Bad Blood: (The Naturals #4) (Naturals, The)

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“But?” Lia prompted.

  “But after that, Malcolm Lowell refused to have anything to do with his grandson. He wouldn’t take custody of his own flesh and blood, couldn’t even look at him. Old Malcolm never spoke a word to the boy again.”

  I could see how this would play out in a small town, how it had played out for Nightshade. At first, people felt sorry for you. But after your grandfather woke up, after he insisted to the police that he hadn’t seen his attacker, people started asking questions. What if he was lying? What if he was protecting someone?

  What if that someone was you?

  “What happened to Mason?” Sloane asked, her hands worrying at each other in her lap. “His parents died. His family didn’t want him. Where did he go?”

  The question struck close to home for Sloane.

  “A local couple took the Kyle boy in,” Marcela said, taking another sip of her tea. “Hannah and Walter Thanes.”

  “Do they still live in Gaither?” Lia asked casually.

  Marcela set her teacup down on the tray. “Hannah passed away several years ago, but Walter is still local. He runs the apothecary museum down on Main Street.”

  YOU

  You know better than to enjoy the quiet moments. You know better than to watch Laurel sleeping and think, even for a moment, that she’s just a child.

  “She looks peaceful, doesn’t she?” Five’s voice is like oil on your skin.

  He’s holding the knife.

  “What are you doing here?” It pays sometimes to be haughty, to remind the sadists that you may be at their mercy, but they’re at your mercy, too.

  “I had some interesting news from an old friend.”

  You don’t take the bait.

  Five smiles at your silence. “It appears the FBI has made an appearance in Gaither.” He drags one finger over the edge of his knife blade. Lightly. Carefully.

  You give him a dead-eyed stare. “What the FBI is or is not doing is none of my concern.”

  “It is,” Five replied, pressing the knife blade into the tip of his own finger and drawing blood, “when it involves your daughter.”

  The others met us outside the apothecary museum.

  “Sterling’s conflicted about letting us on the front lines, Judd has that look on his face that he gets when he’s thinking about Scarlett, and Agent Starmans desperately has to go to the bathroom,” Michael murmured to Lia and me. “In case you were wondering.”

  I glanced over at Agent Starmans, who quickly excused himself to use the facilities inside. Judd reached into his back pocket, pulled out his worn leather wallet, and handed Sloane a rumpled twenty-dollar bill.

  “Donation,” he told her. “For the museum.”

  As Sloane closed her hand around the bill, I let my eyes meet Agent Sterling’s. You hate that I’m the one who has a plausible reason to be asking questions. You hate that people in Gaither will talk to me. But more than anything, you hate that you don’t hate putting us in the line of fire nearly as much as you should.

  Dean reached for the door to the museum, then held it open for Sterling. “After you,” he said, a gesture an onlooker would have taken for Southern chivalry, but that I recognized as an unspoken promise: we’d follow her lead.

  Sterling entered first, the rest of us on her heels.

  “Afternoon, folks.” Walter Thanes stood behind the counter, looking as much a relic as anything housed in these walls.

  Sloane held out the bill Judd had given her. Thanes nodded to a wooden box on the counter. As Sloane slipped the money into the box, I forced myself to turn away from the man who’d raised Nightshade, and perused the shelves.

  Hundreds of bottles with faded labels lined one wall. Rusted tools sat on proud display in front of beakers made of cloudy glass. On the counter beneath them there was a thick leather-bound book, the pages yellowed and the ink faded with age. As I took in the handwritten title scrawled across the top, my heart stilled in my chest.

  Poison Register—1897.

  I thought of Nightshade, of the poison he’d used to kill Scarlett Hawkins—undetectable, incurable, painful. I pushed down a shudder as a presence beside me cast a shadow over the page.

  “To buy medicines that could prove poisonous, patrons were required by the apothecary to sign for them.” Walter Thanes ran the tip of his finger lightly over the entries on the register. “Laudanum. Arsenic. Belladonna.”

