by Stella Hart
“I’m sure it’ll be great.”
“With the amount I’m paying him, it better be,” Edward said with a wry smile. He reached for a green and gold bottle that was sitting near him on the table. “Anyway, a friend sent this champagne to me earlier. Should we have a glass to celebrate us being together this evening?”
“Sure,” I said with a polite smile.
“Sorry we didn’t bring you anything,” Sascha said, suddenly looking stricken. “It’s your birthday. We should’ve—”
“Nonsense.” Edward lifted a hand to cut her off. “I told you on the phone—there’s no need to bring anything but yourselves. I get more than enough gifts from my acquaintances. Like this champagne, for instance.”
He winked at her before popping the cork off and pouring three glasses for us. I watched him take a sip of his own first, just in case, and then I took a slow sip myself. It was delicious.
I heard my phone vibrate in my purse a moment later. I surreptitiously checked it while Sascha and Edward discussed an eighteenth-century painter they both liked.
It was Nate. Everything going okay?
I sent back a brief response. It’s all fine. He doesn’t suspect anything.
“What do you think of his work, Alexis?” Edward said, looking over at me.
I hurriedly slipped my phone back into my purse and dropped it on the carpeted floor. “Um…”
“Lexie isn’t really into art,” Sascha said, coming to my rescue with a teasing grin. “She prefers books.”
Edward’s brows rose. “Oh, I see. Do you like Umberto Eco? I have some first editions of his in the library upstairs. I could show you later, if you like.”
I smiled. “That’d be great. I love his books.”
Now I had yet another excuse in my arsenal if he caught me poking around the mansion later. Oh, I was just looking for the library you mentioned earlier, I could say.
As the evening went on, I felt the tension in my shoulders releasing, my body uncoiling itself. It was all going better than expected. It seemed clear that Edward was ready to welcome Sascha and me into his life and home, so even if I didn’t find anything here during the party tonight, I could return on other occasions to look again.
Halfway through the second course, Sascha’s face scrunched up, and she moved one hand to her abdomen, shoulders gathering in.
“Are you all right, dear?” Edward asked, forehead wrinkling with concern.
“Not really,” she muttered. “My stomach hurts.”
“Have some water. That might help.” Edward poured her a glass from a pitcher and pushed it toward her. “What does it feel like? Is it an ache, or more of a sharp jabbing pain?”
She winced and swallowed hard. “Honestly, I feel the same way I did last time I got gastro,” she said.
Edward’s face fell. “I bet it’s that damn sauce. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted that man when he said he knew how to make it properly,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Sascha. I feel completely responsible.”
She forced a tight smile, still clutching her stomach. “It’s not your fault. A friend of mine has gastro at the moment. I probably caught it from her.”
Edward rang a little golden bell next to his plate. “I’ll have someone bring in an electrolyte drink for you,” he said. “It won’t make you feel better right away, but it’ll help.”
Sascha abruptly stood up, lips pressed together as if she were trying to stop herself from throwing up right on the table. “Actually, I think I should just go home.”
I stood up too. “Do you need me to come with you?”
She waved a hand. “No. Stay. You have a birthday cake waiting for you, remember?” she said with a weak smile. I could tell she felt awful for disrupting our dinner, which had gone swimmingly until now.
“I think I should come and take care of you,” I said.
She shook her head. “No, you probably shouldn’t be near me. I don’t want you to get sick too.” She turned to our grandfather. “I’m so sorry, Edward. I was really looking forward to the party.”
“No need to apologize. It’s not your fault you’re feeling sick,” he replied. “Let me call my driver. I’ll get him to take you home, and I’ll have one of the maids send over some soup later.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
He turned to me. “Is that all right with you, Alexis? Do you want to stay, or would you rather go home too? We can always reschedule our dinner.”
I bit the inside of my cheek as I considered it. The timing of Sascha’s sudden sickness was awful. I didn’t like the idea of being here without her, but at the same time, I wanted to look around the Paxton mansion as soon as possible. If I went home right now, it could be days before I was invited back. Maybe even weeks.
Sascha waved a hand at me, clearly sensing my uncertainty. “Seriously, Lexie, you should stay. Enjoy your birthday. You can bring me some leftover cake tomorrow if I’m feeling better, so I won’t totally miss out on everything.”
“The cake is choc-hazelnut,” Edward added. “Sascha told me it’s your favorite when we spoke on Thursday.”
I nodded slowly as they both stared at me, awaiting my answer. “Okay, I’ll stay. But I’ll call you in an hour to see how you’re feeling,” I said, looking at my sister.
“If it gets bad, just give me a call,” Edward said. “I might be old, but I’m still a doctor.”
A maid appeared in the doorway, responding to the bell Edward rang a moment ago, and they spoke in hushed tones to arrange the driver for Sascha. As they did that, I picked up my purse and got my phone out again so I could let Nate know about the change of plans.
Sascha is feeling sick, I wrote. She’s going home. Everything is still fine apart from that.
A red exclamation mark appeared next to my message a second later, letting me know that it hadn’t sent. My phone had lost service. “Goddammit,” I muttered, taking a few steps closer to the window. No bars appeared.
