Page 22 of Capitol Matters (Marionette #2)

Despite the Bitters’ End being closed due to the plague, Nash hadn’t given up his vigilant security measures. I knew that because, after sitting in the parking lot for fifteen minutes blasting the AC onto my face in the hopes of freezing the tears that threatened to fall, the alchemist peeked out the front door.

Nash shouted something I couldn’t discern as he slowly approached the Bronco. His concern reminded me of myself when I arrived to save Donovan from his storage unit meltdown. It was too similar, and I was on the wrong side of it. Cursing, I killed the engine and threw the door open, stepping down onto the gravel lot.

I sniffled at the salty air, then wiped my nose as I made my way to the tail end of the SUV. I didn’t want to see the body again, but the sob lodged in my throat wouldn’t allow me to explain any other way.

Nash waited, similarly silent, while I flung open the hatch. I stood aside with one arm hugged across my chest and my other hand pressed against my mouth.

This was absurd. It was ridiculous to let these feelings steamroll me into the ground. It was like being fifteen again, when murder was a novel thing, and every crime felt like a knife stabbing into my gut.

I’d grown thicker skin since then, so the blows no longer penetrated me. Usually. But somehow this—or maybe it started with Yankee Doodle’s frosty corpse—had broken through my defenses.

In the Bronco’s back end, Sleeping Beauty lay face down, having shifted in transit. Her arms were spread, and her head was cocked to one side with her eyes as open as they’d been when she screamed. Before I silenced her for good.

Nash took the woman’s wrist and checked for a pulse.

I didn’t bother to stop him.

After a few seconds, he set her arm down, then looked over at me while I fixed my attention on the grit underfoot.

“I thought Grimm and Donnie were taking precautions so this didn’t happen again,” he said.

Given the unnatural slant of Sleeping Beauty’s broken neck, it was little wonder he assumed another suicide.

“That’s the rumor,” I replied, swallowing past the lump still lodged in my throat. “But no. This was all me.”

He arched a bushy brow, and I prayed he wouldn’t ask any questions because explaining the nonstop trainwreck that was today—or the past week, for that matter—would open floodgates I was barely keeping closed.

To his credit, he didn’t press, and left me to fill the void by explaining, “Grimm can’t know about it, so I’ve gotta get rid of her.”

Nodding, Nash motioned toward the bar building. “Come inside.”

We closed up the Bronco, and he led the way through the entry and up the spiral staircase. We passed his bedroom and stopped at the end of the upper hall, where a door stood shut and locked. The mechanism securing this entry was elaborate, with bolts and bars that slid into place as the alchemist fiddled with a half dozen knobs and levers.

I waited like a child told not to peek until he pushed the door open and ushered me inside.

The laboratory rivaled only the bar area in size. It was longer than wide, with windows sheeted over on the far wall. Three tables divided the center of the room, one after the other as though laid out for chemistry class students. Wall racks held potion bottles both empty and full, sandwiched between overflowing bookcases. There was a certain whimsy here, controlled chaos with Bunsen burners lit and miscellaneous concoctions throwing smoke or bubbles into the air.

Nash moved ahead of me to open a tall cabinet and begin rifling through it. Neither of us had spoken since we left the parking lot. In that time, my melancholy mood had been replaced by an emotion I was more comfortable with: anger.

“I don’t know why I put up with this shit,” I grumbled .

Bottles clinked and paper swished as Nash rearranged the contents of the cabinet. “Because you’re a masochist,” he said.

I wasted a scowl on his back. “I’m being serious.”

He paused and looked back to meet me with an even stare. “I’m not laughing.”

Sighing, I wandered down the length of the nearest table, peering into microscopes and sniffing the fumes that rose from a beaker.

“Yeah well, when I told Grimm he made me this way, he said I was a mistake.” My nose wrinkled, and not from the chemicals. “So, that’s in my head now.”

