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I hadn’t realized I was crying again. Why did I keep crying?

“Did her mom do that to her face?”

That was either Dash or Damien, I wasn’t sure which and I didn’t want to open my eyes and find out. They’d been in my house and they’d seen me naked. Two people I had no intention of ever seeing me naked.

I shoved the thought away. I couldn’t think on that right now. I’d think on it later. I’d been doing that with a lot of things.

“Didn’t see her mom hit her, but when we showed she was trying to drown Ariel in the bathtub.”

The air changed again, growing colder, and I knew we were inside once more. We were in Tyson and Quinton’s house. The change in the air had been because of the heat outside and the central air inside.

“Why are we here?” I asked. “I want Tyson. Where’s Tyson?”

“He stayed with Quinton, but if you want me to call him and get him over here I can do that. He’ll come, but someone else will have to go back over there because Quint shouldn’t be alone over there.”

It wasn’t lost on me that Julian failed to answer my first question.

“You can’t bring her down there,” One of the twins said. “We agreed she wasn’t ready for that yet.”

Julian shifted my body closer to his as he lifted me higher up on his chest. I opened my eyes to see us descend some black carpeted stairs into a basement I hadn’t known existed.

At least they weren’t Chucky stairs. You know what I’m talking about, that creepy little red headed doll that’s a serial killer who grabs your ankles when you’re on your way down some open backed stairs in some creepy, dank basement.

Chucky, now there was another topic for avoidance. I needed to not think about him ever again.

At the bottom of the stairs there was another one of those weirdly empty rooms this house seemed to be full of. Like the top floor, there were two hallways, one on the left and one on the right.

Julian moved towards the right side. What was going on? Did Julian have a room down here in the basement?

“If her mom is really dead, then what are we going to do with the body?” Asked Dash or Damien, making me flinch.

Yes, the body. What were we going to do with my mother’s body? Her dead, dead body.

Oh god.

I sucked in a shaky breath and let out a broken sob. I wasn’t feeling so numb any more. Orphan, I was an orphan.

“Go ahead and cry, honey,” Julian murmured.

“She doesn’t need to cry over that bitch,” one of the twins snapped. Probably Addison. Abel would have never said something like that, at least not in front of me while I was upset and borderline hysterical. “That lady was an abusive drunk who, if what you just said is true, tried to drown her in the goddamned bathtub after she beat on her face. For fuck’s sake, you don’t cry over people like that.”

“You do when they’re your mother,” said Dash or Damien. I really needed to learn the differences in their voices. I could maybe like this one. Maybe. Probably not.

I couldn’t think straight.

There was only one door at the end of this short hallway. Abel stepped in front of Julian and pushed open the door. We followed on his heels.

I didn’t want to be around this many people, not in my current state. I was fine with the twins who’d clearly followed me home from school with Tyson. And I was fine with Julian. But, the other two needed to go. I didn’t know why they were even here to begin with. Their presence made me uncomfortable.

“Do we all need to be here for whatever this is?” I whispered to Julian. My words were so quiet I wasn’t sure he heard me, but I didn’t want the other two to hear me.

Julian heard. And he knew what I meant because he said, “Hey, Dash, Damien, why don’t the two of you go see if Quint needs any help. The twins and I got Ariel. We’ll let you know if she needs anything you can help with.”

I didn’t like the way he worded that. Why would I ever need anything from those two? I felt like they were only here to gawk at me.

“Fine,” one of them grumbled. “But I want it known that I think this is bullshit.”

“I second that,” said the other one. “Bullshit and unfair.”