Hey all! You are reading the official second to last chapter, finally, I can just about put this sucker in the bag! Gets a bit dramatic toward of the end of this chap, but what can ya do? Thanks for having my back, all you awesome readers, and the concluding chap to follow soon...
"Uh huh. Oh yes. Almost got me on that one, yeah."
"Karen, what?" Grace shouted in exasperation.
Karen raised her eyebrows indignantly. "Well, if you're going to take that particular tone, I don't see why I should have to tell you, but I suppose I wouldn't be any happier than you are right now if I realized my jig was up."
"Jig?" Will repeated, just for something to say more than wanting to respond.
"Jig," Karen repeated. "You heard me, Wilma. And if you think you're going to get me to finish off the Jack Daniels so you can help your merry little selves to my special order imported rum, you're in for a very nasty surprise."
"Oh, well, I guess we are," Will said, trying his best to sound disappointed and hoping she couldn't detect his immense relief. "Yeah, we…found it earlier and Grace would have been on it like a pack of wolves on a bunny rabbit if I hadn't convinced her to save the best for last--"
"Yeah, well, Grace is like a pack of wolves on a bunny rabbit around anything she either put in her stomach, sleep with, or Jewish," Karen scoffed, waving a dismissive hand.
Will squeezed Grace's arm before she had a chance to protest before flashing Karen a lively smile. "So now that we've got that out in the open, I still insist that you join us." He propped himself up on his elbows. "What's your pleasure?"
"I'll obtain my own pleasure, if you don't mind," Karen sniffed, still traces of suspicion in her tone. Grace found Will's hand and grasped it in anticipation as their eyes followed Karen keenly. Yet when Karen chose to steal a glance in their direction, they were laughing in a seemingly inebriated way, their heads lolling indolently. "Hey! Evita!" She snapped her fingers toward Jack. "You keep track. You're honest even when you hate it." She frowned thoughtfully. "And I guess if we're being honest, I hate that…oh well." She lifted her desire to her lips, closing her eyes briefly to take in the familiar scent, but before she had the chance to let the soothing liquid run down her throat,
"Gaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh-oooooowwwwwwwww!" With an earth-shattering shriek, Grace popped to a sitting position like a Jack in the Box, clutching her stomach after someone plodded right into it and over. There was no time for Karen to react before a solid blow connected with the back of her head and she pitched forward, crashing into her wall lined with vodka, which promptly toppled over, several bottles shattering on impact and covering her from head to toe. Standing over the mess was none other than a fully charged Olivia, arms crossed with something that resembled a cricket bat dangling from one hand.
"What?" she inquired, slightly unnerved when horror stricken eyes were what met her rather than the gratitude she had expected. "Why are you looking at me like that? I just saved you."
"You're going to need someone to save YOU!" Grace roared as she lunged at the small girl, wrenching the batlike apparatus out of Olivia's grip and swinging it toward one of the walls with such a force that splinters of wood went flying.
Olivia bit her lip fretfully. "That's what Karen uses on Mason's head to keep him away from the kitchen! She's not going to be very happy when she sees what you did!"
"When she sees what I did to the bat or when she sees what I did to you!" Grace spat out venomously, going for her throat, but before she could get a solid grip, Will and Jack had forced her arms behind her back and it was taking everything they had to keep them there.
"Where's Mason?" Will demanded.
"I made him go in his room. And I locked the door like Karen always does, and like I do when he's sometimes being a booger. But tonight I had to because she stabbed Rosario in the back and I don't mean like she rode her in Italy and cut each letter of her own name in Rosario's back whenever she started to slow down kind of stab in the back, but the real kind! And she cut out some guy in a uniform's eyes--"
"Just because he was in a uniform doesn't mean he was here for you, Mary," Will told Jack impatiently as he bristled beside him.
"--and," Olivia continued, determined not to lose her audience, "she cut off the gardener's head!"
"She cut off Gardener's head?" Jack repeated shrilly. "But--how could she--"
"Yeah! I know--"
"I mean, he'll never be able to see what he's doing now, and--"
"Jack!" Will snapped between his teeth.
Olivia crossed her arms. "And too," she said, fixing them, but particularly Grace, in a cool, even stare, "she would have killed all of you if I hadn't stopped her in time."