Added to Holland’s emotional outpouring about what a charming person I used to be, and how sad it made her to see me changed. Change was an unavoidable truth, but my transformation was more dramatic than most, and it was more easily blamed on the man who had ruled my life for the last twelve years.

Nash’s ginger head bobbed as he spun away from the cabinet, his arms laden with large, opaque jugs. He set them on the ground with successive thuds.

“It’s true, though,” he said. “Grimm did make you. He made you what a leader wants in his followers: submissive and compliant.”

I huffed a breath and bent over the table, leaning near the flame that danced beneath a glass boiling flask. “More like he terrorized me as a kid, and I can’t fucking shake it.”

Reaching toward the fire, I waved my fingers through it. Quickly at first, then slowing until each digit lingered long enough for the heat to singe my skin .

Nash stepped forward to crank the gas valve at the base of the burner, turning the flame off. When I shot him a narrow-eyed glare, he responded with a stern look of his own.

“Same end result,” he said. “You’re loyal.”

“And unreliable. Irresponsible. Untrustworthy…” I ticked off the list, ending with a bitter laugh. “Grimm’s probably wondering why he puts up with my shit.”

Gripping the edge of the table, I stared down at my knuckles going tense and white.

“I’m stronger than him,” I continued. “He can’t hurt me anymore. Wouldn’t dare. And sometimes I think my life would be so much better if I just…” I relaxed my grip enough to raise one hand. The sharp snap of my fingers echoed in the otherwise quiet room.

“But instead, it’s days later and I’m pissed off because he’s disappointed in me.” I scoffed. “Fuck him.”

Nash came around behind me and braced his arms on either side of mine. The warmth of his body brought comfort, and I sank back into him. His beard brushed the side of my face as he bent in to kiss my cheek.

Mentally grabbing his wrists, I pulled them around my chest and tucked myself into a tight embrace. Nash chuckled and took over, squeezing hard enough that it hurt in the best possible way.

I emptied my lungs, relishing the moment of vacancy. Nothing came in or out. No words, no air, no thoughts. It was an acceptable silence.

“You all right?” Nash asked at length.

“I don’t wanna believe all the best parts of my life are behind me,” I said softly. “It makes the future feel impossible.”

My head rested against his shoulder as he murmured, “All past or all future doesn’t leave much room for the present.”

My gaze angled to the containers he’d set on the ground. Jugs of caustic fluid waited to render Sleeping Beauty’s body into primordial goo.

“I’m in the present,” I said flatly. “I hate it here. I hate me here.”

Nash’s arms tensed. “I’m rather partial to you here.”

“You might be the only one.”

Extricating myself from his embrace, I faced the stoneware jugs that looked like something moonshiners might use to store their brew.

“That it?” I gestured toward them.

Turning as well, Nash exhaled loudly. “That should do it, yeah.”

Without another word, I bent to grab the nearest one. I tucked it into the crook of my elbow and reached for the next when Nash’s hand grazed my shoulder. I glanced back to find his expression rife with sympathy.

“Let me handle this,” he said. “You’ve done enough.”

Shrugging him off, I stood and tipped my head to meet him at eye level. “I asked you for acid, not to wipe my ass for me. If you think I need that, then you’ve forgotten who I am.” I waggled my fingers, brandishing black lines ringing every digit.

The quiet between us grew tense. I kept the defiant tilt to my chin and hard edge to my eyes as I stared him down. Rather than concede or break the visual lock, Nash leaned into it.

“I know who you are, Fitch,” he said. “And it’s not what you think.”

I remained firm a fleeting moment more, then snorted a breath.

“Yeah well, I’m gonna get to it before that corpse starts to stink.” I stooped to collect the other two jugs of acid. “If the smell gets in the upholstery, it’s never coming out.”

I left the laboratory in less of a hurry than I would have liked, laden with several gallons of toxic fluid. I deposited those in Nash’s master bathroom, next to the clawfoot tub that would soon be the bowl for human soup.

