twenty
Mabel Darling
Baron spins around in his seat to face the intruder.
He has no weapon, though. The Dolces never carry weapons—they are weapons.
I don’t have a weapon either. I learned the hard way how easily they can be turned around on the person trying to defend herself.
But I reach for the broken wine bottle wrapped in plastic that Baron carried out with us before turning in my seat.
I don’t hurry. I’m too wrung out to be surprised.
There’s a girl sitting in the back seat—almost lounging.
Her arms rest along the top of the seat on either side of her, and her knees are spread in a relaxed, arrogant pose, her combat boots kicked up against the bottom of each seat.
She’s dressed in black from head to toe—tight cargo pants with a knife holstered on her thigh, a v-neck tee, gloves, and a utility jacket, the pockets bulging.
A small black pack sits beside her in the seat.
We may not have armed ourselves, but she certainly did.
Even after a decade, she’s unmistakable, with the same raven waves tumbling around her shoulders, golden complexion, and full, bee-stung lips she got from her mother.
“Dahlia,” I breathe.
“How the fuck did you get in our car?” Baron asks.
Dahlia smirks. “Wasn’t much of a challenge.”
That’s the wrong thing to say to a Dolce, especially after she out-smarted him online for so long. I see the muscle tick in Baron’s jaw, but he doesn’t get out of the car and grab her, throw her to the ground and do something to her that will change her forever. Instead, he looks at me.
“Did you know she was coming?”
“No,” I say. “No more than you did.”
“Are you planning to hurt Mabel?” he asks her.
“No. Are you?”
He stares at her a second. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought you wanted me here,” she says, her dark gaze sliding to me. “You were summoning me, weren’t you? Here I am. The genie in your bottle.”
She gives me a secretive smile, and with a jolt, I remember that bottle in the cabinet in Maine. Was that her?
Somehow, I know that she won’t answer if I ask. At least not in front of Baron.
“You’re the Black Widow Killer?” he asks carefully, like he’s trying not to sound incredulous.
“I don’t believe such a person exists,” she says, taking her arms from the top of the seat. “I do like to check in on my old friend now and again, though. Keep tabs on her whereabouts. We make such a good team, don’t we, Dahlia?”
Another jolt goes through me. She knows I took her name.
But of course she does. If she’s hacked into my computer and left without leaving a trace, she surely knows everything about me there is to find, especially my borrowed identity.
“I think we do, Dahlia,” I say, smiling at her.
Now that the shock is wearing off, I’m dying to know more about her—to know everything, even more than she knows about me.
“You planned this?” Baron asks, looking back and forth between us.
“Plans are overrated,” she says, not taking her eyes from me.
Baron frowns. “Okay, well, what are you here for?”
She finally drags her gaze away from me, as if it’s tiresome to look at him, as if he’s not a work of art in human form. She must be immune to beauty. She shows nothing but slight annoyance when she looks at him. That comforts me for reasons I will examine later.
“Did you leave a mess?” she asks again.
Baron cuts his eyes towards me.
“Yes,” I admit.
“Of course you did,” she says, pulling a sleek object from her pocket. “Dead or alive, men are always so messy.”
I don’t realize what she’s doing until she twists her hand, sliding her fingers down and her thumb up at the same time, opening the object. It’s some kind of high-tech flip phone made entirely of black glass with a futuristic, angled design.
Baron eyes it with fascination, and I know he’s dying to get his hands on it.
“Cleanup on aisle five,” Dahlia mutters to herself, tapping on the panels for a few seconds before closing and pocketing the device.
“I was going to go back and clean the room once I took Mabel home,” Baron says.
“Of course you were.”
“How do we know you’re not going to take evidence from the scene that could incriminate us?”
“This is as close as I come to the scene,” Dahlia says. “And I trust my team.”
“I have no reason to,” Baron points out.
“I didn’t notice you filling out a complaint form last time,” she says, smirking again.
“That was you?” I ask. “You took the body from my aunt’s house in Maine?”
“ I didn’t go near it,” she says.
“Damn,” Baron says. “So you did that, and you’re the one who’s been following Mabel all this time? And I’m assuming you got rid of all those men she went out with?”
I realize then that the reason he’s not being completely rude to her, like he was my coworker, is that he’s impressed.
It’s not easy to impress Baron Dolce, but he’s definitely being nicer to her than I expected, especially after she broke into his car and eluded him for so long.
I should know, though, that Baron isn’t threatened by competition.
So few people can compete with him on any level that when he finds someone who can, he loves it.