  I forced my attention from the open page to the old man.

  Thanes smiled softly. “The line between medicine and poison was quite thin, you know.”

  That line appeals to you. Immediately, my brain went into overdrive. You find poisons enthralling. You took Nightshade in when he was just a boy.

  “Was the museum an actual apothecary at some point?” Agent Sterling asked, pulling our suspect’s attention away from me.

  Thanes clasped his hands in front of his body as he crossed the room toward her. “Oh, yes. My grandfather ran Gaither’s apothecary as a young man.”

  “A dying art,” Sterling murmured, “even then.”

  Those words registered with Thanes. He liked her, liked talking to her. “Quite a brood you have here,” he commented.

  “My niece and her friends,” Sterling replied smoothly. “Cassie and her mother lived here when Cassie was young. When I heard the whole group was planning a trip to Gaither, I thought they could do with some adult supervision.”

  Lia sidled up beside me, giving every appearance of being entranced by an old-fashioned scale the exact color and texture of a rusted penny. “Fun fact,” the deception detector said under her breath. “The part about adult supervision was true.”

  Behind us, Thanes processed Agent Sterling’s statement. “I suppose that would make you Lorelai’s sister.”

  Hearing my mother’s name on his lips had a visceral effect on me. I wanted to turn to face him, but my feet were cemented to the ground.

  You knew my mother.

  “Do you have any children?” Agent Sterling asked, the question completely natural—and completely benign—on her tongue. I made my way along the outside wall, turning so that I could sneak a look at the old man’s reaction.

  “Anger,” Michael murmured, coming up behind me and speaking directly into my ear. “Bitterness. Longing.” He was quiet for a moment. “And guilt.”

  The fact that Michael mentioned guilt last told me that it was the faintest of the three. Because it’s faded over the years? I wondered. Or because you’re constitutionally incapable of feeling more than the slightest twinge?

  “I had a boy.” The old man’s answer to Sterling’s question was clipped and gruff. “Mason. Took off when he was about seventeen. It just about broke my wife’s heart.”

  A glance at Lia told me that she hadn’t detected a single lie in those words.

  “Mason,” I repeated, doing my best impression of a curious teenager. I let myself hesitate, then said, “Some people were talking at Ree’s this morning.” I averted my gaze, tentative enough to suggest that I knew better than to say what I was about to say. “About the murders of Anna and Todd Kyle…”

  “Cassie,” my “aunt” said sharply, reinforcing the idea that I was a kid who’d just crossed a line.

  “It was a horrible thing.” Thanes closed his fingers around an old-fashioned bottle marked with a skull. “I never cared for Anna’s father. He married a local girl, but never made much of an effort with folks here in town. His wife died when Anna was six or so, and he raised that little girl alone in his big house on the hill—too good for this town, from day one.” He shook his head, as if trying to clear it of memories. “Malcolm flat-out ignored the rest of us, but he clashed with Holland Darby and his followers. That never turns out well for anyone in these parts.”

  I cast a glance at Agent Sterling, as if I were debating whether or not it was worth the risk to stop biting my tongue. “Anna and Todd Kyle were murdered. And their son…Mason…”

  The old man stared at me for a moment. “My wife and I
couldn’t have children. It seemed like the Christian thing to do. And Mason…” Thanes closed his eyes. “Mason was a good boy.”

  Based on the way this conversation had unfolded, I could see two possible versions of Walter Thanes. One was an old man who’d tried to do his best by a damaged boy who’d thanked him by taking off as soon as he was old enough to shake the Gaither dust off his feet. The other was an incredible actor, one whose grief had less to do with the boy who’d left town and more to do with the man Mason Kyle had become.

  Nightshade had failed the Masters.

  Nightshade had gotten caught.

  Nightshade had become a liability.

  The sound of a bell tore me from my thoughts as the front door to the museum opened. Instinctively, I turned away, busying myself with another shelf of relics.

  “Walter.” The voice that greeted Thanes was smooth and pleasantly pitched. Non-confrontational.