Stomping down the stairs, I spotted Nash leaning over the second-floor railing, silently observing. It was a relief that Pippa wasn’t home. She preferred not to involve herself in criminal business but, when that business paraded itself through her house in the form of a dead body, she was as nosey as her brother.

Outside, the sun provided waning light as I lowered the tailgate and threw one leg up onto it to get a grip on Sleeping Beauty’s arms. I heaved backward, hauling her across the carpeted floor. She was short but must have outweighed me by almost a hundred pounds, judging by her girth.

I could have telekinetically walked her inside, but that worked differently with dead muscles. When the person wasn’t able to stabilize themselves, it became a game of micromanagement. Without a better option, I slid the woman’s bowling ball of a body off the tailgate. She dropped onto the ground with a crunching thud that made my stomach twist.

Drawing a steeling breath, I looped my arms under hers, then waddled backward through the gravel and into the Bitters’ End.

The gears on the wall churned as I dragged Sleeping Beauty past. She slid more easily across the hardwoods, but the stairs remained ahead.

Reaching the base of the wrought iron spiral, I let the woman drop. Her disconnected head knocked hard against the floor.

When I bent back, hands on my hips as I stretched out a kink, Nash called from above, “You sure you don’t want me to do that?”

“I’m sure,” I replied, resituating my grip.

He grunted. “Stubborn ass.”

I rolled my eyes. “Eh, fuck you, too.”

“Anytime, babe.” His voice faded as he headed back toward the lab.

I waited till I heard the door close before turning my back to the lowest step and beginning the tedious ascent.

By the time I reached the top, my sides ached from straining, and I was panting. The tight, continuous turn had left no opportunity to take breaks without risking a comedic backslide with Sleeping Beauty bouncing off every step the whole way down. I laid her out then sank to sitting on the upper floor, casting a wary glance at the woman’s bulging eyes.

The emotional tumult of earlier returned, sweeping over me like a crashing wave. Rather than let it drag me into a dangerous undertow, I fought my way up, standing and grabbing the cadaver for the final leg of the journey into Nash’s bathroom.

I had to practically get beneath her to hoist her over the edge of the clawfoot tub, where she slid to the bottom and flopped onto her back, gaping up at me vacantly.

Pushing her head to one side, I shoved the rubber plug into the tub’s drain hole, then grabbed the first jug of acid.

I uncorked the bottle then paused, standing over her.

“I can’t just turn myself off like you can. It’s psychotic.” Donovan’s voice, and the disgusted look on his face, bobbed to the surface of my memory.

A sob surged up from my gut, and I clamped a hand over my mouth, doing what I could to keep it from escaping.

“If I can learn from my mistakes, I expect you to do the same.” Grimm’s disparaging words joined in the chorus that seemed to echo off the bathroom’s cold, tile walls.

Tears burned my eyes as I closed them, frozen in place while weakly clutching the open jug.

“They ruined something beautiful. Something I loved.” Holland’s nostalgic confession piled atop the others because why the hell not?

I forced my eyes open, freeing tears to run down my cheeks as I poured the bottle’s contents over Sleeping Beauty’s prone form.

Smoke rose, bringing a foul odor that choked me.

Coughing, I grabbed the second jug, then the third, emptying and dropping them into the tub. A hissing sound filled the cloudy air as I staggered backward, hitting the door and sliding down it to huddle on the floor.

There was no stopping the sobs that wracked my body. I tucked my knees up, shrinking into a shuddering, sniveling mess.

The voices repeated, rattling around inside my skull so loudly I didn’t hear the knock at the door so much as felt it.

The knob above my head began to turn and I threw out a mental thread to lock it.

“Fuck off, Nash!” I snapped, my voice strangled.

I regretted it immediately, but I couldn’t go after him. Couldn’t budge with my knees weak and wobbly and my sight blurred by tears. So, I wrapped my arms around myself and wished they were his squeezing everything out.

I stayed there until the smoke cleared. Until my eyes dried up. Until I could turn off again because I liked off so much better.