Hissing, I lift Poppy’s layers, peeling the gauze and prodding the sutures. My fingers come away red.
Fucking hell.
“Dantë,” Poppy breathes. “I-I’m so sorry.”
His jaw twitches. Then he laughs.
It’s deranged, the guffaw of a madman who’s lost everything and just keeps losing. Poppy sputters and laughs with him. I sigh, wetting a rag and tending to her wound.
As I’m patching her up, she dials Emi with a sly grin on her lips.
“For the love of every angel above,” I gripe, “what chaos are you stirring now,Petit Diable?”
“Tell me,mon roi.Do you start at the end of a book or the beginning?”
“That horse is beyond dead, don’t you think?”
Poppy reaches back and slaps my ass with a wink. “How do your own words taste?”
This little devil.
Just as Emi picks up, I lean down to whisper in Poppy’s free ear, “I’m guessing not as good as your ass tastes,ma reine.”
Her giggle almost makes me forget about that look on my brother’s face when we first walked in. He’s been wearing it for far too long.
How much more can he take before he’s as lost as Margot?
INFERNO
Poppy
“Ijust sat throughhoursof watching you and Emi swoon over a vampire hunter setting out to slay Dracula, and you’restilldenying being a vamp girl?”
“Technically, the Belmonts hunt monsters, not just vamps.”
Brontë waves me off, grumbling to himself as he boxes completed projects for orders that are slightly overdue. I wander through his cold, odorous studio. My nose slowly becomes blind to the smell as I feather my fingers over the jars above the slop sink. I tap the glass, noting the thick consistency.
“What is this?”
Brontë glances over his shoulder. “Paint for sprayed edges.”
“It’s slightly congealed.”
“Been sitting there for a while.”
I grab a jar and unscrew the lid, catching a whiff of saccharine rot—
“Don’t!” He swoops over, snatching the jar and tightening the lid with a scowl. “Cats and curiosity don’t mesh well,Petit Diable.”
My eyelids slit. “That’s not paint.”
“It is.” He places the jar back on the shelf. “It’s just…homemade.”
“What’s your secret ingredient? Blood?”
“Oui,blood.”
I open my mouth and close it. “You’re not kidding.”
