He ignores me, just keeps stalking down the long, sloping driveway. Two steps in, he glances left and right, like Moroslav’s going to jump him from behind a hedgerow.
“Long gone, idiot,” I half-mutter, half-shout.
“Kai, come on,” Lanz mutters, jerking his head down toward the car. “We can’t be?—”
“Cram it,” I tell him. “That’s your big white knight plan?” I call after Kingston. “Stand there like a fucking sack of potatoes and then run away like a big boy? Oh, no, sorry. Forgot the crucial step where you fucking…fuckingassaultsomeone, assaultAlexei Kostukovich Moroslav, of all people, and in a high-security insane asylum, no less?—”
Lanz winces. “It’s not an?—”
“Fuck you it’s not!” I spin around and all but spit the words at him. “It is, and we all know it.”
I hate every piece of this place. The fake, Monticello-ass aesthetic with all the white columns and brick walls. Thegroundswith their inspirational-words rock garden and hedge-maze meditation labyrinth. Thebarson the fucking windows. How the exterior’s like a goddamn dream house McMansion and the interior looks like it never sees sunlight and the girls inside?—
My throat tightens.
Dumbass.
I’m not some silver-spoon baby like Kingston or Lanz. I’ve seen people all kinds of bad ways—Copsbad; TLC documentary bad; scary,embarrassingbad. Dopesick, DTs, meth comedowns, manic episodes, you name it: I’ve witnessed a whole fuckin’ bingo board of problems, and that was just my immediate bio family.
So I thought I was ready. Figured I was hard enough to handle whatever we found.
But then I saw her.
And she?—
My stomach heaves. I barely make it to one of the hedges before I retch out its contents.
When I’m done, I wipe my mouth on my sleeve and spit onto the driveway.
Awful. She looksawful. Like death. Like nothing. Too skinny. Too pale.
Like she’s done.
Fuck it. I was going to lord this over Kingston’s head forever, hold therealculprit of the fire ransom so that maybe, just maybe, he’d cop to being Gwenna’s alibi and stop acting all holier-than-thou and actually admit when he fucked up for once, but no.
I dig into my jacket pocket and pull out the small plastic baggie I've been carrying around for weeks.
“You what this is, asshole?”
That gets his attention. He turns.
Inside the bag: a half-burnt cigarette.
“Of course you don’t,” I say. “It’s a Belomorkanal. Russian brand. No filter on it, just a cardboard tube, see?” I flick the bag with my hand for emphasis. “And you know the only person ever to grace the Caliburn campus who’s gonna be smoking these? No points for guessing.”
Lanz takes a step closer, squinting at the bag. "How do you even know what kind of?—"
“Tried to bum one off of Moroslav once,” I snap. “Outside the friendly, back in the fall.” I glare at Kingston. "He torched that archive to get back at us. Atyou. Probably figured framing her was just a bonus. But somehow he found out she got locked up, and now he feels allbadabout it, and comes here and his little puppy dog routine with fuckingtea cakesor whatever to clear his consc?—”
"You don't know that," Kingston interrupts, but his voice has lost its edge. “You don’t know any of that.”
He can’t be serious. “It washischeap-ass Soviet cigarette in the ashes of a fire that happened rightafterhe not only lost to you, but acted like a psychotic asshole about it,andcalled Gwenna a whore?” I blink. “What exactly am I missing here?"
Silence.
“Yeah, though so.” My voice rises again. "You fucked this up. You really?—”
Kingston spins around.