"We were stopping her, Thumbelina," Grace growled at her through clenched teeth. "We had it all figured out before you had to come waltzing through and--"
"What Aunt Grace is trying to say, sweetie," Will interjected gently, "is that we know a tad more about this whole thing than you do right now--"
"No, you don't," Olivia cut in insolently. "You're fat and you're gay and you're a lawyer. Karen says people like that don't know anything."
"Well, your stepmother is running around with a hatchet and you're going to assume that she knows everything?" Will shot back. "Look, you scheme with her for a hundred lousy bucks, you give me a hard time about the licorice, which by the way, I never had in the first place, I was just trying to get you to do what I wanted, you won't stay where we put you, and now you're telling me gay lawyers don't know anything…"
"You forgot fat," Jack and Olivia intoned simultaneously.
"Bottom…line," Will said edgily. "This isn't the best time to be talking about who knows what, okay? Especially when you don't know anything about anything, you…you pipsqueak."
Olivia's eyebrows shot up in anger. "I--"
"Well, I know something," Grace declared, struggling again to free herself from Will and Jack, "I know that someone's about to get hurt if I--Will, the gays are supposed to be devoid of the warden's grip."
"Yes, but I don't want to be representing you on the grounds of first degree manslaughter tomorrow."
"No way, the best you could get me with is second," Grace argued. "It's not like I planned it, it's not my fault that Eloise decided to be a little wart."
"You never know, Grace," Jack said smoothly. "She might have done us a favor. We have no way of knowing what condition Karen's going to be in when she wakes up. I think all we can do right now is wait it out, and maybe come up with some other things in the meantime in case we need them."
At that, Grace relaxed. "Okay," she sighed.
"So if we let you go, Gracie, can you guarantee that we won't be scrubbing Olivia's brains off the wall?" Will asked carefully.
She sighed again. "I guarantee."
They released her, rather hesitantly, and Olivia took several steps backwards just as a precautionary measure.
"We're all like cats on a hot tin roof right now, Olivia," Grace said wearily. "It's nothing on you." She moved some of the liquor bottles out from on top of Karen, who moaned softly.
"She's coming to," Will said sharply. "Olivia, go upstairs. To your room, you--"
She moaned again, louder this time.
"Go on, we'll come and get you when we're sure it's safe," Will insisted. "Go!"
"You forget who you're talking to," Grace said. "In her case, it's never safe."
"Grace, I know the difference between not safe and…not safe, okay?" Will retorted irritably. "And we have to make sure this is…just not safe before we let an seven year old into it."
Olivia crossed her arms. "I'm nine. Nine and three quarters. Which means, I'm almost ten."
"And I'm twenty six and three quarters--"
"Grace," Will said.
"--twenty eight and a fourth--"
"Grace," Jack said.
"Okay, something with a three in it, but I'm not jumping the gun to do something stupid, am I?" Grace matched Olivia glare for glare.
"You don't have to jump anything to do something stupid, G," Jack offered.
"And I'm going to do something that you won't think is quite so stupid if you don't shut up," Grace rejoined.
"If you ask me, I think both of you are stupid," Olivia announced, arms crossed resolutely.
"I'll show you something stupid--"
Grace would have followed through on her threat if another moan hadn't intervened, this time with slight movement.
"Will," she whispered. "Go. Check it out. But wait, take this." She handed him the part of the bat that remained intact. "Here. Poke at it a little, see if it's dangerous."
"It? Grace, we're talking about Karen!"
Grace was unfazed; quite the contrary, she seemed puzzled at his comment. "Again I say, poke at it with this."
He sighed. "Yeah, you're probably right." He crept to Karen's side, the others a vigilant distance behind him. Her eyes were beginning to open, a leg stretched out. She stared up at Will blankly.
"What…happened…" she muttered, stretching out her other leg bit by bit.
"What happened?" Will repeated. "You tell me."
Karen squinted at him, but not unpleasantly. "I don't…where…" She attempted to sit up, and collapsed.
"Karen," Will said more forcefully, taking her arm and causing Grace to gasp.
"Will."
"Yes."
