Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle, Pauline Jones [top 100 novels of all time .txt] 📗

end of it. It seemed that coming here and discovering her past had triggered more than her capacity to pace. She didn’t know she had pride until it was on the line. The grandfather clock announced the noon hour, making her jump. Too many more hours. Would it work? She jumped up, but Mickey was using all available pacing space, so she slipped out and found an empty room. She was still there, pacing its ancient and rather ugly rug, when Gracie drifted in.

“The house seems so empty without them,” she said, surrounding Luci in a layer of cool as she settled onto a nearby couch. “Do you think they are all right?”

“He has to keep them alive until the meeting, but I’ll bet he’s feeling the strain. I just hope he can keep it together.”

“He’s spent time with them,” Gracie pointed out. “Surely he has some immunity.”

“But how much? From what I can tell, he mostly came and went. Now he’s doing serious time in the Seymour Zone.”

Gracie chuckled. “I wondered why you weren’t worried about how long it would take. Trying to soften him first, I see.” She hesitated, then added, “I thought that maybe...”

Luci looked up in surprise. “What?”

“Well, he does seem to want you dead. Doesn’t that worry you?”

Luci shrugged. “Why should I worry with you here to put death into perspective for me?”

“Don’t!” Gracie’s cohesion wavered like a rock dropped into a pool. “Don’t let someone take your life without a fight!”

It was, Luci realized, so much easier when you didn’t care. When people didn’t have the power to touch your heart, to delight or hurt you. Maybe that was the secret, the true curse of the Seymours: this inability to feel anything deeply, the failure to live fully. Life, she was only now beginning to realize, was meant to be lived courageously, to be faced bravely. There was no virtue in merely surviving and even less virtue in spending your life observing the ones who were living. In being so afraid, you never got started with life.

The Seymour Zone was a dead zone and she was moving out.

If Maxwell did succeed in killing her at least she’d know she went out having lived more in the last few days than in her whole life. She just hoped Maxwell wasn’t counting his chickens before they hatched. The Seymours may not be great at living, but when they put their minds to it, things happened. Amazing things. Scary things. And when five Seymour women put their minds to something, look out.

Artie had a twitch in his right eye. He hadn’t always had a twitch. This was the first time it had happened to him. He wasn’t sure when it started, but he did know it wasn’t long after he grabbed the old ladies. He knew they were kind of loony, but this was beyond loony. If he didn’t need them to get the money, he’d have held a pillow over their faces just to shut them up.

Listening to them was like the damn chalk on Louise’s blackboard, only without the pauses. Their voices rose, they fell, they blended. One sister would start a sentence, another would pick it up and the last would finish it, then start a new one. Their ideas flowed together and away, shifting from one thing to another with no rhyme or reason for the change.

It was a torturous form of insanity. If he hadn’t had Helen, the idea of Helen to cling to, he’d have popped them all, then put the gun to his own head.

Maybe he should just pop them? Once she was there, what could they do? She’d hand over the money hoping the old broads were all right. And then he’d pop her because she was sure to recognize him. Then all he had to do was take the money and head home.

Home. Closest he’d had to a home was his cell in stir. Been his most permanent address until Helen. He’d even hung a few pictures and bought a plant to brighten their cell. Course Reggie’d watered the life out of it. Guy was poison. A loser with a capital “L.” But in a nice way. If he hadn’t threatened to tell Helen...

It was his first kill. Munn was easier. He’d heard it was that way. First blood was always hardest. He didn’t expect Luci to be hard. Or the old ladies. He checked his chamber. Six bullets. Two to spare.

Through the closed door he could hear their voices, still rising and falling without a break. His eye twitched so much he could hardly see to unlock the door. It swung open. Three round buns atop three tiny faces swiveled away as they turned to look at him. Finally, mercifully they fell silent.

He could have cried with relief. All he had to do to keep it quiet was pull the trigger three times.

23

The clock hit half after ten o’clock when Dante held the door open for Cloris, then slid into the black limo after her. She sat in the corner, clutching her purse like it was a life line. Her face was in shadow, but she’d been quiet and jumpy all day. He felt a little bad about deceiving her, but she’d have to understand. He was just trying to protect her. And get his money back.

Abel was at the wheel, Cain riding shotgun as they pulled into the desultory flow of traffic. On the main drag it was still busy, more so on the freeway. New Orleans never completely went to sleep and good thing, too, since he did most of his business after dark. When they got to the cemetery the gates were ajar, as if they were expected. Dante smiled. This was going to be so easy—

Something cold pressed against his temple as the car passed between the gates. Something like a...gun?

“What the— “ he began.

“Did you think I didn’t know what you were planning?” Cloris said, not sounding