Hazelthorn

Chapter Twenty #2

A snarl catches between his molars and he grinds it to dust before forcing himself to limp after her. At least she probably won’t try to murder him—on account of it being an unpleasant and dirty task—and maybe he can force her to give him some answers.

That is one thing he can cling to: his pathetic attempt to play detective. Then he can stop thinking—stop thinking stop thinking—about what he did to Carrington.

Though what is the point of searching for a murderer anymore? Maybe Byron Lennox-Hall got what he deserved after a lifetime of putting people in the ground to build his fortune. No wonder he locked everyone out and never left Hazelthorn. He didn’t want to share.

Hazelthorn is a blood-soaked monster.

And Evander is inheriting it.

He feels sick as he trails Azalea into one of the downstairs parlors, this one crowded with oppressive ebony hardwood furniture and deep green drapes, the wallpaper patterned with elderberry flowers.

A small, round table sits in the center of the Persian rug, and it’s been set with a silver tray of fresh fruit and soft-boiled eggs and sardines in an open tin.

Tiny dead eyes stare up at Evander as he slumps into the seat opposite her and watches her pour floral-smelling tea into a pretty little teacup.

Steam curls between them and he has the sudden urge to sweep everything onto the floor.

It could be poisoned.

He puts both elbows on the table and digs his palms into his eyes. For once, he’s not even hungry. He’s full, right up to his throat, with a thousand horrors.

“Talk to me, darling.” Azalea starts setting out little dishes and fussing with her toast. “Though I must urge you not to go swimming in that awful pool. I doubt it’s been cleaned for decades.

We used to play there as children, Locke and I.

” Her smile is fond, but reserved, as if something about the memory makes her uncomfortable.

The unfamiliar name cuts through Evander’s muddied fog. “Who’s Locke?”

“Oh, my brother. Laurie’s father. May he rest in peace.”

Ask questions. Now. He has nothing to lose.

“I know about the garden.” He leans forward, his voice shaking. “I—I—I know what you all are.”

Azalea’s expression remains serene as she uses a two-tined fork to stab at the sardines.

“Haven’t you always? It’s not much of a secret amongst the family, though of course you are but an honorary Lennox-Hall—” Her voice takes on a delighted, conspiratorial tone. “Unless that changes through marriage.”

Evander stares. He’s shaking with rage and fear and soaked to the bone, and he has no idea whose marriage she’s suggesting.

“I’m seventeen,” he says.

“Oh, well, adoption, then.” She smiles. “Marmalade on your toast?”

“I’m not hungry,” he grits out.

Azalea’s gaze flutters to him and then quickly refocuses on her arrangement of toast squares. “I have always wanted to adopt. It’s such a glorious, special calling and, truly, I would be a beautiful mother.”

He’s trying to peel his brain away from the fact she was about to frame this conversation around marrying him even though she knows how old he is. His skin wants to crawl off his entire body.

“Then why didn’t you adopt Laurie?” he snaps.

Azalea blinks as if this is the only bizarre part of the conversation. “Oh, well. We are not particularly close, I fear. He’s rather opposed to any sort of affection.”

All Evander can think of is the tender, reverent way Laurie held him after he’d run to his room last night. The way he seemed as hungry for contact as Evander was.

But thinking of Laurie makes something in his chest feel pulped down, so he lets out a slow breath and tries to refocus.

His nerves are feathered out, split and spliced, his mind a hurricane of everything he’s trying to hold in.

He knows Azalea the least, but he’s not foolish enough to think she’s harmless.

“Did you kill him?” He hates how rusty he sounds, hates how he keeps crashing straight into the most dangerous questions.

“Who?” Azalea pauses, butter knife poised above the butter.

“Oh, you mean Father? No, of course not. How does that benefit me?” She makes a dismissive noise, and somehow he believes her, despite the fact they’ve dropped pretenses of the aneurysm now.

“I have quite an agreeable life thanks to Father giving me a nice little allowance.” She says this as if it’s mere pocket money when she’s wearing a dress that must cost thousands.