  “Darby.” Thanes offered little more than a clipped greeting in return. “Can I help you with something?”

  Darby, I thought, suddenly glad that I’d turned away. As in Holland Darby?

  “I understand Shane had a run-in with my father.” Those calmly spoken words filled in the blanks. The speaker wasn’t the older Darby. It was—apparently—his son. “I was hoping to have a word with the boy.”

  “I’m sure Shane would be grateful for your concern, doctor,” Thanes said, in a tone that suggested the opposite. “But I gave him the afternoon off, told him to get his act together before he comes back here.”

  The response from Darby’s son was measured. “I would hate to see Shane prosecuted for assault. And we both know that my father is capable of baiting him into a confrontation and then pressing charges.”

  There was another long silence, and then Walter Thanes abruptly changed the subject. “These folks were asking questions about Mason, about what happened to Anna and Todd Kyle. Maybe I’m not the one they should be asking.”

  I remembered what Marcela Waite had said about Mason Kyle running around with the children of “those people.”

  You were friends with Mason Kyle. My brain went full speed as I turned to get a better look at the man. Agent Sterling stepped forward, drawing his attention before his gaze could land on me.

  This Darby had his father’s dark hair, but thicker and without any trace of gray. His eyes were a light, nearly see-through blue. I put him somewhere in the neighborhood of his early forties, none of which explained the way my fingernails dug into the palms of my hands the second I saw him.

  A heavy weight settled in the pit of my stomach. My mouth went dry, and suddenly I wasn’t standing in the museum. I was hanging on to a rope swing, watching as a younger version of the same man laughed and swung my mom up onto the porch railing.

  She was laughing, too.

  I came out of the memory in time to register the man’s introduction. “Kane Darby,” he said, holding out a hand to Agent Sterling. “I’m a local physician, and as you’ve probably gathered, my father is not beloved in these parts.”

  Kane. My brain latched on to the name. I heard my mom saying it. I saw her standing in the moonlight, her hand woven through his.

  “You were asking about Mason Kyle?” Kane continued, so even and calm that I knew he had a natural bedside manner. “We were childhood playmates, though we had little contact after his parents’ murder.”

  I should have looked at Lia for some indication of whether or not Kane Darby was telling the truth. I should have thrown myself into profiling the man.

  But I didn’t.

  I couldn’t.

  Feeling like the walls were closing in, I pushed past Lia, past Michael, past Dean, the world blurring until I made it out the door.

  My mother had never been the type of woman to fall head over heels. She’d gotten involved with my father when she was a teenager, longing to escape her abusive father’s household. But when she’d found out she was pregnant, she’d run, not just from her father, but also from mine.

  All I could think, as Dean followed me outside—Lia, Michael, and Sloane on his heels—was that Kane Darby had held my mother’s hand. He’d danced with her in the moonlight.

  He’d made her smile.

  Your mama always did have an eye for good-looking men. Ree’s words echoed in my head. Then again, she also had an eye for trouble.

  I tried to remember something, anything else about my mother’s relationship with the cult leader’s son, but came up empty. My time in Gaither was a black hole.

  Viewing that memory loss with a profiler’s eye, I asked the obvious question. What is my subconscious trying so hard to forget?

  I crossed the street. Vaguely, I was aware that the others stuck close to me, that Agent Starmans had reappeared and was trailing a discreet distance behind us.

  “I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that Kane Darby has daddy issues.” Michael did me the favor of not commenting on my emotions. “The good doctor really was as calm as he seemed—right up until the point where he mentioned his father.”

  “What about Mason Kyle?” I asked. “What did Kane Darby feel when he heard Nightshade’s name?”

  “Sometimes one emotion can mask another.” Michael paused. “What I got off the good doctor was a combination of anger, guilt, and dread. Whatever else might have been buried underneath, that particular cocktail of emotions is something Kane Darby has felt before. Those three emotions are intertwined for him, and when they arrive, they arrive all at once.”

