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Unofficially, I’m making sure she’s on the path to happily ever after— murder charges or not.
Wish me luck!
—Stevie
From: [email protected]
I really hope Artemis doesn’t kill him.
It would be partially our fault, and I’m sure she’d rat us out just to punish us for luring her there with a white lie.
And although we’re very lovely, orange really isn’t our color.
P.S. Take Eloise with you. She’ll give Artemis someone else to argue with.
P.S.S. That fish misses judging her, and Lucan keeps ignoring me whenever he’s on fish-babysitting duty.
—Andrea
From: [email protected]
I’m fairly certain Eloise is rooting against our plan to find her grumpy owner a lover.
I’ll take her with me anyway.
Wish me luck.
—Stevie
eighteen
. . .
The Humbling of Artemis Volpe
“Some places don’t feel new. They feel like a memory.” — A
Another damn day without sleep, with nothing but books to keep me entertained.
I sink deeper into the fluffy cream reading chair beside the floor-to-ceiling window, curling up like a couch potato as I turn another page of Frankenstein.
I trace one of Stephen’s annotations with my fingernail, squinting at the cramped black letters. His handwriting is atrocious. Not messy like a doctor’s, where there’s at least an excuse for the illegibility. Not rushed, either.
Just atrocious.
I tilt the book toward the window, hoping the light will help me decipher the words. It doesn’t.
Some passages are underlined so firmly that I can almost feel the force behind them. Other words are circled twice, and entire paragraphs are crammed with tiny notes in whatever sliver of empty space he could find.
I pause over the last one. It’s written in deep red ink and looks downright angry.
I reread the passage, trying to understand what made it worth marking.
Then I reread them.
