“Yes.”
She tapped one toe made viciously sharp by her glittering pumps. “And your mission was unsuccessful, correct?”
“Yes.”
Tired of waiting for me to make the connection, she shrugged. “Then I don’t see the issue.”
Woozy. I was getting woozy. So woozy.
I told myself it was the height, but I knew it was memory warping the scene before me, twisting it into a nightmare tableau where vampire guards might storm the room and haul me before the Master at the slightest provocation.
“I’d heard you were broken.” She dismissed the others with a wave. “I suppose even rumor mills are bound to churn out the truth now and again.”
“I’m not broken.” Catwoman wasn’t snatching a morsel of progress from me. “I’m…mending.”
“Prove it.” She trailed a fingertip down the sleeves of the shirts on the rack nearest her, showcasing the department store she had brought to me. “Either you wear your past, or it wears you.”
A sick certainty knotted my gut. “You know.”
About Lena. About the clothes. About polishing me until I shined.
“Linus was right about me.” Her plump lips smashed together. “I am a liar.” She picked invisible lint from her gown. “Although I wasn’t lying when I said I can pluck your worst fears from your head.”
Meaning she had been taunting me with the naked-woman routine, but this… This was designed to hurt. “That’s comforting.”
“Believe it or not, I was trying to behave since you’ll be gone in a couple of days.” Her tone promised she would never see me again, and it made me question what Linus had told her about his long-term plans. “You’re not worth upsetting my applecart over.”
Again, I wondered what role she filled in his household, and again I reminded myself it was none of my business. “So, what’s all this about then?”
“Why go to the shops,” she said, smirking, “when we can bring the shops to you?”
“You don’t get it.” I sat down before toppling face-first over the edge. “Part of the fun—okay, actually all of the fun—was the experience of going out with my friend.” Buying the clothes was necessity. Goofing off with Neely would have been the only highlight of the experience. “He’s got an eye for this kind of thing, and I haven’t seen him much lately. This trip was going to be an apology for being a lame friend.”
“Your human is unavailable.” She clipped each syllable shorter than Boaz kept his hair on the sides. “That doesn’t change the fact you need clothes. I saw what you brought with you when I located your pajamas. Do you really want to step foot on Strophalos soil dressed in rags?”
“Jeans and T-shirts aren’t rags,” I grumbled, ignoring how many holes frayed each of mine.
“Linus has a reputation to uphold.” Her nose wrinkled. “For that matter, so do you. Do you want people to associate the Woolworth name with grunge rockers from the nineties?”
“No?”
“I’ve wasted enough of my time on this.” She tipped up her chin. “I’ll be back in an hour, and we’ll talk lunch. Make sure you’ve picked out at least a dozen outfits. It’s not much, but it’s a start.”
“A dozen? Outfits?” That was like—I did quick math in my head—thirty-six or more individual pieces. “I don’t know what to choose. You’ve seen what I wear.”
A calculating smile curved her pouty lips. “That’s why I pre-coordinated each piece here. You cannot go wrong. The palette is traditional. Whites, grays, blacks, and reds. These are the colors your adoptive mother wore, the shades associated with your family and your station.”
Surprise left me speechless. This was…a kindness. Meiko didn’t do kind.
The odds of her suffocating me in my sleep jumped by twenty-five percent.
“I’ll do your hair and makeup,” she informed me. “Fashion is armor where you’re going.”
The sentiment was visceral in its accuracy and yet… “Why are you doing this?”
“The sooner you accomplish your goals, the sooner you’ll go home.”
“He’s coming back to Savannah with me.” The taunt popped right out of my mouth without permission.
“This is his home,” she purred. “He belongs here, with me.” Her smile sharpened. “You’ll break his heart. You’re already half in love with someone else, and when you crush him, he’ll finally understand you don’t care about him. Don’t you get it?” She laughed, all sly venom. “I’m helping me, not you. He needs to let go of this fantasy of you. Make your choice, and put him out of his misery. You might not love him, but surely you care enough to want what’s best for him?”
“Linus doesn’t care about me that way,” I said, hearing my own uncertainty.
“You saw his office.” A grimness tightened her eyes as she plucked her keycard from her cleavage. “You know the truth. Run from it if you like, deny it if you must, but remember this: There’s nothing wrong with lying until you start telling them to yourself.”
