"Where the hell have you been?" Fiona said softly, stepping out of the shadowy living room. Cordelia hadn't even seen her. Ash fell from the cigarette in her hand and she absent-mindedly crushed it into the carpet with the toe of her shoe.

Cordelia didn't want to dignify her with a response. She thought maybe, maybe if she was quick enough, she could dart past her mother, up the stairs, and into her room before Fiona could catch her.

She was not, of course, quite that lucky. Fiona grabbed her by the elbow, pulling her closer, and Cordelia got a noseful of whiskey breath. "Not so quick, young lady." Fiona dragged her back into the sitting room and pushed her onto a sofa. "Sit your ass down."

Cordelia sat, slouching back into the cushions and crossing her arms. Fiona didn't even stop to criticise her posture. Damn, she must be mad.

"Where the hell have you been?" Fiona growled. "I was worried sick. I was five seconds away from calling the cops – do you know how embarrassing that would be for me, having to rely on the help of those donut-loving buffoons?"

"Oh, yes, because your reputation is far more important than my safety."

"You're damn right it is."

Cordelia sighed. She couldn't even look at her mother without being reminded of what was happening tomorrow – so she really didn't want to spend any more time being interrogated by her. "I'm sorry that I worried you, mother. Can I go to bed now? I'm tired?"

"Fine," Fiona said, surprising Cordelia that she agreed so easily. What was the catch? She supposed she would find out later. "We will discuss this in the morning."

Cordelia headed upstairs before Fiona could change her mind, and locked the door behind her. Flopping onto the bed, she sighed. What had her life come to? She had been happy with Misty, so deliriously, unbelievably happy, and as soon as she got home it began crumbling around her. Well, I won't let Fiona get her way, she thought, a new plan forming in her mind. Surely there had to be something Fiona had forgotten – something left behind by her father that might help Cordelia put together the mystery of his 'suicide'. Cordelia was almost 99% certain that her mother had killed him – now if she could only prove it.

Tomorrow was the day of the party. She knew she should probably sleep – she'd either need energy or a tonne of alcohol to get through it – but she didn't want to sleep, not now. She couldn't.

Cordelia waited until the house grew silent around her. She could no longer hear the scampering of Spalding's feet – or her mother yelling at the maid – or the cook cleaning the kitchen. She could only hear her own heart, hammering away in her chest. After putting on her fluffiest socks – the best ones for sneaking around places – she tip-toed out of her room and up to her father's study.

She didn't know exactly what she was expecting – maybe for all of her father's things to be packed up in boxes or just not there – but it looked exactly as it had the last time she'd seen it. Only this time, her dad wasn't slumped dead across the desk. She took a shaky breath, and tried to push the memory from her mind – she had been the one to discover his body and raise the alarm, but she was certain she wasn't the first one to see him dead. No, that person had definitely been Fiona.

The autopsy had shown poison in his system – not just rat poison, either, but an exotic, particularly potent poison that had to be ingested through the skin. One thing Cordelia found a bit suspicious was why he wouldn't have just used arsenic and put it in his coffee, if he had really killed himself – why would he have gone to the effort of finding and purchasing such an exotic poison, not to mention the effort of hiding it from Fiona? It just didn't make sense. However, it did make sense for Fiona to get an idea – perhaps it was the allure of the exotic poison, the theatrical kind of death it must have been. If there was one thing her mother liked, it was causing a lot of drama.

Why had the police dismissed the idea of her dad's death being a murder so quickly, when it was painfully obvious he hadn't killed himself? Maybe it's only painfully obvious to me, she thought, but something told her that hadn't been the case. Maybe Fiona had bribed the police.

She didn't really know what she was looking for, but there had to be something that Fiona was hiding – there had to be something here to prove Cordelia's father hadn't killed himself. She began going through his desk drawers, finding papers, papers and more papers. She was about to give up when something caught her eye – a bright red business card that had wedged itself between the desk and the wall. Cordelia squeezed her hand into the tiny gap and pulled out the card. Turning it over in her hand, she frowned. It read FOXX INDUSTRIES in bold print. Why did that sound familiar? She didn't know anyone with the last name… oh. Oh god.

Hank Foxx.

The boy she would meet tomorrow.

The boy she was meant to marry someday.

Chapter title from 'Whole Lotta Trouble' by Stevie Nicks. Sorry I haven't updated for a while, school has been rough.