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Chapter Thirty-Eight
Baxter
As soon as my beautiful bloodstained goddess has gone, I get to work quickly. I don’t have a lot of time, and this bitch beneath me is too stubborn to confess her sins without a little encouragement.
Dumping all of my used equipment into the sink, I quickly wash the worst off and cross to where I keep my poisons and other little helping hands. I take a syringe from the glass jar on the shelf and select a small glass medical vial from my collection. Nothing is labelled, but I know what and where everything is. I’m always meticulous like that. I pierce the top with the needle, turn upside down and draw the clear liquid into the syringe, filling it past what I really need. Can’t be too careful with these things.
When the syringe is fully loaded, I remove it from the bottle and return the vial to its rightful place on the shelf.
I cross back to Cordelia.
I refuse to give this woman any feeling but my loathing, but I have to admit that she has held up better than I expected. Not because she’s strong or anything admirable like that, simply because she’s a stubborn fucking stuck up bitch.
But that’s the beauty of it. The higher she sits, the further she falls. And I’m about to witness her fall from grace.
I take out my phone and hit record, before plunging the needle into her flesh and emptying it in one. I give it the requisite few minutes to enter her bloodstream and really start working, and then I wake her with a bucket of ice water over her head.
She splutters and groans, obviously really feeling what I’ve put her body through for the last however many hours it’s been. I don’t know, I can’t keep track. Having Raven in the room was such a distraction. But the best kind.
I turn my attention back to the almost-corpse on the table in front of me.
“Ready to confess?”
She glowers at me, stubborn to the very end, but I know that’ll soon wear off. Maybe the serum needs another minute. I bide my time fiddling with the music volume so that my recording doesn’t miss a thing she says.
“Let’s begin,” I say when the current song comes to an end and another begins. Ah, Façades, is there a more perfect confessional tune?
“Were you behind Lizzie’s death?”
“Of course,” she replies remorselessly. Usually, I would know that it’s the truth serum working, but I think this bitch is just that cold.
“Why?”
“I needed her gone. I need them all gone.”
“Who?”
“Charlotte. Her mother. Phoenix. The Deightons. Every last one of them.”
“Aren’t you a Deighton?”
“By marriage. I take my work very seriously.” She confirms my grandfather’s suspicions.
“You’ve been undercover this whole time.”
“Bravo. And they said those in The Order were smart. Took you all long enough.”
“Well, I hate to break it to you but Raven’s parents are alive,” I say. “And so’re Lizzie, Raven, and Nix so it looks like you’ve failed. Spectacularly.”
“Are they? Are you sure about that? When was the last time you saw or spoke to them?” She laughs, a cold, cruel sound which has me wanting to plunge every blade I own into her flesh. She splutters and chokes on the end of it, agony rippling through every line on her face. It does nothing to cool the fiery rage racing through my blood.
“And Lizzie? You knew she was alive.”
“She’s alive for now. Not for long. I never suspected until your grandfather let something slip. But it’s okay, I have people working on that. They’ll have her soon enough.”
I feel relief at the knowledge that Lizzie is okay. She’s out there somewhere, hiding from everyone, but at least she’s alive. My emergency message to Macerio must have been just in time. I’m infinitely grateful that I followed them from the hospital and struck a deal with him to keep Lizzie and his family safe from the repercussions of The Order, in exchange for maintaining contact with them. The single use burner phones were a touch of genius on his part, even though I hated lying to Raven, I knew I had to.
I trust Amelie with my life, but she’s bound more tightly by the rules of The Order than anyone, and so I can’t trust her with my family’s lives. Faking rage and confusion over their ‘disappearance’ was essential. Lying to Raven about it was heartbreaking though.
