Page 100 of Lovely Darkness

He stole Maggie.

“You stole Maggie.”

“Carter,” Sasha says again. “You need to stop. Right now. Go back—”

“No.” I feel the anger inside me, even though I’m not the one speaking. “No. I will not go back. You—”

She rushes towards me, fist raised, and punches me right in the face. For a moment I’m dizzy and confused. Then her voice floats back into my head.

“Hurry,” she says to Merc. “Hurry!”

He’s got the IV in. Sasha is taping it to my hand, even as I try to rip it back out.

“One sec,” Merc says. He hangs a bag on the IV stand to my right. Then…

Bliss.

Oh, this is nice.

I close my eyes and I float.

The last thing I hear as I drift back into the darkness is Sasha Cherlin’s voice.

I remember her.

I know her.

She has secrets.

So many, many secrets.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - MERC

I’m holding the new IV bag in my hand trying to figure out what just happened. Then I say it out loud. “What the fuck was that?”

“That was Mr. Couture,” Sasha says. “Both sides of him, I think.”

I shake my head, check his vitals, consider waking up Cerene and letting her know that she put the wrong fucking bag of drugs on this IV stand, then reconsider. Because the old bag—which is spilling clear liquid out onto a stainless-steel tray where I dropped it—is clearly labeled as the drug Doc has been using.

Someone fucked with it. And if it’s Cerene, I want to wait until Doc is back to confront her.

And if it isn’t, I want to wait until everyone is back before I start talking about it.

It could be any of them.

But one thing is clear—someone in this house fucked with Donovan’s drugs.

“Well.” Sasha lets out a long breath. “That was exciting.”

She’s watching me carefully. Like she’s waiting for me to say something. So I do. “Someone switched his drugs.”

Sasha looks at the bag with squinty eyes. “They did?”

“Yeah.”

“Cerene?”

I just had this conversation in my head, so I’m not exactly excited about having it out loud again. I change the subject. “That was them, then?”