Chapter 22
KATE
Breagha crowds into the fitting room with me.
I feel like a cow, looking at both of us in the mirror.
She’s six inches shorter than I am and almost fifty pounds lighter.
Instead of my tangled red hair, she has soft blonde waves.
We’ve both got green eyes, but mine are rimmed with scarlet.
I haven’t slept more than five hours a night since Da handed me off to Wolf.
I’m willing to bet every cent I’ve ever stolen that I’m the only one in this high-end clothing boutique who’s ever shaved her pubes.
“Smile,” Breagha says. “This is supposed to be the most exciting time of your life.”
Exciting was going on my first Red Cap raid.
Exciting was killing my first ice ghoul in Winter Reckoning.
Exciting was slapping Cole Wolf with every ounce of my strength.
And yes. Exciting was him slapping me back. Him tying my wrists and ankles together. Him wrapping his belt around his fist and measuring out ten perfect—
“There!” Breagha says, hugging me from the side. “That’s the smile I was looking for.”
I immediately start to scowl in the mirror.
“Ka-ate!” Breagha turns my name into a scolding taunt as she laces her fingers between mine. She squeezes, and I’m immediately carried back eighteen years.
I’m eight and Breagha’s five, and she’s holding my hand so tight I can’t feel my fingers.
We’re pressed together in the trunk of a car, us and our nanny, Larissa.
But Larissa hasn’t said a word since the Bad Men dragged us away from the playground.
Larissa took out her phone when the Bad Men came out of the woods.
She called Da. I heard her saying, “Mr. Lynch—” But one of the Bad Men hit her on the side of her head, just above her ear.
He had a stick in his hand; it looked like a miniature baseball bat.
Larissa fell like all her bones melted, and one of the men had to carry her to the car.
Now Breagha starts to cry, her fingers clutching mine.
I tell her everything will be all right, all we have to do is—
Breagha drops my hand so she can pluck at my hoodie. “I know you’d be perfectly happy getting married in your sweatpants and this disgusting thing.”
Shaking off the bad memory, I give her the grin she wants. “Now that you mention it…”
“Mommy and Daddy would die before they let you stand up like that, in front of all the crew. I know you don’t care, but this is really important to them.”
I hate the way she talks about our parents, like she’s still five years old. I hate that she’s so easy to win over—a plane trip to New York and a limo ride to Fifth Avenue, and shopping at this chichi store, Gallagher Something. Mam heard about it from one of the other clan wives.
I hate that Breagha’s right.
I was born into the Lynch family. Our clan stretches all the way back to the sack of Drogheda. Generations of proud women have stood beside our men. We’ve done our duty. Paid our dues. Granny did it. Mam too.
I can’t fail at something Mam managed to do.
“Please,” Breagha pleads. “There are half a dozen dresses on the rack outside. They’re all my favorites from my dream book.
” My sister has been planning her wedding since the day she turned three.
“It’s a miracle the store could get them in so quickly.
Will you just try them on? You can choose the one you like best and we’ll be done. ”
“Fine,” I say, because it would be like pulling the wings off a butterfly to disappoint my sister. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Breagha claps her hands like she’s about to blow out the candles on a birthday cake. “Thank you!” she says. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
The first dress has skirts so full there isn’t room for both Breagha and me in the fitting room. The train is long enough to stretch from here to Baltimore; it’s so heavy the sides are reinforced with some sort of wire.
“Oh Kate,” Breagha breathes, and I wonder what mirror she’s looking at, because the one I see shows what happens when a balloon fucks a coconut cream pie.
“No,” I say.
“Katie, a stór,” Mam calls from outside the dressing room. “Let me see.”
“No fucking way,” I say, raising my voice.
I don’t care if the woman who owns the store hears me. What was her name? Martha Gallagher. Maybe Martha Gallagher will be scandalized enough to throw us out of the shop, and I can be done with all this.
“Don’t worry, Mommy,” Breagha calls. “We have five more to try.”
The second one looks like someone turned the Titanic into a dress.
A huge shield juts out over my tits, and stiff sheets of fabric fall like steel plates from my hips to the floor.
I don’t know what the dress is made of, but it weighs about a thousand pounds.
I’m pretty sure I could slit my wrists against the edge of the breastplate.
“No.”
“Katie, a stór—”
I raise my voice so Mam can’t claim we’ve had any misunderstanding. “If you make me buy this one, I’ll burn it before Sunday.”
