Chapter Eight #2
“She knows about the poisoned tea,” Evander says. “Did you hear that? ‘As if I’d touch the tea leaves here anymore.’ She literally said anymore.”
Laurie shifts, his face unreadable. “She wasn’t here.”
“But she could’ve sent the tea,” Evander says. “She came to Hazelthorn knowing she wouldn’t be drinking anything from the kitchen, but she shouldn’t even know about the poison if Dawes is telling everyone it was an aneurysm.”
“I’m pretty sure she’s a demon.” Laurie rubs absently at his brace. “Anytime I’m shipped off to her, it’s like living in hell. Grandfather banned all our relatives from Hazelthorn, not just her, but she acts like it was a personal attack.”
“So, she has motive for murder.” Evander is trying not to pace and flick his fingers, bad habits he’s been told to quell, but Laurie doesn’t cast him any scornful looks. “She talks about Hazelthorn like she’s owed it, like she’d do anything to have it.”
Evander hurries to his bed and snatches up a fresh index card. He dashes Oleander’s name onto the thick cardstock and thumbtacks it to the wall before he realizes Laurie has drifted over to view the scrunched-up papers of neurotic ramblings covering the bed.
He looks at the wall with its growing mind-map of evidence. “One of these for me?” he says with fake pleasantness.
Evander hesitates and then points to Laurie’s index card. The name has been gone over twice in thick, black marker, as if he has an addiction to the curves and angles of Laurence Lennox-Hall.
“Nice.” Laurie’s eyes are half-lidded and his drawl turns sarcastic. “I’m not playing detectives with you.”
“Good thing,” Evander says coolly, “I didn’t ask for your help.” Though he had been talking as if Laurie would be interested in his deductions. A mistake.
They aren’t friends.
They hate each other.
And Laurie is one of his top suspects. He’s not exactly going to offer to solve a murder if he’s covering his own tracks.
But at least with the way Laurie is talking, it sounds like he finally believes that there was a murder. That feels like something.
“I’ll go see how much of this historical house Oleander is planning to destroy,” Laurie says. “Have at it, Sherlock.”
But a sudden, ravenous urge pulls out of Evander’s chest and he cuts in front of Laurie to block his exit. It’s a reversal of that moment in the greenhouse, though Laurie’s reaction is only a raised eyebrow of dry amusement.
“Tell me the truth.” Evander’s words are sandpaper against his throat, and he’s gripping the marker so hard it leaves indents in his skin. “Why did you try to kill me that day? What did I—What did I ever do to you?” He hates how his voice cracks in the middle, hates his own wretched desperation.
There’s a flicker of something on Laurie’s face, the smallest crack in his veneer of complacency. Then his expression shutters again, and the bored amusement is back, playing with the corner of his mouth.
“You don’t remember?” he says casually.
“No.” Evander does his best not to snarl. “I still don’t have any memories before the—attack. I deserve to know why it happened.”
“There is no why,” Laurie says easily. “We played a game in the garden, you and me, and it went wrong and you got hurt.”
“So you tried to bury me alive to cover your crimes?” Evander stares at him, wanting—needing—to see guilt, remorse, anything.
But Laurie only stuffs one hand into his pocket, unbothered. “Sure. Something like that.”
What did Evander expect, anyway? That he would find loose threads in the flawless facade of Laurence Lennox-Hall and tug until the edges unraveled and showed the raw and tremulous truth beneath?
he’s lying he’s lying he’s lying
Maybe, but Evander can’t grab Laurie’s jaw and squeeze until bone cracks and truth slips out between the ivory splinters. He is drawn to him, repelled by him, and he can’t let this go.
“Why cover it up?” His voice is hoarse. “What game were we playing? If it was just some stupid mistake, why not run for help? I was screaming and you filled my mouth with dirt.”
Finally, Laurie’s smile drops. “Because whenever I fucked up, Grandfather would beat the living shit out of me as a kid. So.”
Silence closes over the room like a fist.
Evander presses his back to the wall next to his index cards of suspects.
He doesn’t know how to fit this information against the bloody throb of his heart.
It’s a lie. Mr. Lennox-Hall was nothing but kind to him, gentle as he smoothed back Evander’s sweat-slick hair during a raging fever or lifted him into bed after he fell out during an episode.
“I was ten,” Laurie adds, his eyes flicking around the room as if anything is more interesting than Evander’s discomfort. “My parents had just died. I wasn’t making the most logical decisions.”
“You were grieving … So you took it out on me.” Evander can barely get the words out.
Laurie shrugs one shoulder and then leans in suddenly, placing his good hand on the wall beside Evander’s head.
They are much too close, personal space invaded, and Evander sucks in a breath, trying to make himself smaller.
Get away get away—But part of him doesn’t want to.
If this is intimidation, two can play this game.
He glares at Laurie with hot defiance and thinks, for only a second, of pushing into him until the force of their collision makes him back off. But Evander isn’t yet that brave.
He also can’t help but notice Laurie didn’t say what game they had been playing.
“Just so you know,” Laurie says, his voice gone low and smoky, “that day in the garden? I wasn’t the only one at fault.” He twists his arm slightly to show his brace. “You’re the one who tore my tendon out with your teeth.”
A slow chill spreads up Evander’s spine, skeletal leaves dancing along his skin. He can’t think around the brambles growing sharp and wild in his head.
Laurie pushes away and strolls toward the exit, nonchalant and unaffected. He glances over his shoulder just once before disappearing out the door.
“Add your own name to the murder wall, Evander.”
A stagnant quiet is left in Laurie’s wake and Evander is alone with a bouquet of burned-up memories clutched in his fist as he stares at his index cards.
Another lie. It has to be. He didn’t do that.
But suddenly he can taste it again—lurid white tendon caught between his teeth as blood slicks his tongue, lush and wicked. And lovely.