by Cat Larson
What did he put in his mouth, and had he noticed me watching him do it? I wanted to ask but not if he wasn’t aware that I’d seen.
“Come on.” He waved me over. “You keep him from flopping over while I secure him.”
He never even asked me again about the rope. Think, Samm, think. At that moment, when Colin’s back was toward me, Gavin opened his eyes, and I gasped.
He closed them just as quickly before Colin swung around. “What’s the matter?”
I don’t know! I wanted to scream. “I… should I call Tommy? Maybe he can help with this instead.”
“Nah, we’ll be done soon enough. Then it’ll all be over.” Now, what did that mean? “Gavin planned to set you up, you know. Prove you guilty for the poisonings.”
“What?” I whispered, more to myself.
“He was going to have you take the fall for his actions.”
No… I heard him say he was taking responsibility for Penelope.
“In his eyes, you were an easy mark.”
Stop talking! I needed some solitude here.
“New girl back in town, figured he could claim you were getting revenge on Regina through Penelope, and then Jonny just happened to—”
Shut up! I drowned out his voice in my head. For someone who gave others a hard time whenever they talked to “Griffin’s girl,” he sure was talking a heck of a lot to her.
I slowly loosened the binding around Gavin’s hands, not even sure what I was doing or why I was doing it. I just knew I had to do it now! Colin was babbling away, derailing my train of thought, and I prayed my snap decision to follow my gut was the right one.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Colin’s eyes were on the slackened rope, and I blurted out, “Griffin?”
In that split second, I was pushed aside as Gavin’s fist connected with Colin’s head, snapping it back. No piddly split lip for him; he was down for the count.
It’d all happened at lightning speed. The first thought to cross my mind was: Wow, this guy has a whopper of a right hook. His arms weren’t even fully untied. The second thought came after he’d turned to the side and spat something onto the floor.
What in the devil is that?
Chapter Sixteen
“What is that?”
I fixated on the slimy green blades as if they were going to leap up and attack me. Then I grabbed the wooden leg that’d broken off from the easel I’d used to smack him over the head earlier.
“You wanted to explain. Then explain. You have two seconds.”
Gavin cast me a look. “It’s Goblin Grass.”
“And what is that?” I repeated.
“Water first,” he rasped.
I held up my makeshift baseball bat, still not convinced I’d done the right thing. The innocent guy could be lying on the ground, putting me in some serious trouble, but if I had made the wrong decision, what was there to do about it now?
Gavin shook off the rest of his arm bonds then started on his legs. “Stop!” I said. “I’ll get your water.”
He nodded toward a small fridge in the back room. “There’re bottles in there.” His lips twitched up. “But you do realize that I could easily untie myself, right?”
I showed him the wooden weapon. “Hence my protection.” I looked around at all the other easels I could dismantle if needed. “And there’s more where that came from.”
I looked at Colin. Unfortunately, it worked both ways. Gavin still had his fists too. I moved slowly, keeping my focus on him as I backed into the room. Luckily, the fridge was near the doorway.
With one eye on Gavin, I reached in and grabbed a couple of bottles, not realizing how parched I was until then. I rolled one over to him then cracked mine open while stepping out, keeping my distance.
“Thanks,” he said, chugging the entire thing in one go. I drank nearly half of mine while watching him. “If you don’t trust me that much, why’d you untie me?”
“I’m not sure. I’m still asking myself that. Maybe I shouldn’t have.”
“Oh, you should have.”
“Of course, you’d say that.”
“Your quick thinking saved two lives today. Thank you.”
“Unfortunately, thinking had nothing to do with it and—wait, two lives? Are you implying that Colin was going to kill both of us?”
“No, just me. But he was going to ruin yours by making it look like you were the one who did it. Which would’ve then been traced back to Penelope and Jonny. So, you would’ve been ending the day with three deaths to account for. Sounds like a ruined life to me.”
“Funny, he said you were planning on doing the same thing—frame me for Penelope and Jonny’s poisonings.”
“I know.” He pointed at my water. “You going to finish that? I have a wicked headache.”
I kicked it over to him. He guzzled that down too. All that liquid would have to come out sometime, but if he thought I was going to let him out of my sight to use the bathroom, think again, buddy.
“Where’d you get a swing like that anyway?” He rubbed his head.
“Where’d you get such a hard skull? You cracked the wood in half.” The purplish swelling on the side of his head was visible, and if he did end up being squeaky-clean, my conscience would also be taking one heck of a beating. I gestured to Colin’s prone body. “But I could ask the same to you, and you didn’t even need to use a weapon. Punching people must be your forte.”
I had the sudden feeling that if he’d wanted to take out Tommy in the pub, he could’ve done so easily.
“Hardly, Samm. Who knows if I would’ve even gotten the chance to hit him if you hadn’t distracted him first by mentioning Griffin.”
“Why is he so afraid of him?”
“Don’t know. You’d have to ask him.”
“Yeah, I’ll get right on that.”
What time was it anyway? The sun hadn’t set yet, but it felt like an entire week had passed by in slow-mo since first stepping foot into the art studio, but at the same time, it also seemed like the entire snafu had happened in the snap of a finger.