Breagha’s smile falters, but she helps me out of the suit of armor.
The third dress looks like something a mermaid would wear, if she was trapped on land and still had her feet bound into a tail.
It’s strapless, with a thousand feet of snow-white feather boas wrapped around the chest. The waist cinches in like the body of a wasp, and the hem is so snug around my ankles I have trouble turning to look at my arse in the mirror.
“Kate,” Breagha sighs. “It’s beautiful.”
“You’re out of your tree if you think I’ll wear this in public.”
“Katie, a stór—”
“I will tell you when I’m ready to show you a fucking dress, Mam!”
She gasps like somebody’s shivved her. There’s a lot of hustling outside the fitting room and even more bustling, and I hear the subtle pop of a champagne bottle opened by an expert. Liquid fills a glass and ice shifts in a bucket, and Mam mews a pitiful little, “Thank you.”
I wonder if I can get a glass for myself. Or maybe a whole bottle. Come to think of it, a fifth of Grey Goose would be pure heaven right now—I don’t even need ice or tonic.
The fourth dress cuts off at the knees, making me look six months up the duff.
The fifth dress has a slit all the way up to my gowl that almost meets the neckline, and I don’t have the hips or tits to begin to carry it off.
The sixth dress has so much lace it looks like someone ran a marathon through cobwebs. My arms start to itch just looking at it.
Breagha’s smile is as tattered as that final reject. “I j— just wanted to find you th— the perfect dress,” she says, her lower lip quivering. “I w— w— was certain one of these would be it!”
I hate it when Breagha cries. She doesn’t do it often, only when she’s absolutely, completely at the end of her tether. But when she does, it’s almost always because of something I’ve done.
And let’s face it, there’s a lot I’ve done over the years.
“Excuse me, girls.” It’s Mrs. Gallagher.
I wonder if she’s going to offer Breagha a glass of the champagne that stopped Mam’s mouth.
“I know Miss Lynch has done her best, and on very short notice. But it was a rush for us to bring in some of these dresses, and the sizes aren’t doing anyone any favors. ”
Breagha sniffs valiantly.
Mrs. Gallagher goes on. “We do have a few items in stock. And there’s one in particular I think might work.” She looks directly at me, a gentle smile lighting her face. “Could I convince you to try on one more?”
No. No fucking way. All I want to do is get out of this place and back to Baltimore and online with the Raiders. We’re planning our hit on MaskedMarauder’s bookie acquaintance, debating the best approach to breach the arsehole’s firewall.
But Breagha looks so hopeful that I hear myself say, “Yes.” My sister barely refrains from clapping before she goes to sit with Mam.
The dress Mrs. Gallagher brings me looks like something a Greek statue would wear.
It has a V-neck and a lace bodice with silk panels that cross on the diagonal.
Mrs. Gallagher calls the fabric tulle. It hides the fact that I barely fill a B cup.
My shoulders are covered with soft little caps of the same material.
The skirt falls in gentle folds that Mrs. Gallagher says are fluted.
The back fastens with two dozen cloth-covered buttons.
It’s beautiful.
And even more amazing: I’m beautiful in it.
Mrs. Gallagher accepts my stunned silence as a good thing.
“Just a moment,” she says. Before I can stop staring at myself in the mirror, she’s back.
She does something magical to my hair, weaving it into a loose braid and tucking under the end with pins that materialize from nowhere.
She settles a veil into place, centering a headband that doesn’t even pinch.
She hands me a pair of shoes—plain white with a tiny heel, something even I can walk in.
“There,” she says, fluffing the veil so it swirls around my shoulders. “What do we think of that?”
“We think you’re amazing,” I say, my voice barely a whisper.
“What’s that?” Mam calls. “Katie, a stór. Do you have something to show us?”
Mrs. Gallagher waits for me to nod. When she steps out of the fitting room, she holds the door for me to make a grand entrance. I expect the shoes to pinch my toes the instant I take a step, but they fit like they were made just for me. I feel stronger, steadier, just having them on my feet.
“Katie, you can’t waste any more of Mrs.— Oh!” Mam is knocked speechless.
That alone proves Mrs. Gallagher works miracles.
“Kate,” Breagha whispers. “That’s exactly what I was thinking of.”
I laugh, because she’s my little sister and because she means well and because weddings are infinitely more important to her than they are to me.
Mam recovers before Breagha or I do. “I don’t know, Katie. Those buttons will be very difficult. You won’t be able to dress yourself.”