Chapter 61
WREN
“I DON’T GIVE A SHIT, fuck face. I bought a bowler hat and I need to wear it. End of story.” Pax throws back the remains of his beer and tosses the bottle so that it spins in the air, spraying amber liquid from its mouth as it flies end over end toward the trash can. Dashiell visually reprimands him with a trademarked Lovett family frown of disapproval. Pax ignores the look, smirking like a bastard when the bottle finds its mark and clatters loudly into the receptacle on the other side of the kitchen.
“Alex has hair in A Clockwork Orange. You’re gonna look nothing like him.” Holding his beer bottle to his lips, Dashiell drinks, his throat working. I sit on the stool by the breakfast bar, saying nothing, brooding, glowering at each of them in turn to make it clear how little I’m enjoying this.
“Oh, ye of little imagination. If I can get a bowler hat, you don’t think I can find a fucking wig?”
“It’s ‘Oh ye of little faith,’ you heathen. And all I’m saying is, that costume parties are for kids. And Halloween. At no other time should people on the verge of adulthood voluntarily want to play dress up.”
“Come on. Don’t be a prick. Girls always wear the sluttiest outfit they can find at a costume party. Aren’t you jonesing for a little T & A? It must have been, what, five years since you got your dick sucked?”
“Funny.” Dash grins sourly at him. “Wren, we’re at odds here. You have the deciding vote, mate. What do you say? Should we have an adult party, where the attendees can wear their normal clothes like big boys and girls, or should we have an infantile fancy dress party?”
I glance up from the laptop screen in front of me, waiting for him to see just how annoyed I am by this whole thing. He just stands there, waiting patiently for me to offer him my opinion, though, and I know the fucker. He’s not gonna leave it be until I’ve made some sort of decree. “I don’t give a flying fuck about this party, boys. If it were up to me, we wouldn’t even be having it. So wear a fucking bowler hat and a tutu,” I tell Pax. “And you can wear a cravat and a three-piece fucking suit if you like. And I’ll wear what I’m wearing right now, and I’ll drink myself into oblivion until it’s all over, and then we can all move on with our lives.”
Pax’s eyes narrow, and narrow, and then narrow some more. I can’t even tell if they’re still open when he says, “You’re master of this hunt this time, Jacobi. I wouldn’t go getting too shit-faced if I were you.”
God fucking damn it. I knew this was gonna happen. I fucking knew it. “I’m not master of the hunt. I was a master last time. Which means one of you fuckers is up to bat.”
In unison, Dashiell and Pax shake their heads. They disagree, bicker, fight, and squabble about everything, but it looks like they’re of one mind about this. So typical. “Things went badly last time, so Pax and I made an executive decision. You need to get back into the saddle. You’re all over the place, and Frankl, we’re tired of living with an imposter.”
“An imposter. Right.”
“Yes.” Dash drops a couple of dry roasted peanuts into his mouth. “You’re currently not yourself, and we’ve decided we want the old you back. So, you get to be master, and we get to revel in whatever sick, fucked up party game you arrange for us to play, and everything goes back to normal. Sound good?”
No, this does not sound good. None of it does. As master of the hunt, I’ll be expected to do certain things. I used to revel in those arcane delights, but things have changed now. There’s Elodie to consider. I haven’t been able to shake the image of her, naked and beautiful, straddling me, the sweet sound of her panting in my ear, since last night. I’ll die an old man in my bed, all of my other memories eaten away by the ravages of time, but that memory will still be burning fiercely behind my eyelids when I go.
Elodie is mine, and I’m not fucking letting her go. And I can’t be master of the hunt and keep Elodie. There’s no way in hell.
“Do what you gotta do,” Pax says, snapping open another beer. He flicks the cap across the living room. “But this is happening, Wren. You’re gonna have to man up. Dash and I have never balked when you’ve thrown us a gig. We sure as shit didn’t kick up a fuss when you bundled us onto that plane last weekend. And that was some fucked up shit.”
He’s right. I’ve put both of them in really compromising situations before, for the sheer hell of it, because it made me laugh, h and watching them squirm was ten different kinds of entertaining. And my most recent ask of them could have ended in disaster for all three of us if something had gone wrong. I can’t back out of this. If I refuse to play ball with them, it’ll cause a rift in the house like nothing else. I chug from my beer to stop myself from cursing the motherfuckers out.
“In the meantime,” Dash says, eyeing me sternly. He looks like my fucking father. “Mercy’s asked if she can move in here.”
I spray IPA across the kitchen counter. “What the fuck did you just say?”
“No need to overreact. I told her it was up to you, and your word would be final on the matter. She said you were never gonna let her stay here, and I didn’t give her any reason to believe she was wrong. At which point, she called me and Pax cunting little bitches for not standing up to you, and then put a scratch in the Charger.”
“I haven’t put a single scratch on that car,” Pax growls darkly. “Not one. And I take terrible care of my things. You’ll be pleased to know that your sister is now on my shit list.”
I don’t like that Mercy’s been talking to these guys behind my back. She thinks she fucking walks on water, that girl. At least one of them is beginning to see things from my perspective, though. Dash...Dash, not so much. “I think she’d be a great addition to the house, but I know how little my opinion counts for these days. You’re lucky you have a sister y’know, Jacobi. Some of us had to grow up all alone, in a big, drafty house
—”
“Oh, cry me a river. I’ve seen that sprawling mansion you call a house and it’s fucking beautiful. You were raised in the lap of luxury with a silver spoon sticking out of your mouth. Having a sister’s like having an annoying case of hemorrhoids that won’t fucking go away.” “Little young for hemorrhoids, aren’t you?” I roll my eyes.
“I agree with him,” Pax mutters. “I fucking hate both of my sisters. And my brother. They’re the cunting little bitches. The dynamic of the house would be fucked if a girl moved in here. Mercy’s blossomed quite spectacularly since she left last year, she’s the hottest little fuckhole at the academy, but she’s also fucking insane. I don’t have time to install eight new locks on my bedroom door, and she could whoa—WHOA! What the fuck are you doing? Take your hand off me, Jacobi, or I’ll fucking snap it off.”
I have him by the collar of his T-shirt. I’m ready to lay the fucker out. We’ve gone four months without any of us hitting each other, though, so I shake him hard enough to make his teeth rattle instead. “She is fucking insane. She’s the bane of my fucking existence. But she’s still my fucking sister. Say something like that again and I’ll take a pair of pliers to your front teeth. Get it?”
Pax slaps me away, eyes furious, his cheeks turning red. Fuck, he wants to land a right hook on my jaw so fucking bad. He won’t, though. He’s still thinking about Corsica and The Contessa. “All right. All right. Point made,” he seethes. “Jesus. You take everything so fucking personally.”
“I’ll drive over to DC and finger bang your mom then, shall I? See how personally you take that?”
“Enough. Enough. God, it’s a miracle you guys haven’t given me a nervous breakdown by now. Let’s all cool our jets and gather our composure, shall we? Pax won’t say anything weird about your sister anymore. Mercy isn’t moving into the house. And you will be master of the hunt,” he reaffirms. “Come hell or high water, you, Wren Jacobi, will have something truly devious and perfect planned for us the night of the party, I just know you will.” He pauses, his expression hard and judging as he gives me a meaningful look. “You haven’t let us down yet.”