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I rolled my eyes so hard it hurt. “I am not going to ‘chop off his head.’ Move now. I have questions.”
Alice hopped up and launched herself at me, hugging me. “Thank you!”
I froze. “The last time you hugged me, you tried to kill me. Let go of me.”
She jumped back. “Bad idea, huh?”
“Terrible plan,” I said.
Eli stared at her, dumbfounded, and I started to laugh. Honestly, I think I’d just lost the trophy for “worst ideas ever.”
I realized that both Alice and Eli were staring at me, but more importantly, Tres’ dead body called out for resurrection in increasingly loud summons. Did I let him revive? Did I revive him? Putting him in a T-Cell was the expected next step, but we all knew what I could do.
Nothing about my life had gone according to plan the last month—and the month was only half over.
I motioned for Alice to leave the room. I had questions, and I couldn’t focus with Tres’ corpse beside me. He was transforming internally, and I could practically hear each shift. He would be adraugrwhen he woke, and I’d need to either behead him or subdue him so he could be taken to a T-Cell House.
Or wake him myself.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Somehow,after we left Tres in the room, Alice had reverted to wifely diligence when we walked out of the room with her dead step-son. We followed her into the hallway and descended to the main floor.
“Tea? Coffee?” Alice led us to the kitchen. “Tres sent the staff home before he . . .” She shook her head and smiled. “I can make tea or coffee, though.”
The clip of her steps was even as she marched toward the stainless steel and stone kitchen. She paused and glanced at us. “Both?”
“Who killed Tres? Who is Lydia?” I asked.
The polite façade that the widow Chaddock had suddenly evaporated. “Promise not to be mad?”
Eli and I exchanged a look.
“Of course,” he murmured quietly.
I tried not to think ill of people as a rule, but Alice—aside from the whole trying to murder me thing—was pushing so many of my buttons that I had the fleeting urge to pivot and leave. I could get answers later. If not for Tres’ corpse, I may have done just that.
Alice motioned for us to follow her through a doorway to a closed door across from what looked like a formal living room—not the one where we’d waited previously. This was more elegant, from silk drapes to elegant period reproduction furnishings. A gleaming marble hearth and fireplace dominated the far wall. The rug in the middle of the room was obviously missing. Brighter hardwood in a rectangular area showed that there had been a rug.
“Where is the rug?”
“Garage.” She paused and glanced at us. “I’m not a bad person. I was just so angry.”
She turned the knob and opened the door a crack.
“She wasn’t thinking clearly,” Alice added. Her hand tightened on the doorknob. “Lydia had killed my Alvin, and then tried to kill you and I needed yourhelp.Then we came home, and she was arguing with Tres.” Alice started to sniffle again. “I warned him, and she shoved me, and Tres fell against the fireplace.”
“He fell?” Eli prompted. “So, he’s truly dead?”
“No.” I’d felt him, seen venom under his skin. “He was injected when he was alive. Multiple times, right?”
Alice sobbed, but she nodded. “Little bits. I just kept jabbing at him when he wasn’t looking. I was afraid of him dying and leaving me alone. So I just . . . put the venom in him in little itty bitty pokes.”
Alice’s confession made me realized that Tres’ odd regard for me was because of the venom he’d received in micro-doses before we met at the morgue. It wasn’tgriefthat made him act so odd, and the dead that I sensed when I was at the morgue wasn’tjustbecause of Odem. It was Tres, too. The venom in him made me feel a pull to him.
I glanced at Alice. “So Tres had the venom in him, and then he fell.”
“Mmm-hmm. His head made athunksound. He wasn’t moving. So, I injected him again and called you. Then I injected him a few more times. I used all of it I had left. You can fix him. He wasn’t dead at first, but he wasn’t moving. I didn’t think you could fix brain damage, but if he was dead . . .”
