by Kenya Wright
I looked at Elle. “I can’t believe I’m even asking this, but what do you think?”
She faced Grandma. “Will whatever you gave him kill him?”
“Of course not. I’m no killer. I just gave him a basic potion. Whenever he’s being mean, it hurts him. It was supposed to take a while to work, but he’s so bad it probably triggered the magic inside of him.”
I rubbed my eyes. “Go get the antidote. This is ridiculous.”
“Even if I did make it, which I would have to do,” Grandma said. “It would take two days to process. I figured he would stay here and in that time we could convince him—”
“Stay here?” Rage bubbled inside me. “I thought I told you to consult me before you did drastic things.”
“Well, who knew this man was coming when he did? I had to be quick and act fast. He stays. I’ll make the antidote and will give it to him when he signs whatever contract Hex was talking about.”
Dear God. Will this craziness ever end?
“You’ll give him the antidote regardless.” I gritted my teeth.
Hex raised his hand again. “Maybe we should vote. I say yes to only giving him the antidote if he signs our special contract.”
I waved his ridiculous idea away. “We’re not voting. This is a man’s life we’re talking about, we can’t just—”
Grandma raised her hand. “I vote yes, too.”
Elle raised hers and displayed a weak smile. “Sorry, Alvarez. I vote yes also. He’ll hold that damn contract over my head for years. For now, all I have is modeling. If he wants to play dirty with me, then I’ll play dirty back. I back Grandma in this decision.”
My grandma smiled.
“You’re outvoted, Al.” Hex clapped his hands.
“I’m not outvoted. I said we don’t get to vote.”
“We should take him upstairs to one of the guest rooms,” Grandma suggested, as if I hadn’t said anything.
“Wait a minute—”
“Okay. When will he wake up?” Elle asked Grandma, completely ignoring me.
“He’ll probably sleep for several hours,” Grandma said. “The vomiting and diarrhea will begin soon after. I gave him some nasty stuff, but at least his system will be nice and clean after these days.”
God help me.
“Okay.” Elle walked over to Michael’s sleeping body. “Let’s get some servants to take him to a room and have one of the guards watch over him. Grandma, do you have all the ingredients for the antidote?”
“Yes. Even the human lungs.”
Elle paused for a minute as if waiting for Grandma to say she was joking, realized that wouldn’t happen, and moved onto Hex. “Okay. Grandma, you make the antidote. Meanwhile, Hex, we need to talk.”
“Do we?” He leaned his head to the side and stuffed his thumb in his mouth.
“Yes. I don’t think you killed anybody, but I do believe you know what’s been going on with everything. When I was talking to Alvarez just now I thought of something.”
“What?”
“You love art installations.”
Hex tensed. It was a subtle movement from him that only someone like me, who’d been around him for years, would have noticed.
“So what? Everyone knows I love art installations. That’s not a big deal.” Hex continued to suck on his thumb.
“When we were in the limo, you told me there was an installation in your collection. Where is it?” she asked.
Hex didn’t say anything.
“Are these deaths connected to the installation?” She smiled, but no one else in the room even dared to see the brightness in the situation. Whatever Elle had on her mind I couldn’t even comprehend. Grandma and I looked from Hex to each other with confused expressions on our faces.
“Okay, Hex. Let’s talk.” Elle gestured to the door. “In fact, let’s go to your studio so you can show it to me.”
“Will you tell my brother everything?” Hex asked.
“Of course she will,” I replied.
Elle shook her head no. “I’ll have to make that decision once I know everything. I’m not promising anything now.”
What? My own lady has teamed up with my family?
“Okay.” Hex took his thumb out of his mouth. “Let’s go.”
“I’m coming, too.” I trailed behind them.
Elle stopped me with her hand on my chest. “No. It’s only going to be Hex, me, and my guards. If he doesn’t want you to know, then I won’t make him.”
“But—”
“No. You told me something that touched my heart today. You said you would leave with me and give it all up just for my love.” She leaned in and kissed me. “Now, let me show you how much I care for you, by helping you out with this crazy load you call a family.”
I seized her waist. “I don’t need your help.”
“Oh, be quiet, Alvarez, and make sure my spelled ex-boyfriend makes it up to the guest room without vomiting all over your expensive carpet.”
Chapter 27
Elle
“The first time we talked about your art collection it was in the limo ride to go shopping. Do you remember that?” I opened the door to Hex’s studio.
Still with the thumb in his mouth, he walked through and nodded.
“You told me about installation art and how when an artist starts the process they first create a mini-model of the whole installation.”
My guards shut the main doors behind us.
“When I saw the mini-model today, it never occurred to me that it could be a model for installation art. I was just on edge and nervous about everything.”
Hex walked into the studio. “What did you think?”
“Nothing clicked. I just got crazy jittery, especially when I saw the tiny figurine of Patricia.”
“How did you recognize her?”
“We hung out during the art gallery opening. She actually wore that same pretty sea green and white flower dress.”
