I never saw my mamma’s body. But Aurora would have seen hers. Cancer tended to leave a bit more of a person behind than a gasoline- and vengeance-fuelled fire.
“It’s time to go,” I told her. I couldn’t keep standing here in this place talking to her like we were the kids we’d once been on that beach. Talking to her like she hadn’t just watched me unzip and step out of the costume of my humanity so I could place my hands around someone’s throat. “Did anyone see you?”
The last thing I fucking needed was Aurora being tied in any way to a crime scene. Not that I ever planned to let this place be discovered as a crime scene. But even the possibility made me feel like my spine was splitting apart.
“No,” she said quickly. “There’s no one out there.”
“Except for you, apparently.”
She pursed her lips and ducked her head.
“Except for me.”
I didn’t need to drag her out of the building. She went on her own, with me looming behind her. When the lights outside hit her face, the bright glimmer of that silvery hair shining like a fucking halo in the night, I swore and yanked off my hoodie, shoving it down over her head before she had a chance to recoil from me or complain.
“What are you doing?” she gasped as I yanked the hem all the way down to her hips.
“That hair,” I said, making sure the hood shadowed her face, “is like a goddamn fucking beacon out here.”
I already knew there weren’t cameras to worry about in the dead parking lot. I’d scoped everything out here myself. But there were cameras in the streets beyond. And if anyone ever had a reason to check that footage tonight, a beautiful little slip of a rich girl in a fancy dress with hair the colour of spun silver would stand out in this neighbourhood like a swan in a murder of crows.
She didn’t belong here.
She didn’t belong beside me, either.
Even if the zombified heart of little Accursio Giordano said otherwise.
I thought about sticking her in a cab, but didn’t like the idea of watching someone else drive away with her in the backseat. No. I’d have to see her right to the goddamn doorstep. Wherever that doorstep was.
“Where are you staying?”
“It’s only a fifteen-minute walk,” she said, striding ahead, the impossibly slender heels of her shoes clacking. “I can make it on my own.”
I kept careful pace behind her anyway.
“You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here,” I said after a few silent blocks.
I wanted this conversation, this entire interaction, to end. So why the hell were my lips still moving?
“I got straight A’s this year. Papà gave Mamma and me a trip to celebrate the end of the school year. That’s my step-mother,” she clarified quickly. “Her name is Mia.”
“And where is Mia tonight?”
“Fucking one of Papà’s soldiers. The one he sent to escort us,” she said flippantly. It was jarring, hearing her high, melodic voice used to swear. I’d never heard her use that kind of language before.
“Her flavour of the week,” she went on. “Don’t get me wrong, I actually like Mia. She’s nice. She takes me shopping. She’s only twenty. So more like a sister, I guess.”
“Sister or step-mamma, it doesn’t matter,” I growled. “She shouldn’t be letting you wander around out here on your own.”
“I like to wander.” She glanced behind at me, then straight ahead once more. “I like abandoned places. Houses…”
“Warehouses.”
“Yeah…” Her voice trailed off. She slowed, until she allowed herself to fall into step beside me. “I still can’t believe that I found you.”
Found me.
Like she’d been searching for me.