“There is so much of the beautiful world to see—in first-class fashion of course, I’m not an animal.

Also, I was on a beach in the Maldives when I received the call from Dawes of Father’s tragic passing.

I have reservations, plane tickets, all of that. It’s easy to prove.”

She picks up a phone in a pearl-crusted case and taps at it for a few seconds before flipping it around to show airline tickets that put her in the sky while Byron lay dying.

Water drips off Evander and patters softly onto the carpet. He tries to read guilt or manipulation off her dreamy face, but he’s exhausted and he isn’t sure if he ever reads people right anyway.

“I’m quite happy to be abroad instead of here and I’m fairly certain Oleander wants Hazelthorn all to herself.

And you.” Azalea gives a small laugh as she sets down the phone, but there’s no humor in it.

“Listen, darling. Say you and I were to enter an arrangement. It could work nicely for us both. Adoption, marriage”—she waves a hand as if they’re the same thing while Evander glares daggers—“we could work it out and then I would take myself off on glorious, luxurious adventures and you could stay here, doing whatever you please. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?

Freedom.” She smiles, beatific, and leans back to pop a whole sardine into her mouth.

He thinks he hears the little jellied suck of the eyeball slithering down her throat.

“Of course,” she adds, “I would manage our finances.”

A tart taste stings the back of his mouth and he swallows hard, knowing she means she’d drain all of his inheritance and leave.

But is that even such a bad thing? He needs only Hazelthorn, wants nothing to do with the blood-soaked fortune Byron has cultivated.

Evander hates that he’s even considering her offer, but Oleander is obviously going to rule Hazelthorn and him with an iron fist and do nothing to stop Bane using the gardens to bloat himself with more wealth.

Bane is probably still out there, covered in Jessica’s blood.

“Think about it,” Azalea says sweetly.

If Evander was alone on the estate, no one would ever have access to the gardens again. He’d be sure of it. He could force everyone to leave. Bane, Oleander …

Laurie.

“When I turn eighteen, I’ll lock everyone out.” His voice is thick with unshed tears. “Forever.”

Azalea’s elegant mouth turns into a pout.

“Don’t take this so hard. I truly thought you knew about the gardens.

It’s a little barbaric, of course, but everything has its balance.

If we feed it a reasonable amount of blood, it gives us rubies, and quite frankly, we deserve that.

The unfortunate part is how it’s gone feral these last few years.

Father mentioned he was no longer feeding it since it was taking so much and giving back so little.

A little starvation to motivate it to behave, you know? ”

Evander’s stomach clenches.

Azalea taps the top off her egg with a silver spoon. Slick membranous liquid oozes out and puddles on her plate. It’s undercooked, but she barely seems to care. “But don’t worry. It’s not as if we ever feed the garden anyone important.”

It hits like a physical blow and he can hardly breathe around it.

Anyone. Important.

“It was unfortunate about Locke’s wife,” Azalea goes on, unconcerned.

“But she was such a miserable woman. When some people find out what the garden is like, they go a little mad. It took a lot of encouraging for him to tidy up that loose end and let the garden have her, but I still do not understand why he took it so hard and drove his car into the tree afterward. My poor, silly brother. I miss him.”

A dull roar slowly fills Evander’s ears; he is back underwater, putrid water sluicing from his mouth.

“No.” He is surprised how steady he sounds.

“Laurie’s parents died in a car accident with my parents.

They were all out together for the opera and dinner.

” He repeats it again, the words hollow and tasteless as he grips the table until his fingertips turn white.

“They were all in a terrible car accident.”

Azalea pops another spoonful of sloppy egg white into her mouth, long strands of it dripping off the spoon like gelatinous saliva.

“Well, I’m not sure who told you that, but Locke was alone in the car when he drove out of Hazelthorn.

It was, oh, eight, nine years ago now? He was highly strung, yes, but none of us suspected regret would hit him that swiftly.

Though I suppose the tip-off was that he left Laurie behind before he tore out of Hazelthorn like he’d lost his mind.

Which I suppose he had. I was touring Amsterdam when Father phoned me with the news and I just couldn’t take on Laurie at that point.

