Page 175 of On Edge

“Now you get the urgency? Seriously? You bastard, you don’t deserve?—”

‘Address, now!”

She reels off the address in Templevale. “And Troy—” Her tone is scathing. “If anything happens to her, I’m holding you responsible.”

My vision distorts, chest closes in, and I want to bolt cut the fingers of the fuckers that thought they could put their hands on her.

“You think she’s hurt.”

“After she read that letter, after she learned the truth,”—Laine seethes down the phone—“she thinks she’s crazy, and so do her parents. They’ve locked her up before.”

Rage engulfs me.

I don’t even remember hanging up.

“Is it time to go hunting?” Mundel is already standing, pulling on a pair of black leather gloves.

“Change of plans.” I head for the door. “We’re not hunting Richard tonight.”

He pauses. “Then where the hell are we going?”

I don’t look back to see if he’s following. “To get my bloody wife back.” If she’ll take me.

The Lovett estate in Templevale is two hours away, but she’s already been there two weeks where anything could have happened. I drive, and Mundel sits in the passenger seat and calls me all kinds of fucked up things when I almost crash, driving way too fast, reducing the time it takes to get there to one hour and 27 minutes.

But of all the horrors that I could have imagined, nothing prepares me for what I see when I walk into that house.

And I’m a dark-hearted bastard at that.

40

From Sage’s Notebook:

Before I left Grayfleet, I went up to the tower one last time and looked down. I don’t know why. I just wanted to see it in the light, without the craziness distorting my vision or the fear tainting everything.

If I close my eyes, I see it clearly. There’s nothing but water below, no rocks or anything that looks remotely like it could crack a skull open going down.

There was blood on Nell’s diary when Father showed it to me. I often wondered whose blood that was, and why the pages were torn. I had a fantasy that I would go down to the rocks, where my father said her diary was found, and find those lost pages, and they would tell me everything.

Like a letter to myself.

The house I grew up in feels like a museum, or a mausoleum. It’s cold and unloved, and filled to the brim with expensive things that no one is allowed to touch.

My old bedroom is exactly as I left it two months ago, which means exactly as my mother arranged it. It’s pink and white and frilly, filled with dolls and teddies, and a dressing table laid with a silver brush set and matching mirror—a room designed for a little girl.

Except for the books, lots and lots of books, in my reading corner. There have been many fantasy worlds I’ve explored, so many mysteries I’ve solved, from this very love seat I’m sitting in right now.

But I’m not interested in reading.

Not since they locked me in.

But Nell taught me how to pick locks. Or should I say, I learned how and gave Nell that skill when I became her.

I use it now to leave my room, but pause on the stairs and then sit, dangling my legs through the banister to listen to my parents go at it.

My father is back from his trip, and his voice already echoes up the stairs like a bulldozer, wreaking havoc through the house with all his shouting and banging. No wonder Mother left him. Except she’s back, for me, for a short while at least, or so she tells me.

“Has she said anything?” my father asks, lowering his voice to a more dangerous tone, if you know him the way I do.