“Can I use your phone?” I asked.
He raised an eyebrow, sliding it over to me. “Can I ask what for? I’m not going to be like Colin and tell you not to call the cops, but shouldn’t you get your story straight first?”
“My story? You make it sound like I did something wrong and need a cover for it.” I actually just wanted the phone to check the time and also as a security measure, just in case I ended up needing backup. “And how’d you know Colin said that to me?” Gavin hadn’t opened his eyes until the very end.
“You may be a good shot, but I was only out for a moment.”
My eyes widened. “You only pretended to be dead to the world?” He nodded. “Whatever for?”
“A couple reasons. I wanted to see how things would play out, and if I would’ve come to right away, what’s to say you wouldn’t have whacked me again and put me out for real? And then the chances of you getting hurt would’ve increased considerably. No, it was better to have let things unfold as they did. If it would’ve gotten out of hand with Colin, then I would’ve figured something else out.”
“Hmm. That might have made a lot of sense if only I hadn’t found Colin gagged and handcuffed. He was hardly a threat.”
“He did that to himself.”
I laughed. “Yeah, okay.” I clutched the stick harder. Too bad the place stocked paint tubes instead of cans. I bet those things could pack one heck of a wallop.
“Samm, I speak the truth. When you first saw me, Colin was sitting freely in the back room, also probably just waiting to see how things would play out.”
“Who were you talking to on the phone?”
“Tommy.”
Hmm. “So, you’re claiming that Colin was just sitting there with a pair of handcuffs and a gag ready to go? How convenient.”
“I didn’t know he had cuffs on him at the time—they were likely going to be used on me late
r. Or that he put the key in the drawer to make it look like it was mine. The gag was just some nearby rag he grabbed. When you showed up and struck me it probably threw him off, but also due to his quick thinking, he was able to use the change of plans to his benefit. At least at first. Doesn’t look too beneficial for him now.”
“Do you realize how crazy that sounds?”
“Can you really say it’s any crazier than anything else you’ve dealt with before? Probably much less so.”
“Let me get this straight—you’re saying he did that to himself in the split second it took between clobbering you and finding him?”
“A split second? You really think you reacted immediately?”
I thought back, and no, I couldn’t say that with certainty. It was possible that I had dazed out for a while, wondering what to do next, but…
“Stop confusing me,” I said when in reality, I was confusing myself.
Colin twitched, scaring the bejeebers out of me, and I leaped up. He rolled over but didn’t appear fully awake yet. But then how would I know? He could’ve been a master faker just like Gavin. He turned back the other way, and grass fell out of his pocket.
Gavin gestured to his bound legs. “May I?”
“Uh, sure.” The fact that he was even asking when he could’ve done whatever he wanted was both strange and reassuring.
I stared at Colin, my stomach in tight knots. When my gaze returned to Gavin they released somewhat. “You planning on punching him again?” I asked.
Gavin stood. “No, just ensuring he doesn’t do any more damage.”
He grabbed Colin by his jacket collar, and I felt an odd urge to warn Gavin to be careful, just in case the immobile guy was pretending. My impulse to help Gavin was stronger than my impulse to help Colin. Maybe that meant something, maybe it didn’t. A fat lot of help my head was giving me so I was forced to resort to intuition. It was frustrating, to say the least.
Gavin dragged him into a space near the front of the studio that looked like a cubbyhole then closed it up. “Let’s see how much trouble he’ll get into in there.”
“And he’s your friend? What do you do to your enemies?”
“Friends don’t kill each other.”
I picked up some of the grass and rolled it between my fingers. “What did you call this—Goblin Grass?”
“Yeah.”
“Never heard of it.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to. You likely know it as Witch Bane. Although, if you couldn’t identify it by sight, then you probably wouldn’t—”
“Witch Bane?” I gawked at him. “Do you know where Violet is?” I blurted out.
His brows knitted. “Violet? No. Should I?”
My heart jackhammered my ribs. I was onto something. I was so close I could taste it, but yet I couldn’t quite grasp hold.
“Forget that for now.” I could only go off on one tangent at a time. I slipped most of the grass into my pocket, keeping one piece out to examine more closely. But it was like the spellbook—I could stare at it till kingdom come, but that didn’t mean I’d see it any differently. It still just looked like… grass. “What’s so special about this stuff?”
“It has several purposes. It’s used in games, lower dosages as a truth serum, higher ones can paralyze or cause death.”
I dropped it. “Now, you tell me?”
“I assure you; you have nothing to worry about. For one thing, it needs to be absorbed through the mouth. For another—you really have no clue?”
“If I did, would I be asking?”
“You just have nothing to worry about, that’s all. And don’t forget what I said about low doses.”
“Right, truth serum. So, I’m supposed to rest assured knowing you had some in your mouth earlier?”
“That’d stand to reason.”
“No, it wouldn’t since I don’t know if it even is a truth serum. And a game? Paralysis and death? No, thank you. I’ll stick with Tiddlywinks. As far as I know, no one ever got hurt by a flicked plastic disc.”
Gavin laughed. “Yeah, it’s quite the game. You don’t know the half of it.”
“No, I don’t.”