” Her sigh is full of curated regret. “He has … difficulties. It was better that Father raised him.”

The dull roar is growing to a spiraling scream in Evander’s head. “No, no, b-because my parents were in the car too.”

“Sweetie.” Azalea gentles her voice, but the saccharine lilt to it makes him choke. “I can assure you my brother died alone in that car.”

“Then how did my parents die?” he bursts out.

“I’m not sure.” Azalea plucks a finger of marmalade toast from her plate and there’s half a smile caught on her mouth. It feels mocking. “What was your last name again, dear?”

“It’s—” And he stops.

Everything inside him

stops.

It’s as if the too-fast beat of his heart has simply imploded like a soft dandelion head, his rib cage contracting to catch all the soft strewn seeds before they fly away.

In his mouth is nothing nothing nothing.

Evander—

Evander Nothing.

How could he forget his own last name?

No, he can’t freak out. He’s gone through hell in the last twenty-four hours and he’s had trouble with his memory since the accident—this is just him, spacing out for a second. Dawes must know. It must have been in the will reading.

Wasn’t it?

Azalea is chattering on, unconcerned even though he’s turned to stone. He barely takes in what she’s saying.

“—was adorable as a child.” She dabs at her lips with a napkin.

“He had certain behavioral difficulties at school, but Father didn’t want him coddled, so we just hoped he’d grow out of it.

Unfortunately, he turned into such a sour young man, so antisocial and sarcastic, but he used to be so lovely and bright.

Oh! And he had the cutest imaginary friend.

He combined his own names to give it a name. Isn’t that sweet?”

“His names.” Evander’s voice is dead.

His heart is not beating.

He can’t think.

He shoves out of his chair and strides for the door, ignoring a startled noise from Azalea.

“At least think about what we discussed!” she calls after him. “We would make a wonderful team, you and I! We could both have everything we wanted.”

He gets to the narrow back staircase before he starts to run for the north wing, his lungs full of black tar and his head throbbing.

Around him, darkness streams down the walls in ebony waves, and he can feel it soaking into the carpet, licking the undersides of his feet, laughing and laughing at him.

The halls have become too narrow, strangling.

He is nearly delirious as he crashes through his bedroom door and goes straight to his bedside table.

The photo frame was always his prized possession, the only thing he had of his family. But why? Why doesn’t he have more of his own things? Wouldn’t they have fetched his clothes, his toys, his books from his own home after Byron took him in?

my parents didn’t die in a car crash

what’s my last name

whatwhatwhat is going on—

He snatches the frame with dull fingers and stares at the rot speckled on the glass, the dust caked in the corners, the plastic smiles on their perfect faces.

The lack of him in the frame.

He hurls it at the wall.

Glass shatters in a delicate spray, the frame cracking as it hits the carpet with a dull thud.

He crouches, not caring about the sharp slivers nicking his fingertips.

The thin paper crumples as he tugs it free and it takes him a full minute of staring at the text on the back to understand what he’s seeing.

There’s half a recipe, an ad, an article about a celebrity’s dress.

He unfolds the photo that is not a photo and stares at the kitchenware his parents are holding that was hidden just out of the frame.

This was cut out of a magazine.

A stock photo.

Hands shaking, he stares and stares at the picture that used to bring him more comfort than anything in the world.

All he can hear is Laurie’s voice pounding inside his skull.

If you start unlocking doors, you might find things you don’t want to see. Or worse, you might wake up.

Evander lunges to his feet and staggers to his murder wall.

Vines still cover his floor from where Laurie yanked them from under the bed, but he doesn’t care about the poisonous blossoms or the impossibility of them growing in his room.

He is thinking only one thing as he yanks Laurie’s card off the wall so hard it rips.

He is riddled with despair, his next breath choked with something too close to hysterical laughter. This can’t be real.

Laurence Evan Alexander Lennox-Hall. He’d rattled it off when asked, though he’d been reluctant.

Evan

Alexander

Laurie named his childhood imaginary friend—

Evander.