“Luckily, the illness is gradual. James, after his time in Kansas, recognized the symptoms right away. Everyone knows about Rogue City’s magic ward and do-good Indians, and their special friendship with Nigel here,” she said, patting him on the shoulder. He looked exhausted. Westie ached seeing him sitting there tied up and beaten. She wondered how long they’d held him captive while waiting for her to return.
“We knew we only had a few days, so we hurriedly packed our things and made arrangments to leave Sacramento. Our plan,” Lavina continued, “was to move to this horrid little town before we completely turned, and live among its disgusting creatures. Then we heard about Emma. With a machine like that casting magic wards in every American town, we could live anywhere, hunt anywhere. We had the Lovett fortune and Nigel needed investors. It seemed too good to be true. Once we arrived in Rogue City”—Lavina narrowed her eyes at Westie—“I saw that it was.”
“Because of me,” Westie said, a touch of obnoxious pride twisting her lips into a smirk.
“Yes, because of you. James recognized you first and tried to warn us, but by then it was too late.”
“James?” Westie looked at him, watched his entire face transform beautifully with his cocksure grin. “But how did you recognize me unless you were there at the cabin with—”
Something about his lips, the small white scar through the bottom lip that was invisible until he smiled, brought back a memory so sharp it severed her words. It was a memory nearly covered and forgotten beneath the layers of time: Westie having a tea party with her Clementine doll on the porch of their home in Kansas, Tripp slopping through the mud in the yard. She hadn’t been paying attention to him until she heard his screams and looked up just in time to see one of the Undying grab hold of his foot. Westie had leaped from the porch and played tug-of-war with the prairie-sick man for her brother’s life until he lost his grip, flinging Westie and Tripp into the steps, where her brother busted his lip clean open.
The humor drained from his smile. “I’m hurt it took you this long to recognize your own brother.”
Thirty-Nine
“No. No. You’re not Tripp.” The circus of emotions cartwheeling through her made it hard to stand still. She didn’t know if she would laugh or cry or simply implode. “Tripp had red hair, not black. That’s not something you just grow out of.”
“Come on, haven’t you noticed the grease in my hair? Cain wears it too. Surely you’ve noticed his hair change colors.”
She had, but she hadn’t put too much thought into it. Westie rubbed her eyes with her flesh hand, trying to push away the pressure building behind them. With her machine arm she tapped her parasol against her leg.
“Tripp’s dead,” she said, blinking back the tears that blurred her vision. “I saw his leg on the butcher block next to a pot of stew.”
Lavina said, “That was the last of the stragglers from your caravan. Tripp was locked up in the back.”
Westie tugged at a strand of her hair to keep from reaching over and ripping Lavina’s throat out.
“But how, and why?” Westie turned to Lavina. “Why would you kill my folks and try to kill me, but keep Tripp alive?”
If Lavina felt any remorse at all, she did a good job of hiding it. “I never planned to keep your brother alive, but at the time he was too sick to feed us. Hubbard wanted to kill him and throw him out to the chupacabras, but I felt it was in our best interest to nurse him back to health just in case we needed to feed on our way to the valley.”
Westie looked at James, but he remained unperturbed by Lavina’s admission. “Then Olivia got attached to him. He was so frail and weak. I think he reminded her of one of her dolls. We decided to keep him and raise him as one of our own. It’s a good thing, or we would’ve had to keep the real James Lovett Junior alive. I’d never been around such an annoying child in all my life.”
Westie continued to stare at James, his green eyes, the spatter of freckles on his slim nose and cheeks, and watched as Tripp’s features slowly leaked through James’s cocky facade. Part of her wanted to take him in her arms and hold the boy she’d loved so dearly as a child. It wasn’t his fault he was a monster. His mind had been twisted by Lavina’s deception.
A tear slipped down her cheek. Whether it was his fault or not, he was already ruined, she knew. Once you kill your own kind and eat their flesh, there’s no going back.
Westie shook her head. “God, Tripp, how could you stay with these people? They killed our parents.”
His smile wavered, then fell from his lips. “We do what we need to do to survive. You should know that better than anyone, since it was you who left me back at the cabin to be eaten.”
The more Westie looked at James, the more he took on the features of her brother. But he didn’t look exactly as she remembered. What she saw in his eyes was not the kindhearted little boy she had once loved, but something else, something dark and evil.
“This isn’t you, Tripp. You were a good boy, a sweet, loving—” Her voice got trapped behind the wall of emotion building in her throat.
“I’m not Tripp any longer. I’m James now.”
“So everything you’ve told me about your life has been a lie.”