Karen felt the back of her head gingerly and winced. "Good Lord, I--did Grace come in wearing synthetic cotton, because this is exactly how I felt when she thought chiffon was--"
"Okay." Grace held up both hands irritably. "Okay. My wardrobe isn't the issue here--"
"Oh honey." Karen chuckled dryly as she struggled once again to get into an upright position. "Your wardrobe is always an issue." She brushed at herself, wobbling slightly, and not bothering to make a song and dance over the broken liquor bottles when she noticed them, as she normally would. Will, Grace, and Jack, who was hugging Olivia's shoulders and clutching her tightly to him, exchanged wary glances, knowing full well that she would have been heard in China under any other circumstances. "Oh God…would it be too much to ask somebody what happened?"
"You don't remember?" Jack asked timidly.
Karen scrunched up her face. "I remember…darkness…and…I found myself in a room, in front of a big screen, being told that…the video I was watching would…" She choked back a sob. "Kill me in seven days, and…"
"Gee, it's, uh, funny, how a trip through the unconscious could end up so extraordinarily similar to the plot of The Ring," Will mused.
"Oh." Karen frowned. "Yes, I thought there was something funny about…well. Anyway." They watched as she slowly worked her way to her feet.
"You okay there?" Will asked tentatively as she swayed once more.
"Just ducky, Wilma." Her eyes rested on her stepdaughter. "Well, now, Olivia--" Her expression was something of a stern amusement. "Trying to make away with sips again? Or did your brother smell the smoked beef log I had hidden down here?"
Olivia stared at her vacantly, seemingly knocked for six at being addressed so directly by the stepmother who, more often than not, treated her like a scab that she consistently attempted to flick away.
Karen chuckled. "Well, I suppose it doesn't matter." She stepped over to where Olivia and Jack where standing, disentangling her from Jack and taking her into her own arms. "Have I ever told you how much I love you?"
"Uh…no."
"Oh. Well, I do." She planted a kiss on a flabbergasted Olivia's cheek. "So much, in fact, that I might give you the chance to run in a little bit here."
"Huh?" Her eyes met her stepmother's directly for the first time that night.
"That's right." Karen's gaze burned unpleasantly into the other three. "You have been working my last vodka and it ends here. Perhaps it's a little persuasion that you need. That," she added slyly, "and the fact that little girls who knock out their stepmothers never get away with it."
"No, Karen, wait," Will interceded pleadingly, "just wait. Olivia has nothing to do with this."
"She does from where I'm standing," Karen declared, "and even if she didn't, she turned the tables by behaving in a manner so exceedingly stupid that nobody would be convinced otherwise. But I'm not unreasonable, you don't have to watch. Not unless you want to continue fighting this."
"So you're saying…Olivia's life…" Jack began precariously.
"For ours?" Grace finished.
"Either or. I'm not too picky at this point."
Will didn't have to give either of his cohorts the slightest glance to know how to handle this. "Tell me this one more time, Karen," he said evenly. "We give ourselves up…no funny stuff…and you walk away from Olivia?"
"I'll put it to ya this way, I'll walk away in a way that would never concern you."
"Is that the best you can give us right now?"
"Afraid so."
"Well…" Will lowered his head in defeat. "Then I guess that's better than…any other alternative you could resort to if we didn't…"
"Will, we have no control over what she does after she gives us the axe," Grace argued, "and I mean literally, gives us the axe. She can do whatever she wants to Olivia when we're gone, the lucky bi--I mean…mind you, after all the trouble the aggravating beast gave us over licorice and being locked up with dead bodies, I don't…okay. God." She drew in her breath. "We can't trust her, Will."
"No," Will agreed. "I know. But in the time it takes for Karen to wipe out the three of us and use what's left of our faces for dust mops, it gives Olivia a chance to do something. Even if it's something small. So okay, Karen." Defeat was slowly being written over his face.
"Good," Karen responded coolly. "I'm glad you've come to that conclusion, Daisy, not that you had any other choice. If you look around, you're undeniably screwed."
"Yeah, I know."
"Okay, and I've been thinking about this," she said, "and I know I said I'd be starting out with Will, but I believe it's always good to start out with something light, so Jacqueline, I think you're up." Karen beckoned a trembling Jack forward, and Jack whom Will and Grace could not have been prouder of at the moment; they knew if Olivia had not been part of the equation, that he would have been making by far the most noise about their predicament, fighting to the very end, but now his eyes were seeing something far more significant and he had not one word to say about it. Will knew he was not alone in knowing that there were a million things he could be saying to Grace right then, but didn't. He simply found her hand and squeezed. His free hand he placed gently over Olivia's impressionable eyes, and Jack closed his own.