  “Anger that someone else has all of the power and you have none.” Lia strolled ahead of the rest of us, turning to walk backward, light on her toes. “Guilt, because you’ve been conditioned to believe that there is no greater sin than disloyal thoughts.” She turned back around. “And dread,” she finished softly, her face hidden from view, “because you know, deep down, that you will be punished.”

  You’re not talking about Kane Darby.

  “In other words,” Michael translated, acting as if Lia hadn’t just shown us a glimpse of her deepest scars, “the good doctor has daddy issues.”

  Like Lia, Kane Darby had been raised in a cult. Based on the fact that he’d spoken negatively about his father, I assumed that, like Lia, he’d gotten out.

  But you didn’t leave town. You didn’t cut all ties. You didn’t start anew.

  “Kane Darby and my mother were involved,” I admitted. Lia had been honest. The least I owed the group was the same. “I don’t remember much, but from what I’ve been able to piece together…” I closed my eyes, picturing the look on my mother’s face, my throat tightening around the words. “She might have loved him.”

  There was a beat of silence, and then Sloane picked up the conversational slack. “Counting the bellman at the front desk and various casual encounters, we’ve spoken with a dozen Gaither citizens in the past three hours. And of everyone we’ve spoken to or observed, there’s only one person we’ve identified as having a close relationship of some sort with both Nightshade and Cassie’s mother.”

  Kane Darby. I willed myself to remember something else about him, any interaction I’d had with him as a child, no matter how small.

  “Darby the younger would have been all of ten years old when Nightshade’s parents were murdered,” Dean commented.

  “And I was nine,” Lia countered lightly, “when I killed a man dead. Children are capable of horrible things, Dean. You know that.”

  Sometimes, I thought, seeing the world through Lia’s eyes, you have to become the monster to survive.

  I thought of Laurel, held captive alongside my mother; of Kane Darby, growing up under his father’s thumb; of Nightshade, whose parents had been murdered in their own home. And then I thought about the holes in my own memory, how much of what I’d thought I knew about my own childhood had turned out to be a lie.

  “We need more info on Kane Darby,” I said, my stomach flipping as a plan solidified in my mind. “And I think I know how to get it.”

 
; YOU

  You should have known that it would come to this, that Cassie would remember. The wheel turns. The die is cast.

  It is only a matter of time before the Masters ask you to pass judgment.

  You showed no weakness when Five told you of your daughter’s arrival in Gaither, no hint that his words had hit their target. But in the hours since, you’ve felt the shift coming, felt yourself on the verge of becoming someone else.

  Something else.

  When the acolyte—no longer an apprentice, not yet a Master—comes to present his work for your approval, to add a diamond to the collection around your neck, you’re ready.

  This one is young. This one wants your admiration. This one you can use.

  You listen. You nudge. You lay a hand lightly on the flesh of his chest, tracing a symbol—seven circles around a cross. You whisper in the acolyte’s ear.

  You are powerful, you murmur. You will be the best among them, if you choose your targets well.

  You offer immortality if he is worthy. If he will do as you say.

  Lorelai would shudder at your words—at your plan. But Lorelai isn’t here anymore. Cassie doesn’t need Lorelai.

  She needs the Pythia.

  She needs the monster.

  She needs you.

  When Agent Sterling caught up to us, she sent everyone back to the hotel but Dean and me. I told her what I wanted to do. She made me lay out the pros and cons. She made me walk through it again and again. She listened to my arguments and, finally, she agreed. The three of us would go back to the quaint blue house where I’d spent a year of my childhood. Barring any unforeseen complications, I would see if the current occupant would let me poke around inside. With luck, we might knock loose a few memories.

  Eventually, Agent Sterling might have to blow her cover and approach Kane Darby as an FBI agent. Eventually, we could directly interrogate him about Nightshade and my mother. But for now, we needed to know who we were dealing with, and that information was locked in my mind.

  “I’d tell you that you don’t have to do this,” Dean murmured as the house came into view, “but I know that you do.”