‘Yes, I wasn’t sure how long you’d be,’ she says. She turns and smiles at me, but I can’t find it in myself to smile back. Her energy exhausts me further. Exhaustion is slowing my every movement, but there is no fucking way I’m sleeping here today. I’m not convinced I’d wake up in one piece.
‘What day is it?’ While I don’t think I spent long in the Underworld, it can be unpredictable how much time passes relatively between the worlds. There are ways of controlling this, but they take focus and concentration. Even the time spent talking to theBean Nighecould have resulted in this not being Saturday morning as I expect.
‘Saturday.’ Vittoria frowns at me. ‘You’ve been to the Underworld?’
‘Yes, but not intentionally,’ I reply. ‘But someone seems determined to fuck me over this weekend.’
‘Aww, poor darling,’ she pouts. Thankfully, her attentions return to the cool box, any concern about my evening and the hunt long gone. She doesn’t even ask me how I killed Niamh, her sole focus is on the fact I delivered the prize to her, not the lengths I went to to get it.
She places the cooler in the sink and opens it, then peers in and… giggles. It might be the first time I’ve ever heard her do that. It sounds anything but amusing.
‘It’s bigger than I thought it would be,’ she says.
‘You’ve seen a lot of human hearts?’
‘A few,’ she confesses, lifting it out of the cool box and holding it up in both hands to admire. ‘But none as pretty as this one.’
I watch as brilliant-red blood oozes from the heart down Vittoria’s arms, the sticky liquid coating her hands as she cradles the organ. She runs a taloned finger over the surface, tracing the outline of it. I hide my emotions as she beams at her prize. Where smiling implies joy, her features show evil. A dark, stagnant evil.
‘Goodbye,Fairest,’ she says with glee as she dumps it unceremoniously in the sink. Blood drips from her fingers, and she turns and cups my face, smearing blood over both my cheeks. Leaning in, she pulls me towards her, kissing me deeply. The feeling of her tongue entering my mouth and the smell of the metallic blood has my insides churning.
‘Fuck’s sake, Vittoria. The blood,’ I say, pushing her away. She pouts and turns back to the sink.
‘Actually,’ she says, eyeing the heart with sickening glee, ‘I might keep it instead. The end of an era, so to speak.’
‘The end of an era?’ I query, as I search for something to clean the blood off my face, concern that Vittoria suspects more than I think she does begins to gnaw at me.
She doesn’t face me, but shrugs.
‘She appeared in our lives just as everything turned to shit, Cillian. Consider it symbolic. And maybe it’ll stop you being so distracted.’
‘Distracted?’
Now she turns, her expression way too innocent, and a chill runs right the way down my spine. Has she fucking known all along?
‘Surely this will be a wake-up call for Rose? That it’s time for her to fully support her family.’
I pray to the old gods that that’s all she means.
‘I’ll find a suitable container,’ she says, pulling open the door to a cupboard. ‘Then I’ll ask around, find out the best way to preserve it. For posterity.’
I shake my head and frown. I’d much rather she disposed of the evidence now. ‘Why?’
‘If it wasn’t for her…’ She trails off, shaking her head as she slams a box on the counter and lifts the heart out of the sink into it, seals it, then stores it in the fridge. I stare into the sink as she throws a tiny piece of stray flesh into the waste disposal and presses the power switch, smearing blood over it as she does so. I flinch– the grinding loud in the morning stillness. Vittoria stares gleefully as the little piece gets pulled into the machinery.
‘What did you do with the rest of her body?’ she asks as she washes the blood off her hands.
‘Buried somewhere it won’t be found,’ I say, as she tosses me a clean cloth. I use it to wipe my face. Then she pours bleach onto the cloth and wipes down the sink with the thoroughness of someone well-versed in cleaning crime scenes.
‘One problem, all gone,’ she says, turning to face me, pouting when I don’t close the gap between us. ‘Oh, you’re no fun this morning, Cillian. Anyone would think someone had died.’
She laughs and my guts twist into knots as I think about the fact that I’m supposed to marry this woman, be tied to her until death do us part. It’s not the fact that she doesn’t care about the death of another woman, it’s the fact that she’s taking such pleasure in the death of an innocent.
‘My sister isn’t going to be happy.’
‘Is she ever? You know she hates me.’
She goes to pass me, and I step into her, pushing her back against the fridge. The one in my sister’s flat is covered in a collection of ridiculous fridge magnets, which Rose and Niamh buy whenever they go on holiday. Most of the surface is now covered in a clashing, gaudy ensemble of moulded magnets, few of which are even used for the purpose intended. There’s one from Paris that I bought when I went with them once– although ‘with’ is doing some heavy lifting there.