“Everything okay?” Edward asked, stepping up behind me.
I almost dropped my phone in surprise. “I was trying to send a message to my friend, but my phone is being weird.”
He let out an annoyed sniff. “This part of the house is terrible with service,” he said. “The ballroom is fine, though. You’ll be able to send messages once we’re in there.”
Dammit. There was no way I could run off to the ballroom right now. It would make it far too obvious that there was something going on with me. I had to wait.
I lifted one shoulder in a nonchalant shrug and nodded. “It’s no big deal,” I said, aiming for a casual tone.
Edward smiled and put a hand on my shoulder. “Should we see your sister out?”
“Sure.”
He directed us down a hall that led to the north side of the house. Directly ahead, a large Palladian door opened up onto a terrace. A black car was idling beyond that terrace.
Edward waved at the man inside the car before heading down to give him instructions on where to go. I helped Sascha into the back seat, even though she kept pushing me away and insisting that she might transfer her germs to me.
“I’m sorry for ruining the night,” she muttered near my shoulder as I leaned down to say goodbye.
“You didn’t ruin anything. You’re sick.”
She shrugged listlessly and turned her gaze to the front.
“I’ll call you later, okay?” I said.
She nodded and clamped a hand over her mouth. “We should probably go,” she murmured through her fingers. “Unless you want me to vomit all over the seats.”
The driver nodded and started the car. It meandered down the curved road that ran alongside the house before turning onto the main driveway.
Edward put a hand on my shoulder. “Well, it’s just the two of us now. We’re dropping like flies,” he said. “I hope Sascha recovers soon.”
“Me too.”
He gestured toward the house. “Shall we finish dinner?”
I nodded and followed him back into the ma
nsion. When we were back in the dining room, Edward picked up the champagne and held it above my half-empty flute. “Top-up?”
I shook my head. “No thanks. I should save some room for the party later.”
He chuckled and poured himself a new glass. “Smart thinking. Unfortunately, I love the taste far too much to resist it.” He took a sip before picking up his cutlery. “Anyway, I haven’t asked yet—how are your studies going at Blackthorne?”
I hesitated. “Honestly, not very well,” I said. “I’m probably going to have to drop this semester and redo it all in the spring.”
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. Do you mind if I ask why?”
“It was fine at first. I was doing well. But then…” I trailed off and hesitated again. “It got too stressful for me to be there anymore because of the Butcher copycat. One of the girls who died was my neighbor.”
Edward’s eyes widened slightly. “That’s terrible,” he said. “I hope they make an arrest soon.”
I smiled thinly and stabbed my fork into my meat. “Me too.”
“How has your mother taken it?” Edward asked. “You being at Blackthorne while these awful murders are going on, I mean. I can’t imagine she’s very happy about it after everything she went through ten years ago.”
I nodded. “She’s worried. After the bodies were found, she called and asked me to go back to California. But I wanted to stay.”
“I see.” Edward lowered his eyes to his plate and cleared his throat. “I, er… I want you to know that Deborah and I regret the way things turned out with your mother.”
“You do?”
“Yes. She was so young when she left, and we let her go. We thought it was some silly teenage rebellion thing. But then she never came back, and we were stubborn, so we didn’t try to contact her.” He let out a deep sigh and shook his head. “We shouldn’t have been so stubborn. I regret it every day.”
“Oh,” I murmured. I didn’t know what else to say.
He glanced at his watch. “We still have forty minutes until the party guests start to arrive, so if we finish our dinner quickly enough, I can take you up to see her old bedroom. We never touched it after she left, so it’s still decorated the way it was when she was a teenager back in the 80s.”
“Wow. That sounds cool.”
My left thigh suddenly started to prickle with pins and needles. I winced and reached down to give it a light slap under the table.
Edward looked at me curiously. “Is everything okay?”
“It’s just my leg,” I replied. “You know when you sit in the same position for too long and you start to feel weird and tingly?”
He nodded. “It’s nerve compression. Just shake it a bit. That’ll remove the pressure.”
I tried to do what he said, but my left leg wouldn’t budge. It seemed as if the connection between my brain and body had been severed. “What the hell?” I muttered.
My right leg was tingling now, and within seconds it was just as immobile as the left. It felt like my lower body didn’t belong to me anymore; like it had been transplanted from another person.
Edward looked over at me again. “Is something wrong, Alexis?”
I stared down at my lap, pulse racing. “I… I think so. I can’t feel my legs.”
“What do you mean? Have they gone numb?”
“No. I can’t move them. It’s like… I’m paralyzed.”
He nodded slowly. “Ah. It’s probably the sedative I gave you.”
I lifted my chin and stared at him, certain I’d misheard him. “What?”
“The sedative,” he repeated calmly. He paused to slice up a potato with his knife and fork. “It’s the strongest kind available. A few drops of it could knock out a horse.”
My stare turned into a mask of frozen horror. “I… I don’t understand.”
“I would explain, but judging by the symptoms you’re displaying, you don’t have enough time to hear the whole story.” He took a small bite of his food, chewed it, and swallowed it, face remaining coldly impassive the entire time. Then he looked at me again. “Don’t worry, dear. It won’t take much longer.”