“I don’t kill men,” she says. “I kill monsters.”
“It’s really you,” he says. “I was halfway convinced it was Mabel, and halfway convinced one of her dates made it out alive and was stalking her to take his revenge.”
“Men don’t typically kill with poison,” Dahlia says, adjusting the fingers of her glove. “Like I said, y’all are messy.”
Baron’s eyes narrow, and he turns to me. “That’s what you said.”
I shrug. “It’s common knowledge. Off the top of my head, I can name a half dozen plants in the woods behind Summer House that could kill a man. Mistletoe, foxglove, pokeweed, nightshade, amanita… Want me to go on?”
“You’ve made your point.”
“How many can you name?” I challenge.
“I’ll count myself lucky that you don’t cook,” he says, but his eyes shine with admiration. “I couldn’t name one.”
Smiling, I turn to Dahlia. “So, what now? Are you back for good?”
She cracks a grin. “That’s not how this works, babe. You need me, I’ll be there in a heartbeat. But I’m a rolling stone. I don’t gather moss.”
“No,” I say, smiling over my shoulder at her. “You prefer mushrooms.”
“You got me there.”
“Does your family know you’re home?” Baron asks. “I’m sure they’d want to see you.”
“They see me all the time,” she says. “Even if they don’t know it. You’ve probably seen me a few times yourself.”
“I very much doubt that,” Baron says. “You’d be hard to miss.”
I don’t like that, but Dahlia doesn’t seem to notice he paid her a compliment.
“On the contrary,” she says. “A moving target is very easy to miss.”
“Can you stay for a while?” I ask. “Even just tonight? I have so many questions.”
“I don’t like questions.”
“Then we’ll just talk,” I say. “Like we used to.”
She’s quiet a moment, frowning down at her glove. Then she darts a glance at Baron. “And him?”
“He’ll keep a lookout,” I say. “He won’t be with us.”
Baron frowns. “How do I know you’ll be safe with her?”
“I’m safer with her than you,” I point out. “She’s never hurt me.”
“I’m not used to playing errand boy,” he grumbles, but he starts the car. I halfway expect Dahlia to slide out and disappear into the dark, but she doesn’t look at all concerned to be in a moving vehicle with us. A few minutes later, we pull up at Summer House and climb out of the car.
“Is the other one in there?” she asks, nodding to the house.
“Duke,” I say. “Yes, he’s home.”
“Tag, you’re it,” she says reaching out and brushing one knuckle against my shoulder. “I’ll see you there.”
She hoists her small backpack higher, turns, and cuts a diagonal across the lawn towards the woods.
“What was that about?” Baron asks.
“It means I have to bring snacks,” I say, smiling after her. She still remembers. She probably never wondered if I was a figment of her imagination.
“I can see why she made a lasting impression on you as a kid,” Baron says, watching her cross the section of the back lawn we can see from our vantage point before she disappears into the forest.
“Seems like she made an impression on you too,” I mutter.
He grins. “Are you jealous?”
“Do I have a reason to be?”
“Mabel Darling,” he says, stepping forward and brushing his fingers up the side of my neck.
“I’m yours until they put me in the grave.
And even when I’m buried in the ground, I’ll still be yours.
And you will be ours.” He slides his hand behind my neck and draws me close.
“Don’t let that girl tell you otherwise.
I’d hate to have to kill her. She’s a rare one. But you… You are one of a kind.”
“What kind am I?” I whisper, searching his eyes.
“Mine.” He leans in and presses his lips to mine, firm and quick, like a stamp. His seal of ownership is on me like a brand I carry while I check in on Seeley and Duke—both sleeping—and pack a few snacks and a thermos of sweet tea.
At the back door, Baron grabs me by the throat and pulls me in, planting another kiss on my lips and pushing a flashlight into my hands. “Don’t forget what I said,” he tells me. “And if you hatch some plan to kill us, just know, it will fail. And things will be very unpleasant for you afterwards.”
I shiver in his grip.
“For how long?” I ask.
“You saw Jane,” he reminds me.
My stomach turns at the memory of what I saw, the emaciated skeleton of a girl.
She probably manipulated me to get away, but I don’t mind.
I don’t care if she was lying, if she was too thin to carry a pregnancy.
I would have said anything to get out of that situation too.
And I would have tried to get her out even if she hadn’t said that.
I just wish I could have foreseen that Baron would follow Duke and check up on her.
I’m afraid I didn’t do enough to save her, that she’s dead anyway.
“I’d kill myself before I suffered through that,” I whisper against Baron’s lips.