“It was her favorite.” He took his time guiding me to the back room. “I want the guards to be out here while I explain everything to you.”
“That’s fine.”
“Then afterward, I want you to give me a chance to convince you not to tell Al until it’s all done.”
If it’s what I think it is, then you’ll need a lot more than words to convince me.
“Okay, Hex.”
The room was just how I’d left it. I studied the model on the table again. “So this is your art installation?”
“Yes.” He took his thumb out and placed the figurines of the women back into the box they’d been in. “I made this model three months ago.”
“And the little figures of the dead women?” I asked.
“They’re not all dead yet.”
That response delivered chills up my spine.
“But yes, once everyone decided their part in the installation, that’s when I created the tiny figures. The women picked their outfits and everything.”
I was still confused, but I kept a neutral mask on my face so he wouldn’t backtrack or try to get out of telling me.
“How many people are involved in this installation?”
“At least thirty.”
“What is it about?”
“I wasn’t a hundred percent sure at the time, not until you and I talked in the limo and I came up with sacrifice. But when we all discussed this installation we pictured a place out in the open, surrounded by nature. We wanted it to be interactive, but involve video footage.” Hex touched one of the numbers in the trees. “Brenda taught me all about cameras, how to work them, where to place them for better lighting, how to create extra emotion. She was an amazing teacher. Toward the end I thought she would’ve opted out of sacrificing herself, but she did it with no hesitation.”
Fear bubbled in my chest. “So these five women who died actually committed suicide?”
“In a way. We agreed to make it as painless as possible. There would be no guns, knives, or anything to suggest
violence. We needed the focus to be on the art of death, the beauty of it.”
I cringed. “The beauty of it?”
“Yes. In all of my works I explore death, and in many of my friends’ works too, whether poetry, calligraphy, water colors, video art, etc. We’re all portraying the concept of death and the enchanting wonder of it.”
“Why?” My voice came out as a whisper. My legs wobbled as if I’d just picked up a box full of heavy weights and tried to hold it for hours.
“Artists always create to answer a question, even if they don’t know they are doing it. Death is the most mysterious question in life. Why not explore it?”
I raked my shivering fingers through my hair. “Okay. Let me get this straight. You created this huge elaborate video art installation around the castle to explore death?”
“Yes. And we wanted to make it interactive on many layers. As the deaths are happening each night, we’re videotaping the human reaction to it all. We’re even studying how nature reacts to death. Is there a change with a tree when a woman dies under it? Do more leaves fall? Does the earth rot? Or is it all a continuation of life? So far, I believe nature has subtle reactions to the loss of life. I swear to God the trees seemed to lean toward Brenda when she passed away. The whole moment was eerie.”
“You were there?”
“We all were the first night. She was scared to die alone. She took the sleeping pills. Laid in the garden in the one area where my brother’s security cameras didn’t monitor, but where all of our video cameras were positioned. Brenda didn’t want us to talk or make any sound. She just asked us to stand around her in a circle and looked down at her face; just give her the image of the only people who loved her, smiling down at her as she died. And that’s what we did. Under the moonlight and hidden in the shadows, we watched her die.”
Oh my god.
I rested my hand on my chest. My heartbeat pounded beneath my breasts.
“She’d been trying to kill herself for years, but never had the heart to go through with it. Like some of the others, she just wanted to end life, get it over with and see the other side. We talked about what could be there waiting for us. I mentioned Grandma’s gods being on the other side. Some spoke about their beliefs of life after death. Others spoke of colorless worlds where you could fill in color and paint all day, never getting tired or needing to eat. Brenda didn’t care about any of that. She just wanted to see her twin sister, a girl who had died when she was a kid. Brenda kept saying she felt like half of her being had been cut out, never to be replaced. She claimed to walk around the earth as an empty shell of a woman.”
“So she was killing herself to see her sister again?”
“Yes.”
Patricia’s scarred wrist flashed in my head. She’d said that her group of friends called her healed wrists life lines. At the time I’d found it odd that people would nickname such a tragic thing, but now I understood why. This bunch was not only crazy, they were all suicidal in some way.
As if hearing my thoughts, Hex lifted the figurine of Patricia. “Patricia slit her wrists after the first time her mentor had sex with her. She was ten. No one believed he’d done it. Her parents, being psychologists, chalked it up to all types of mental illnesses, but the truth. He remained her mentor and continued to touch her inappropriately. By the time she turned of age, she was in love with him. It killed her inside. She was simply using death as an escape.” Hex set the figurine back in the box.
“Her mentor was on the property, right? Did he know what she was going to do?”
“He was here, but he never knew she would kill herself.”
Hex pulled out three more figurines of women I didn’t recognize. “This is Broseli. She was dying of cancer. The doctors gave her less than a month to live. She chose to die her way. Trudy is right here. Five years ago, she lost her whole family in a plane crash as they were flying to one of her events. I mean everybody--parents, husband, kids, and an aunt. They were on her private plane when it happened. She never got over it.”
“And the last one?”
