Chapter Ten
TEN
There is something wrong with him, with how hungry he is.
Evander has been trying not to think about it, smothering the flickering panic in the back of his head with soothing platitudes that almost make sense.
Withdrawal from his meds has probably stoked some long-suppressed hunger.
Or maybe he’s having a growth spurt. He can’t stop thinking about the grooves his teeth would make against a supple, fleshy thing.
When he reaches the formal dining room, he’s wound himself into a twitchy, ravenous ball of electricity and the urge to scrape free of his own body as if it’s a chrysalis is hard to ignore.
Get through this dinner. Then he can crawl between cool sheets and lie still until his skin feels less like it’s about to flake off his bones in hot, dry scabs.
Laurie has packed himself back into his box of apathy, as if his mouth hadn’t been inches from Evander’s ear moments before as he whispered, Or worse, you might wake up. He is gasoline poured into Evander’s open mouth of flame, and the worst part is how he likes the taste.
An immense table stretches before them, blackened oak polished to the glossy sheen of a reflective lake, and dozens of thick red candles line the middle with bloody rivulets of wax dripping down their sides.
At the far end, Oleander stands abruptly, her chair giving a clawed shriek that makes Evander jump and Laurie flinch.
She scowls as she yanks out the seat at the head of the table.
It takes Evander a full minute to understand it’s meant for him.
“Tardiness is unacceptable, Laurence. I’ve told you this before.” Oleander’s pursed lips are slashed in a deep shade of mauve that matches her evening gown. She is a slice of bloodied meat with fangs out, nails tapered to points made for pinning down helpless mice.
“Shockingly,” Laurie says, “it was the little lordling who slowed us down.”
“Do not talk back,” Oleander snaps.
Laurie rolls his eyes and stands aside with a mock bow to let Evander go first.
It feels like a trek to a sacrificial altar.
He walks in dead silence, his shoes clacking oddly on the floorboards, as the black table stretches on and on.
It could sit thirty people, maybe forty.
Above, cobwebbed chandeliers flicker, most of the bulbs blown out under layers of dust, and the deep forest walls make the room seem airless and constricted.
Only four places have been laid: white crockery against crisp white napkins, a terrifying amount of forks and knives on each side of the plates, crystal goblets studded with rubies and filled with a sticky, plum-colored wine that clots against the glass.
He sits. Oleander smiles down at him and rests an elongated claw on his shoulder.
“Good boy,” she says, and then takes her seat at his right.
He is ridiculous sitting here at the head of the table. The imprint of Byron Lennox-Hall simmers beside him, insulted at this insubstantial replacement whose fingers are tapping the underside of his chair to soothe some of the fractious energy pulsing through him.
Oleander picks up a tiny silver bell and rings it so hard Evander’s ears sting. A server in a black waistcoat appears out of nowhere with pearly bowls of soup that he lays one by one before each place.
Laurie collapses into his chair to Evander’s left. “Is Jessica eating with us?”
Oleander looks offended. “That setting is for Benedict Dawes, who should be here by now. I need to make sure he’s in contact with my own lawyers to send them a copy of the will. I cannot believe, by the way, that he would do the reading without me present. Where is—Jessica? Jessica!”
A server sets a bowl down before Evander, an oily, unappetizing sheen staring back at him with lumpy white shapes bobbing beneath the surface.
Jessica hurries into the dining room, still clasping her clipboard and looking exhausted already.
“Did you fetch Mr. Dawes?” Oleander barks.
“I’m so sorry, ma’am,” Jessica says. “He declined the invitation to dinner.”
“I have told you,” Oleander says steadily, “that empowered women do not retreat in the face of failure. Do you not wish to feel empowered?”
Jessica mumbles something that sounds like she would rather quit her job, but she clears her throat and says, “I’ll inquire again.” She drags herself from the room.
“It is impossible to find good assistants these days.” Oleander sniffs and lifts her wine.
It slides into her mouth in a slurry of sluggish gulps and Evander watches in wide-eyed revulsion. No way is he drinking anything at this table.
He chooses a spoon, casts a sideways look at Laurie, who raises one eyebrow, so he picks a different one.