The door clicked shut on her heels, and I was left alone with a loft full of clothes and the budding certainty I might not have been the only one nursing a teenage crush.
Meiko might be a liar, but her hurt over his rejection rang all too true.
Partly to spite Meiko, and partly to cut myself some slack since I had no idea what I was doing without Neely, I chose two. Five pieces of clothing total. Three baubles. Plus, one pair of shoes—flats—guaranteed to earn me a lip curl when she spotted me wearing them.
One of the most valuable lessons I learned from being a Haint, besides breathing was optional, was comfortable shoes trumped beauty every single time. There was a reason we dressed in full Southern-belle regalia, hair and makeup just so, but wore coordinating sneakers instead of the heels that were period accurate.
When the door opened an hour later and Meiko sashayed in to survey the results of her ultimatum, I stood as tall as one could in black flats. The black slacks emphasized my thinness, but the ruffled front of the white blouse gave the illusion of cleavage. A strand of red glass beads hung around my throat, and I paired it with a matching bracelet at my wrist. The coordinating jacket, also black, hung over the back of a chair, the red embroidery on the lapels peeking out just a touch. Makeup wasn’t happening, I would end up looking like a runaway clown if I applied it myself, but I had put a little effort into my hair.
After pulling the frizzy mass into a ponytail and deciding that wouldn’t do, I sacrificed a sock to the cause. I trimmed off its toe and scrunched it down until it formed a donut. From there, all I had to do was thread my hair through the hole, tuck as I rolled it down against my scalp, then secure the sleek bun with bobby pins. Not too shabby.
“You look…decent.” Meiko prowled a circle around me. “Where are your other selections?”
“This and that,” I said, indicating my second outfit, “are all I want from you.”
“It’s your money.” She twitched an elegant shoulder. “What do I care how you spend it?”
“Wait—my money?” Nails bit into my palms when I formed fists at my side. “How do you figure?”
“I used the debit card from your purse when I called in the order.” Smugness lent her beautiful face a cruel edge. “All of this is yours. Keep it, wear it, or burn it. I couldn’t care less what you do.”
While I didn’t mind paying for my clothes, I had no intention of stuffing a closet full of pieces handpicked for me by her.
“This is what we’re going to do,” I told her, slow and polite. “You’re going to return everything but what I’m wearing and the one other outfit I showed you.” Her lip peeled over her teeth, but I kept going. “Anything that’s nonreturnable will be tallied and billed to you. Not Linus. You.”
“You can’t be serious.” She fisted the sleeve of the nearest garment. “Have you seen the price tags on these pieces?”
“Oh, I’m sure they were the most expensive clothes you could have delivered on short notice. Just another way to stick it to me. Don’t worry, I get it. But here’s the thing. The money you spent? It’s mine. It’s not yours. I’m not Linus. I won’t allow you to play with me or my things, and I won’t let you spend my money as if it’s yours when I’ve bled and grieved and almost died to earn it.”
Meiko sharpened her scowl into claws she raked over me. “I was wrong about you.”
In a fit of pique, she shrank into her cat form and stalked off without finishing her thought. No doubt she hoped to leave me in suspense, but I didn’t care about her opinion of me. Not before this moment, and certainly not after it.
But I did wish we had put off this confrontation until after lunch.
Most days I did a good job of acting like the old Grier. Enough so people didn’t stare, didn’t ask what was wrong. But new Grier lurked beneath that thin skin, and she wasn’t someone I wanted off her leash.
Anger simmered in me, even when I laughed, even when I smiled, and one day it would devour me from the inside. What emerged would be the truth of what was left after Maud, after Atramentous, after Volkov. That Grier would make a merciless Dame Woolworth, a matriarch the Grande Dame would adore, and that more than anything had me tucking her deeper and deeper within me until I could act like everything was okay again.
While I waited on Linus, I texted Amelie a heads-up about Meiko’s prank. As my financial advisor, I didn’t want her to have a heart attack when the bill arrived.
Guilt tempted me to fess up about the accident while we chatted, but she would be livid I hadn’t confessed sooner, and I was too tired to face a lecture. A suffocating weight pressed on me every time she explained how much losing me had cost her, and her brother. When I was feeling uncharitable, I asked myself if they realized how much losing the old Grier had cost me. But mostly I was just lonely for the simplicities of that life.