I scooted up against the wall and hugged my knees to my chest. The phone and broken easel were close to me, but I no longer felt the need to have them attached to my person.
“You haven’t even explained everything yet,” I said. “And you used up way more than two seconds.”
He eyed me carefully. “It’s pretty convoluted. You might think you want to know everything, but I’m not sure you really do.”
“Shouldn’t I be the one to decide that? You’re sitting here making Colin out to be the bad guy when I heard you confessing to Tommy over the phone and… Holy crud! You were holding Penelope’s sunglasses.” I’d almost forgotten about that little piece of damning evidence.
“I do hold myself accountable but not in the way you’re thinking. It’s my responsibility because I started the game, but I didn’t kill Penelope. As for Jonny, I’d bet anything that Colin had a hand in it, especially after witnessing his behavior today. I just can’t prove it. Not yet anyway.”
“Was that supposed to make sense to me?”
Bang bang bang.
Holy maracas… I clutched my chest. The sudden loud noises in rapid succession might as well have been a round of gunshots for how I’d reacted. Geez. Way to spook a girl out of her skin.
“You’re making a mistake!” Colin yelled from inside the cubby. But which one of us he was talking to, I wasn’t sure.
“I’ve got a handful of grass here,” Gavin said. “If you don’t shut your mouth, I’ll do it for you.”
Silence.
All right, then. “Is it fair to say that this so-called Goblin Grass caused Penelope’s death and likely Jonny’s as well?”
“Yes.”
“And since you called it a game, albeit a demented one, can I also assume you started it by daring her to eat the grass, like some twisted version of truth or dare?”
“More like Goblin Roulette. But no, your assumption isn’t accurate.”
“Goblin Roulette—what?”
He sighed. “If I explain things, do you promise not to respond until I finish?”
“Yes.”
Colin either kicked or hit the door but didn’t say anything. Both of us ignored him.
“All right. Every year we have the Goblin Games. It’s—”
“Hold up.”
“Well, that lasted long.”
“That was the third time you mentioned something about a goblin. Is that some kind of a code word?”
“No. As I was saying, we have an annual event called the Goblin Games. It’s basically a free-for-all the entire week leading up to Goblin’s Day. Lots of mischief, pranks, black humor, that type of thing. We end on April 1 by playing Goblin Roulette.”
“April Fools’ Day? How fitting.”
“Unless you’re a goblin, then it’s Goblin’s Day.”
Okay, this was just getting disturbing. Goblins? As in those monstrous little creatures with razor-sharp teeth?
My mouth popped open, but he spoke first. “Samm, if you want me to talk then you’re going to have to let me talk.”
I just glared at him. He kept saying “we,” but if he was a goblin, then I was a one-legged millipede.
“Whoever wins last year’s Goblin Roulette gets to pick next year’s games. And since I won last year, I got to decide what to do this year. The roulette rules are simple—whoever is bravest enough to eat the most Goblin Grass wins.”
“Brave? Don’t you mean stupid?”
“Samm.”
“Trying to poison yourself is a game to you?”
“You’re not a goblin; I don’t expect you to fully understand that part, but yeah, it is a game to us. It’s fun, and until this year, no one has ever gotten hurt before. At least not fatally.”
I didn’t comment because seriously?
“So, for this year’s games, I suggested doi
ng something different. Instead of messing with each other, I came up with the idea to… mess with you.”
“Me? You wanted to Goblin Grass me?” If he thought I was going to keep my mouth shut any longer…
He chuckled. “No, I didn’t want to ‘Goblin Grass’ you. That’s something only we do at the end of the week as a grand finale. I just wanted to make you think you were losing it.”
“Oh, is that all?”
“No harm was ever meant to come to you. You were just supposed to be our entertainment.” He gave me a half smile. “Tag, you’re it.”
I conjured up the nastiest look I could and shot it his way.
“Normally, you’d see right through our tricks, but since you came back to town in denial and all.” He shrugged.
Did everyone and their mother know my secrets?
“All I had to do was mention my idea once and everyone jumped at it. Especially Penelope. She took the whole thing and ran with it. I’m sure it was a way for her to avenge what you did to Regina.”
“What? I never did anything to Regina.” At least not outside of my head.
“Griffin loves you, and she knows it. Has always known it, even when they were together. That’s what you did to her.”
More stuff I wasn’t going to tackle at the moment. I thought back to everything Griffin had told me at Lou’s. “Do you know where she’s living now?” I needed to scratch her eyes out.
He gave me a funny look. “No, I don’t. Why?”
“Just continue with your story, please. I want to hear more about how you guys turned me into your personal cat toy.”
“I warned you you wouldn’t want to know everything.”
“Just continue.”
“So, Penelope set up this whole scheme that quickly spiraled out of control. She intended to make you believe that Regina was back in town in order to freak you out, and then she was going to pretend like she was dead just to play with your head further. She had Jonny go to the cops and report a conversation that you two supposedly had that wouldn’t even occur until later. All as a way to mess with you. Her goal was to get you to leave town so you’d be away from Griffin. I think Regina is still hoping for another chance with him sometime down the road, but that’ll only work if you’re not around.”