsessed with information.
And, as it turns out, if you pump enough of it into a room and lock someone inside, it’s just as bad as forcing them to smoke it themselves.
Which means Castle poisoned my girl. Even if Lucy hadn’t already told me that someone drugged her as a child, I’d kill him for that alone. Combine that with the state I found her in with Frog?
“They’re all dead,” I mutter.
“I don’t blame you,” X agrees through gritted teeth, the content expression he wore just a second ago while watching Lucy and Duchess completely gone.
Chef shakes his head.
“I’ve been with the man for years. I’ve never seen him force anyone into Smoke & Mirrors. He runs a strip joint, but everything is about consent.”
“Seriously, Chef.” I drag my hand through my hair. “If you defend him right now, you’re making my list too.”
“No. You misunderstand me.” He levels me with a glare and shakes his head so hard a short gray curl escapes its pomade-hold and falls over his forehead. “I refuse to work for a man who would do such a thing. But I want to know why this happened before I start digging graves.”
Okay. That I understand, and wholeheartedly plan to do.
“Yeah, I’d like answers too. But that comes second to me fucking them up.”
“Good.” Chef huffs and goes back to wiping down the bakery’s counter.
There’d been icing smears and tea stains across the white surface when we first came through.
Crumbs littered the floor, and a cooling rack with an abandoned tart sat forgotten near the register.
As soon as he ushered us in here, Chef took one look around, winced, and immediately went to work cleaning.
Up until this point, he’s mostly either ignored us or assured us that his wife, who owns the place, had to close the shop suddenly because of a headache.
I, for one, couldn’t care less about the mess. I’m just grateful that Lucy had a safe place to land.
After Lucy stopped having to huddle over the trash can, Chef opened the hidden door connecting the kitchen to the bakery and helped get her calm and settled without asking questions.
Ever since then, she’s been sitting at that table happily licking cherry filling from an entire pie plate full of tart while downing honey-ginger tea.
Doesn’t sound like a great flavor combination to me, but Lucy seems positively delighted by both, so I’ll take it.
She giggles, then darts a conspiratorial look from Duchess to me and back again. The move is childlike and innocent in a way that makes it clear she’s not totally herself yet, and her eyes are still red and glassy despite her smile, making me murderous all over again.
I blow out a breath and rake my fingers through my hair before forcing myself to look away.
“You really think she’ll be okay? I thought she’d be…” I glance back at her grinning at something Duchess just said. “I don’t know. Traumatized?” A harsh laugh escapes me. “I know I fucking am.”
There’s no way I’m ever forgetting what I saw when I first stepped into that room.
Chef’s expression softens. “My sister-in-law never remembered a thing when she was that gone.” He dries his hands on a towel, then pushes open the kitchen’s door. “Alice will be upset when she tries to piece it together, but she won’t have to be upset because of a memory.”
“Small mercies,” I mutter as he leaves us to probably go clean in the kitchen too.
Then a thought hits me. I look to X. “The other rooms. Does Castle pump Smoke into those too?”
X took his balaclava off when he arrived with Duchess about ten minutes ago, so I can see him roll his lips between his teeth, hesitating while reading me before finally answering.
“The Flower Room can get some spillover.”
My stomach drops.
“But the others are usually fine. Especially if you close the vents.”
I try to think back on everything Lucy and I have done in moments that I shouldn’t have tried to steal.
We didn’t let things get too far in the Flower Room before X interrupted us.
And in the Sugar Room, I distinctly remember Lucy messing with a switch at the back of the room.
If I’m not mistaken, the air conditioning had cut off right after she disposed of my syringe.
The tightness in my chest eases, because thank fuck we knew exactly what we were doing. If last night had only been possible because she was drugged? After I carved Frog’s dick off, I’d have added mine to the pyre.
I exhale slowly. “Well, on that note, I’m gonna need you to delete two more videos. Tonight’s and… one from last night too.”
I did my best to shield her from the cameras I spotted in the Sugar Room, but I want any footage gone for good measure.
As for the Mirror Room? Not even God could help anyone who sees that escape my wrath.
“Yeah, of course.” X pulls out his phone, then waits for more information.
“The Sugar Room.” I scratch my jaw. “I don’t want anyone else seeing us like that.”
The implication of what we did hangs in the air, but I refuse to be apologetic about it, not even to the guy who’s into her.
Interestingly enough, though, he doesn’t seem fazed. He simply swipes through his phone to get to the app.
I can’t help the question that comes out.
“You don’t care?”
He frowns. “About…?”
“About me and Alice.”
The snort he makes catches me off guard.
“Why would I care? I mean… I’d prefer you just do your job instead of bang it out on the clock.
But it’s not like you haven’t been reliable—well actually, you really haven’t been all that reliable.
” He laughs out loud before stepping back to give me a onceover before grinning like a smug bastard.
“But, dude, you really believed I had a thing for her?” He shakes his head.
“You’re either paranoid or delusional. We’re friends.
I see her as a sister. Hell, I see all the girls in the Hole as mine to protect.
I take that shit seriously. There’s only one that’s anything more than that,” he says slowly, his gaze drifting to the side. “And it’s definitely not your Alice.”
The fondness on his face absolutely doesn’t look like a brother-sister relationship, and I follow his eyes to where Lucy’s sitting.
She’s given up on using her tongue and has switched to a small spoon to scoop and scrape out the last of her tart while Duchess talks animatedly with her hands.
From here, the scene plays out like a normal night between best friends, which admittedly worries me.
Lucy seems too okay after what she’s been through.
Which means the Smoke still has her firmly in its grip or she’s been through some major shit in the past.
But her sunny disposition is comforting too. At least in a I-hope-when-the-other-shoe-drops-we-don’t-all-get-squished kind of way.
Duchess reaches over and steals the last bite of tart. Lucy gasps in mock outrage and smacks her hand while Duchess grins around a mouthful of cherry filling.
X chuckles, and the look on his face says he’d happily stand right here watching them for the rest of his life.
No. Not them.
Oh.
“Duchess?” I ask.
His lip kicks up in a sideways grin, but he shrugs.
“Officially? No. No boyfriends in the Hole.”
“And unofficially?”
His expression softens into something so open and so vulnerable, I feel guilty for asking while I still hold so many of my own cards so close to the vest.
“Unofficially…” His gaze drifts back to her. “She’s my world.”
Then his eyes return to mine. “Which I have a feeling you get.”
A lump forms in my throat.
Lucy’s laughing again. Her cheeks are flushed from the lingering effects of the Smoke, and her hair is a complete mess. But she’s alive. She’s safe. She’s smiling, and some of those smiles are for me, a gift I thought I’d lost the chance at ever receiving.
“Yeah,” I admit. “I get it. More than you know.”