Laurie pokes at his soup with the tip of a silver knife. “What’s in here? The cook’s own sweat and blood?”
Oleander ignores her nephew and zeroes her icy gaze in on Evander, measuring him up like he’s the next course.
“I shall hire a valet so you have someone to keep you respectable at all times. He can escort you to and from your room so you don’t get lost.” She casts Laurie a nasty look, and he smiles back, all teeth.
“You’re an ill little thing, so I shall take due care of your health. ”
Spiders have nested in Evander’s gut and he doesn’t know what to do, what to say to her, so he swallows the first mouthful of soup. As soon as the salty broth hits his tongue, his cavernous hunger roars to life. He’s left breathless by it, frenzied, unable to slow down the dip of his spoon.
Laurie watches him with a complicated frown and taps his knife idly against his wine until Oleander snaps her fingers and the server removes the glass.
The next course is served, a blackberry and feta salad with thin dill-and-salmon crepes twirled into the shape of a rose.
Evander eats everything, the sour vinaigrette making his eyes water and the salmon slipping down his throat like a detached tongue.
Everything is oily. He has never tasted so many new things all at once.
“You can ask me for anything, Evander.” Oleander reaches out to lay a hand over his, her skin so moist it’s hard to hold back his shudder.
He tries to slide away, but her nails close around his wrist like a vise.
“I shall be what Byron was to you. A guardian. A grandmother.” Her eyes are bright, her voice a low, rusty croon.
“I know he was very fond of you and I shall make sure everything remains as it was so you won’t have to worry about the care of this complicated estate and all its tedious demands. You can recover in peace.”
“It’s funny how sick he doesn’t look.” Laurie drums his fingers on the table, his voice a bored drone, but his eyes pin Evander to his chair.
The server whips Evander’s empty dishes away and sets down a plated steak, thick and juicy with salt flakes and thyme crusted on top. He should feel full, but his stomach is a bottomless well.
He can’t remember the last time he ate meat.
“What are you doing?” Laurie says, fake pleasant, but he’s staring directly at Oleander.
She ignores him and leans closer to Evander, her sickly sweet perfume throttling him with roses and bergamot. “As your new guardian, I will take such, such good care of you.”
Suddenly, everything is too much. She is too close, the candles are too hot, the steak is bleeding out on his plate like a freshly cut throat. Sweat beads on his brow and the room gives a sickening spin, but he has to focus.
If he wants to find a killer, he has to ask questions.
Talk. Even if he has to reach down into his own lungs and pull each syllable out one by one.
Words have always sat like dead moths and dried flowers in his mouth, unheard because no one is ever interested in what he has to say.
He is not clever; he is not poetry. He is just a boy who speaks too bluntly when what he wants most is to figure out which pretty, magical words will finally make him understood.
He thinks of a coffin half-buried, crumpled pages of a will sticking out from the cracked-open chest of Byron Lennox-Hall as his decaying skin sloughs off his bones.
Evander tries to breath slowly, steady himself, as his eyes lock on his plate. Don’t look at her. It’s easier this way. “Why did Mr. Lennox-Hall ban you from Hazelthorn? How much money do you have? And are you familiar with any botanical poisons?”
Oleander releases his wrist and draws back with stiff indignation.
Laurie outright laughs. It is a quick, singular sound and it surprises Evander into looking up.
“What impertinent things to say.” Oleander’s nostrils flare. “Who put you up to this?”
They’re well-thought-out questions, actually, and relevant to his investigation, though he’s trying to decide if her hostility can be chalked up to guilt. He should’ve brought his notepad.
He swallows hard, feeling untethered but determined to plow on. “Well, then why do you want to be here so badly? If you’re poor, it makes sense why you want Hazelthorn.”
“I am not—The absolute disrespect!” Oleander cracks a palm against the table and Evander’s bravery scatters as he withers back against his chair.
“You wanted him to talk.” Laurie leans back in his chair, delighted. “Behold, he speaks.”
“Mark my words, Laurence,” Oleander hisses, “you will be receiving firm discipline from me to fix that disrespectful, lazy attitude, or I will pack you off to military school.”
