Page 64 of Savage Prince
With my heart somewhere in the vicinity of my throat, I move toward the newspaper. It’s splattered with what looks like coffee.
He was here.
In the courtyard.
Oh. My. God.
I flip the paper over, and the headline on the front page sends my stomach plummeting to my feet.
Gregor Standish, Celebrated Artist, Commits Suicide
Oh.My. Fucking. God.
My knees turn to water and I collapse into the chair.
Standish is dead. But I am not naive enough to believe the newspaper.
Someone killed him.
I have to talk to Keira. She’s the only person who can tell me if I need to freak the fuck out or if I need to calm my overactive imagination. I know what has happened to people who cross Mount, whether knowingly or not, and everything in me says this is another case ofI need to pretend I’ve never heard of the man before.
I reach out with trembling fingers and fold the paper closed, but something falls from between the pages.
A black business card. It has the same emblem that was on the other cards the stranger gave me, along with another time and date.
Tonight.
* * *
I can’t do this.
Really, I can’t do this.
I’m pruning in the bathtub, but I add more hot water anyway. I can’t stop staring at the folded newspaper on the edge of the sink, and the black business card on the glass shelf above the basin.
If I stay in the bathtub, I can avoid reality.
If I get out, I have to decide what I’m going to do tonight.
I want answers, but I don’t. I really don’t want to think about what connection the stranger may have to Standish’s death.
I don’t even want to think about the fact that he’s dead.
It’s all my fault.If I hadn’t had an extra sculpture in my office, they couldn’t have screwed up and brought mine up instead of Standish’s. And then he wouldn’t have gone off and smeared Seven Sinners on every social media and advertising platform known to man.
But he did. And now he’s dead.
I can’t believe it.
How am I going to tell Keira? That is, assuming she doesn’t already know. She has to know. Right?
Why am I so shocked by this?
Because it’s death. Death never becomes mundane. It’s always shocking. It should be. That’s what makes me a normal human being.
So does my guilt.
I spend another fifteen minutes tearing myself up over it before I shut it down. It doesn’t matter how long I spend blaming myself. He’s dead. Nothing I do or say is going to change that. My guilt isn’t going to disappear because I had a hand in his death, even if I didn’t order it or pull the trigger.
