“It’s been a long night, Cecil.”
The city streets whizzed by. Cecil weaved the sports car in and out of traffic, missing bumpers by inches. We drove stupidly fast over the hills. At one point we became airborne. The sports car sent up sparks as we hit the pavement on the other side.
I couldn't bring myself to care. I was too tired. Burnt out. Wrung dry. “This is a one-way street, Cecil.”
“So?”
“You’re going the wrong way.”
He snorted. “Maybe I’m the only one who is going therightway. Maybe everyone else is going the wrong way.” Horns blared. Cecil spun the wheel wildly, turning a corner.
“Did Violet House grow the car?” That might be why he was treating it like a toy he could throw away when he was done playing with it.
“Nope,” he said shortly, brushing the edges of a tramcar as he slid around a corner. “Violet is a Domicile. Not a… er… Ve-hick-a-cile. She can’t grow a car like this.”
I frowned. “Where did you get it, then?”
“I stole it.”
“Youstoleit?”
“Relax,” he snorted. “No one will know. I threw a glamor on it before I drove it away. Nobody will recognize it.”
“Oh. So, it’s not actually a gold Lamborghini?”
“No. It’s a black Lambo. The gold goes better with my coloring.” He spun the wheel wildly, drifting. I held on for dear life as we skidded sideways for several hundred feet. “Home!” he announced. Suddenly, he peered through the windshield. “Ooh. Who isthat?”
Slowly, I turned and saw him standing in front of my building. My heart, already thumping so wearily, gave up and stopped.
Cecil jerked in his seat. “Chosen?” He nudged me. “Bitch, say something. You’ve gone white.”
“That’s Vincent,” I said. “That’s my ex-husband.”
Chapter
Twenty-Four
I’d waited for this day for years. Dreaded it and longed for it at the same time.
I hadn’t seen him since my trial. Two years.
“Okay, what are we doing here?” Cecil asked. “A quick goring? I can stab him in both kidneys at the same time if I strain myself. That will do the trick if you don’t want to get your hands dirty. I’d prefer not, though. I did my back at yoga last week, so it would be helpful if you had a gun on you somewhere…”
It felt like I was looking at a photo of another time. Vincent looked as gorgeous as he’d always been. Some men got better looking with age, and Vincent was one of them. His hair, dark-blond and tousled in a way you couldn’t replicate, hung thick and tangled around his face. His body was still lithe, lightly muscled, with barely any fat because he often got lost in his work and forgot to eat. Only faint laugh-lines in the corner of his eyes indicated his age.
“I could back up this Lambo and ram him into the wall. Although, it would make more of a mess,” Cecil went on. “Violet’s bones are in the earth now, though, so she mightbe able to swallow him. If not, we could dissolve his body in lye in the bathtub. He’d be gone in a week.”
I barely heard him. I was too busy trying to see Vincent, trying to recognize him with my new eyes. He looked the same… but he was different. He wore the same clothes as usual, ripped light-blue jeans stained with paint and a plain white t-shirt—also so perfectly paint-stained it looked deliberate, like a thousand-dollar shirt you might find in a boutique. He leaned against the entryway of my building, gazing up at the sky with his piercing blue eyes. A beautiful man, lost in the beauty of the stars.
You couldn’t see the stars, though. The city had far too much light pollution.
Was it all an act? Was everything about him an act?
I knew what he’d done to me now. I’d acknowledged the truth. I should have wanted to kill him, but I didn’t.
I didn’t feel anything at all.
“Okay, girlfriend. Give me a second. I’m coming with you.” Cecil whinnied and bristled in the bucket seat. A sprinkle of glitter sparked in the air, surrounding him, raining like sparks of fireworks, slowly disappearing into nothingness.
