“What the … ?” Brady mumbled. “How … how could you’ve built something like this without us knowing? You would’ve had to hire whole crews of construction workers, and people talk, especially in Ridgemore.”
“Yes. The joys of small towns. I have no idea why my sister loves it here.” His mouth twisted into a grimace. “I brought in my own crews, along with portable housing for them. You were busy with all your dying and coming back to life, and Kitty Blanche was very helpful in keeping everyone’s focus off what I was doing.”
“And on us,” Griffin said through gritted teeth.
Chase frowned. “Her tenacious nature got in her own way.”
“Meaning?” Layla asked.
“Meaning, since we’ll be arriving in moments and I don’t know how long it will take my former employees to locate their research subjects, I’ll make one thing abundantly clear right now.”
He glanced at his watch, pursed his lips, then looked back to all of us. “None of them are your parents. None of the women have ever even been pregnant. Well, except for the woman who now calls herself Monica Bryson, who got pregnant during an affair with the local sheriff, a Xander Jones. The pregnancy was terminated.”
Despite everything, despite sufficient shocks to numb me, my jaw dropped open.
“No way,” Layla whispered.
Griffin’s biceps beneath my head tightened before he asked, “And the woman I believed was my mom?”
Chase laughed, and dread pooled in my gut. “‘Mitzi Conway,’ was it?”
Griffin didn’t move, though his heartbeat sped up. I straightened and wrapped an arm around his waist, ignoring the tug of healing flesh across my chest.
“Mitzi never existed,” Chase said.
“Never existed,” Griffin repeated in a numb echo. “That … can’t be.”
“Explore the campus, your house, see what you think. Then we’ll talk, you can ask your questions and I’ll answer those I’m willing to answer.”
“And my dad?” Hunt asked anyway.
Chase arched a brow. “The one who supposedly died in a car crash?”
His jaw clenched tightly, Hunt gave a single, sharp nod.
“The only thing real about him is that your biological sperm donor had Eastern Band Cherokee heritage. Everything else was a complete fabrication. You’re not who or what you were led to believe. Not at all. You’re something infinitely better.”
The limo pulled to a stop. Seconds later, the door beside Chase was pulled open on silent hinges. He slid across the seat, and with a foot already on the ground, craned his neck around.
“Welcome to Ridgemore’s Institute for the Advancement of Immortals.” Then, he stepped out.
My friends and I gaped at the empty space he’d just occupied, for once entirely at a loss for what to say.
7
The Distasteful Business of Walking, Talking Lies
Magnum Chase’s latest round of revelations detonated like a bomb inside the limo. It took my friends and I several speechless minutes to process the settling mushroom cloud. Not only had our supposed parents lied to us, they were actualwalking, talking liesthemselves. Assuming we believed the megalomaniac who’d murdered every single one of us, of course. Strangely, his “the devil you know” argument was working on me. No doubt he was a Hollywood 101 classic villain, down to the obscene wealth, perfect good looks, dubious moral compass, and penchant for monologues.
When the five of us eventually stumbled from the limo, Chase was gone—along with one of the Escalades. A woman stood waiting for us while consulting a tablet. An eight-seater cart—so shiny and crisp it had to be new—idled quietly beside her, a fresh driver behind the wheel. The other remained with the limousine.
The woman appeared to be in her mid-sixties, with a face that was fresh and only lightly lined, and a lithe body that suggested a lifetime of exercise. Her hair was a soft, silky silver that feathered around her face and shoulders in the way only expensive haircuts could achieve. But unlike Chase, who could have walked off the cover ofGQwith his crisp business-casual clothes and impeccable grooming, she wore a brightly-flowered maxi skirt that revealed Birkenstock sandals beneath the ankle-length hem—no socks, thank the gods of fashion blunders—and a tailored navy-blue blazer that accentuated her slim frame.
She held up a finger to us while her eyes finished skimming across whatever was on her screen. Then her no-nonsense expression softened as she took us in.
Usually, we weren’t prone to bunching together. Normally, no matter what the situation, despite our lifetime friendships, we usually stood apart as individuals. Thrived on it. But we’d never survivedour deathsbefore having Chase go allkaboomyon us.
Griffin’s arm looped around my waist, pulling me close. And Layla looped her arm through mine on the other side, hooking her left arm through Brady’s. Hunt stood so close to Brady that their arms touched.
