Vicious Minds: Part 3 (Children of Vice 6)

“Ivy. And that situation still confuses me. Since when did Ethan become such a good actor? It was like he was a different person. But whatever. Let’s say it was all fake. What he has with Calliope is different. It’s darker and deeper. When has anyone in this family been good at getting over any of our loved ones dying?”

To this day, my grandmother still mourned the loss of my grandfather. My uncle was nearly on his own deathbed because of the loss of my aunt. I could remember back to the time when my own mother had supposedly died and how heartbroken my father was at that time. I still didn’t know if he was acting or not back then, but the image of him in tears was still burned into my memory.

“Your brother is strong; he’ll get past it.” That was her only answer.

I shook my head. This really was hell. No one was listening to reason, only the demons on their shoulders.

“Where is Dad?” It had been two months since they had first reached out to me via Helen. And they rarely ever showed up apart from each other, if they showed up at all.

“Healing.”

“Healing from what?”

“A shot to the shoulder via one of Calliope’s little snipers,” she muttered bitterly.

“Should I come—”

“No, She interrupted. “You should go to work and keep going about life as you normally do. Your father is fine. He’s bitching at me all the same. With this attempt on her life, though, Ethan’s likely to get paranoid.”

I couldn’t believe this was the same brother I had always known. Ethan, the puppet master, was now Ethan, the puppet. The king of ice and snow was melted into a puddle by a chick.

“What happens if Ethan can’t be saved, Mom? What do we do then?”

She didn’t answer. I had always said that I was her favorite. But right now, it seemed as if it had been Ethan all along.

“Your wanting to save him so badly is making me a little bit jealous here, Mom,” I admitted when I pulled off the highway toward Callahan Hospital Avenue.

From the rearview mirror, I saw the corner of her lips turn up. “I would fight just as hard for any of you. I have fought just as hard for all of you. But you all are spoiled and ungrateful, so you do not notice all my fucking hard work.”

“Spoiled and ungrateful…ouch. Tell us how you really feel.”

“You’d say more than ouch after I was finished.”

I snickered at that. Part of me wondered if this was how it could have been if they had “lived”—if they hadn’t disappeared. If we’d grown up with her and Father until this very moment, would she and I have had more conversations like this? Would Ethan ever have even fallen into Calliope’s trap, to begin with?

“Do you ever regret it?” I asked as I parked in my spot at the hospital.

“Regret what?”

“Leaving us?”

Again, she didn’t answer the question. She placed a cellphone on the console between the front seats. “We act tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” I had wanted to wait a few more days before acting. “Why tomorrow and not the grand opening of the new church?”

“Because she was poisoned today. She won’t expect a back-to-back hit on her life,” she replied. “We will do it at the governor’s ball.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think she is going to go. She barely had the energy to keep her eyes open tonight, let alone go to some fancy ball and pretend to be a socialite.”

“She’s not pretending. She is a socialite. She thrives on that type of scene. She likes it, everyone’s eyes on her. She is going to go even if she has to crawl inside.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

“We stick to the original plan. Calliope will most likely be better in a few days.”

“Okay,” I nodded.

> “Good, have a good night at work.”