“Sounds fun,” Laurie drawls.
Evander cuts into his steak, knowing he’s holding the knife and fork wrong, but he can’t copy Laurie because he hasn’t touched his plate. Evander is only used to eating oatmeal while perched in his window seat with a book propped open. The steak bleeds in his mouth.
“You want him gone, don’t you, dear?” Oleander all but purrs as she stares down Evander. “I know what he did to you.”
Panic flutters in his chest and he looks at Laurie from the corner of his eye, hating how the candlelight bastes his cheekbones in a high gloss and turns his eyes to liquid, luminous oceans. He is beautiful without trying.
Sweat runs in a straight line down Evander’s chest and he has the mad impulse to strip off his jacket, his shirt, anything to cool down.
A sick roil spins his stomach and he should push the steak away, but somehow he’s still hacking at it with a slippery grip on his knife.
Blood flecks his knuckles. It’s barely seared.
It’s raw. He downs a sliver without chewing.
Then suddenly his plate is being lifted, the server’s white-gloved hand a blurry flash in front of him, and he’s left staring at the empty table, his tongue stained with copper and the fork dangling uselessly from his slender fingers.
“You may have that back,” Oleander says sweetly, “once you answer me with courtesy.”
“You mean, give you the answers you want.” Laurie still hasn’t touched his steak.
He slouches in his chair at an indolent angle, one leg draped over the arm, his fingers toying with his knife as his food grows cold.
“Why don’t you try striking him across the face, too, Auntie? Heard that works a charm.”
Evander swallows thickly. A throbbing beat marches through his head, each pulse dislodging his focus. He should be analyzing Oleander, questioning her further, but all he can think of is the undercurrent to what Laurie just said. If, perhaps, he is talking about how she treats him.
Fury seeps into Oleander’s eyes. “That’s enough.”
“Stop entertaining the delusion you’re going to keep Hazelthorn.
” Laurie sticks his knifepoint into the table and spins it.
“You don’t deserve this place and it doesn’t want you.
This is my inheritance.” Then he looks straight at Evander and there is something too bright and terrible in his eyes.
“I want Hazelthorn. I’ve always wanted Hazelthorn. ”
It feels like a threat or maybe an invitation to fight. Maybe Laurie longs for split knuckles and an eye purpled with the imprint of a fist, for pain to drown out the apathy that smothers his lungs.
Evander’s breathing too fast, his hands trembling around his cutlery.
The fact that all he can think of is getting his plate back is disgusting.
This isn’t him. But his brain feels sucked out like the moist flesh within an oyster shell, and all he manages to say is, “Laurie can stay. I … I want him to stay. Please can I eat? I’m sorry.
” The last part is a whisper, in case that’s what she wants to hear.
Oleander nods to the waiter to return Evander’s plate, and his relief is palpable as he hurries to saw off another strip of meat congealing in its own oily juices.
“See, is that so hard? Respect is all I ask for.” Then she snaps her fingers at Laurie. “As for you, leave my table. You can go to bed without dinner.”
“With pleasure.” Laurie scrapes back his chair. “Try not to swallow Evander all at once. I have a feeling he’s the kind of wishbone that will stick in your throat.”
He walks out with careless disregard, one hand tucked into his pocket, the other hanging limply at his side.
Evander doesn’t know why he didn’t consider all of this before: a cut tendon, fingers constantly curved against the hard confines of the wrist brace, a scream that went on for eternity.
Understanding comes in a quicksilver rush.
Laurie never uses his left hand for anything.
He couldn’t cut his steak and he’d never ask for help.
Oleander ordered this meal to be served knowing Laurie couldn’t eat it.
A snarl of a smile stretches Oleander’s lips. “Evander, look at me. Evander.” Demand tightens her voice. “I said look at me.”
But he’s staring at his empty plate, wondering if he can lick it, wondering if he’s about to vomit or ask for more. Red wax spills from the candles and pools on the table, and his face stretches like an eyeless ghoul in the reflection of the over-polished oak. He is a distortion, he is a wildness.
He will not lose Hazelthorn to any of them.
It’s his now.
This is all his.
He decides it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks, and licks his plate.