Chapter 27 Maeve
MAEVE
She told me about the social media campaign she’d designed for Fall and Fern, the natural skincare company where she worked as a marketing assistant, then about the three guys she’d dated briefly and uneventfully.
“I can’t even find one good man,” she said. “How did you find three?”
I smiled, happy that I could do that now without my face hurting. “Are you admitting they’re good?”
“They flew halfway around the world to rescue you from an actual dungeon and burned down a castle on their way out as a fuck-you to the guy who took you. So yeah, that’s good in my book.” She wiped her hands on a napkin. “So what are you going to do about Ethan Todd?”
“We’re going to kill that motherfucker,” Remy said, entering the kitchen with sweat dripping down his bare chest. “Hi, Bailey.”
Bailey’s eyes widened when he turned around to pull his smoothie stuff out of the fridge, her eyes locked on the skull tattoo on his back, the words Memento Mori inked in script over a tattoo of the bone mask the Butchers wore in the Hunt.
“Um… hi.” She glanced at me with a shrug.
I smothered a smile. I didn’t blame her for staring.
“How are you going to do that if you don’t know where he is?” Bailey asked.
I was surprised she’d moved past “we’re going to kill that motherfucker” to the logistics of finding Ethan Todd, but I knew how easy it was to fall into the Butchers’ world, how quickly even the most violent and unhinged things could start to seem normal.
“We’re going to find out where he is,” Remy said. “Somehow.”
“He’s gone into hiding,” I explained.
It was hard to catch Bailey up on everything at once, but no one had heard a word from Ethan Todd in the week we’d been back from Romania.
There was a news article in a Romanian media outlet about the castle fire, but it had been a small article buried in the bowels of the website and no mention had been made of Anton and Nick, who’d died in the dungeon tunnels.
“We need to draw him out.” Remy turned on the blender.
Except he forgot the lid, and yogurt, protein powder, and blueberries went flying.
By the time he turned it off he was covered in the purple mess.
Bailey stared, open-mouthed, but Remy just sighed and moved to the sink.
“Want help?” I asked.
“I got it."
“How often does this happen?” Bailey asked.
“Um…” I tried to think of a nice way to say “every day.”
“A lot,” Remy said, saving me from the diplomatic crisis.
She lifted her eyebrows, like this was new information, which I guess it was for her.
“So you were saying he’s in hiding?” she asked as Remy started cleaning up. “Ethan Todd?”
I nodded.
“He knows he’s a dead man,” Remy said.
I tried not to laugh at the contrast of inked Remy, with his lean, defined muscle, on his knees wiping up the blender mess while threatening another man’s life.
“He’s such a narcissist,” Bailey said. “Can’t you just bait him on social media?“
Remy rose to his feet. “What do you mean?”
Bailey shrugged. “You can hire a bot farm for next to nothing to push any kind of content you want. We do it at Fall and Fern all the time to promote new products.”
Remy had lost interest in his cleanup operation. He braced his hands on the island and stared at Bailey. “You’re saying we can pay people to stir shit with Todd online?”
“Well… yeah. That’s not how we use it at work, but I don’t see why you couldn’t.”
Remy looked at me. “We need to get Bram and Poe.”