His words bounced around in my skull as pinpricks of discomfort built in my arms, filling me with a hollow terror.
“Please tell me what’s happening,” I said in a ragged voice.
Edward smiled. “Like I said, I really don’t have time,” he replied. “You’ve got about one minute left until you lose consciousness. Maybe two or three, if you’re a real fighter.”
I could feel the paralysis taking complete possession of me. My limbs were motionless, and I couldn’t blink. I couldn’t see properly, either. Whenever I tried to focus on anything, the details were shaky and juddery, like an old film coming off its reel.
“How did you drug me?” I managed to say in a panicky whisper. “We ate the same food.”
Edward picked up my half-empty champagne flute and swirled the bubbly yellow liquid around. “You drank it, my dear.”
“But we drank the same stuff. I watched you pour it,” I said. “And I only had half a glass. You had half a bottle.”
His thin lips stretched into a cruel smile. “The sedative was in the glass. Not the bottle.”
My heart was pounding so hard my chest ached, and I heard deep, gasping breathing that I soon realized was my own. It was getting harder and harder by the second to fill my lungs. “Please…” I choked out. “Stop it.”
“I can’t.” Edward glanced at his watch again. “Go to sleep, my dear. It’ll be over soon.”
My forearms and hands were the only part of me that I could still move. I tried to use them to pull myself forward so that I’d fall off the chair and land on the carpet below. That way I could drag myself to my purse and get my phone. With any luck, I’d have a bar of service again, like I did earlier in the evening when my texts to Nate were still sending.
Edward sighed as he watched me drag the dead weight of my body forward, painstakingly slowly. “Just give up, Alexis.”
I was fading fast. I’d never make it off the chair before I lost consciousness.
In a last ditch effort to save myself, I brought my hand to the edge of the table and used it to flip open my Fitbit watch. If I could somehow hit the digital interface at the right angle, it might turn off or do something else that Nate would find suspicious if he checked the app on his phone.
Before I could try to hit the digital face, my hands lost their ability to move, and they fell into my lap, limp and useless. I tried to draw enough breath for a scream, but a raspy moan escaped my mouth instead. My vision was turning dark, and my lungs felt as if they were on fire.
I gasped once, and then everything swirled into oblivion.
17
Nate
I leaned back in my car seat and smothered a yawn as I scrolled through my phone. Alexis hadn’t texted me in half an hour. I could only assume that meant things were going well.
Some movement on the Paxton estate caught my attention a moment later, and I glanced upward and squinted through the windshield. A black sedan was heading down the driveway.
Curious, I used the zoom function on my phone camera to get a closer look. Even though the driveway was well-lit by spherical lamps on white pillars, I couldn’t see who was inside the car because the windows were tinted.
It skidded to a stop just outside the gates. The back door on the left side opened a few seconds later, and a tall young woman stepped out, clutching her stomach. It was Sascha, Alexis’s sister.
She fell to her knees and puked all over a garden bed that lay by the side of the gate. Then she got back up on shaky legs and returned to the car. It started up again, and soon all I could see were its red taillights as it drove into the night.
I went into my message folder, assuming Alexis would have texted me if she or Sascha decided to leave, but there was nothing there.
I sent a quick text to her. Just saw your sister leave. She threw up in a garden on the way out. Is everything o
kay?
She didn’t reply.
I checked the Fitbit app on my phone to see where she was. The location data told me she was still at the Paxton estate. She definitely hadn’t left with her sister.
I pressed my lips into a flat line and leaned back in my seat again, figuring she was simply too busy to contact me.
Knowing Sascha and her mental state from everything I’d overheard on the bug I put in her and Alexis’s city apartment a few months ago, she’d probably had far too much to drink and started to embarrass herself at the dinner. Now she was probably headed home for some sappy TV dramas, a few tears on the couch, and a raging hangover in the morning.
That meant Alexis would have to carry the rest of the evening on her own. Hopefully, she could manage that easily enough.
When we first made the plan for tonight, I told her I didn’t like the idea of her being totally alone in the Paxton house, but she eventually convinced me that it was fine, because there was no way her grandparents could have any idea what she was up to. I had to agree in the end. How could they possibly suspect a thing?
I returned to scrolling through websites on my phone to stave off the boredom. Every so often, I looked up at the estate to see if anything new was happening, but everything seemed quiet and normal.
An hour drifted by. Cars began to arrive, snaking up the driveway one after the other. Clearly, the birthday party was about to kick off.
I sent another message to Alexis. Let me know how things are going.
I waited five minutes, but she didn’t reply. Frustrated, I sent another message. Guessing things are going well, and you don’t have much time to check your phone, but when you get this, please let me know you’re okay.
Another twenty minutes crawled by without any response from Alexis. Her Fitbit still said she was in the Paxton house, though.
“Fuck it,” I muttered to myself. I dialed her number and waited for it to ring, but it didn’t. It went straight to voicemail.
My heart thudded as dread filled my veins with ice-water. Alexis wouldn’t turn off her phone for no reason, and there was no way that the battery had died. I bought her a portable charger yesterday just in case it started to run low on power, because I knew it had a shitty battery life.