“I don’t know why she did it. She never told me much about her life. I’d invited her for some of her famous video art collections. You’ll never hear of them. They were all banned in pretty much any country that matters.”
“Why?”
“She killed animals in most and—”
“I don’t want to hear anymore.” I sighed. “Okay. So you have five more mini-dolls in the box. That means five more women are going to kill themselves?”
“Yes. Which is why I don’t want Al knowing about this. He’ll want to stop it.”
“Of course he would. This is wrong.”
“How is it wrong?”
“If someone says they want to kill themselves, you don’t say cool, let’s make it art. How can I help you do it? You try to get them help. You pray for them or—”
“All of that has been done. I’m giving them what they want.”
“No, you’re not. You’re doing this for yourself.”
“No. I’m not.”
“You are.” I pointed at him. “If any art gallery shows this--and that’s a big if--it will be huge. This will go down in history. Art schools will discuss it, whether in a good or bad way, they’ll study it. Psychologists will probably jump on this, and any other social scientists. You and your group will be famous.”
He grinned. “Well, I did think of that. We all did, in fact.”
“This isn’t funny, Hex. You’re letting people kill themselves for art.”
“I don’t see the problem if they want to do it.”
How can I get through to him? How can I stop those other five women from dying?
“You’re acting just like your dad, but in a different way,” I said. “You’re killing women for immortality. Your name will be out there forever in the art world. In the end, that’s all it is.”
“Their names will be there, too.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. People will wonder about the women for probably the first ten or twenty years, but after a while the ones who died will be insignificant to the one who presented it all. The genius artist who got them all together will be known and remembered.”
“No.” He shook his head and put his thumb back in his mouth. “You’re wrong.”
“Who are the other five girls?”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want them to kill themselves. I don’t want the police to exhaust even more of their time to this freaking case when they have real cases out there to solve. I don’t want everyone on this property, especially the women, to walk around scared out of their mind, wondering if a serial killer is standing next to them. And I don’t want Alvarez to continue to overwork himself to save more women. This is wrong.”
“So you’re going to tell Alvarez?”
“How can I not?”
He got in front of the tiny electronic display I’d seen earlier with all the multicolored buttons. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
He pressed the red button on the right.
The metal floor under me opened up. I fell through, screaming the whole time. Hex dropped along with me. The button must have controlled the entire floor. I crashed into the ground. Dirt rose all around me. I coughed as it got into my mouth. Pain licked up my whole body. I didn’t think I broke anything, but I was sure I would be sore for a while. Something crashed above us. I looked up to see the metal floors slam together.
“No!” I rushed up to a standing position and tried to jump up to stop the floors. It was too late of course. Darkness filled the space. I limped around and extended my hands to see if I could touch anything in the dark.
“Elle, are you okay?” Hex asked.
“Where the hell are we? Where are you?”
“Hold on. There’s a light switch around here. Just give me a minute to find it.” A boom sounded, and then another. Finally the light turned on to reveal a thumb-sucking Hex with a few dots of blood dripping from h
is forehead. The whole area was gray metal around a dirt ground. “Okay. There is a sliding door here on the right for the main facilities. I have to check my forehead. . .”
He swayed and tripped over his own feet. The back of his head slammed into the wall. “Oh God!”
I ran to him. “Hex? Are you okay, you crazy bastard?”
“I fell on my head. . . I think. . . I banged it at least. . . Fuck, that hurts!”
I grabbed the sides of his face. “Where are we? How can I get you help?”
“I’m fine.” His eyes rolled to the back of his head before coming back forward. “I just. . . need a minute to rest.”
“You don’t know that. You might have a concussion or even worse. Is there a phone down here or a way to get in touch with someone to get help?”
“The door. The silver one over there.” He pointed up to the ceiling and let his head fall back, which told me he was barely with me. “Don’t tell Al. We only have a little bit more time. Don’t say anything.”
“I won’t say anything. I promise, just stay with me.” I laid him down and raced to the wall, sliding my hands over the cool, smooth surface to see if there was a hidden door like Hex had said. When I got to the second corner, rough edges pressed against my fingertips. The wall clicked. The door opened a few inches. I pulled at the edges, straining with all my might, until it opened completely.
A big room appeared, packed with ten TV screens on the wall, an electronic control display, two chairs, a shelf with canned goods and boxed items, several stacks of bottled water, as well as a few bottles of wine.
I stepped inside and glanced over my shoulder at Hex. “What is this room?”
“This was just in case. . . Al found out.” Hex rolled over to his side. His chest rose and fell as if he’d been running for miles. “My plan was to run to my private room near the studio and get Al to chase me in there. Then I would press the button, we would all fall in here and remain until everything was over.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I was hoping to never use the plan. . . but it sounded reasonable at the time.”
“Can we even breathe down here?”
“Yes. It’s an old bomb shelter.”
“And these cameras and screens? Are they taping everything above us?” I limped over to the other side of the electronic display. It looked like it had a phone next to it.
