Page 2 of Sinful Sorrow

“What the fuck?!” Mason practically stomps his foot, just like he used to do when he was seven and losing a game of basketball against his older brother. “This is absolute bullshit, Kallie! Only psychos would pay to come to a place like this.”

“Guess that makes us psychos then.” She laughs, almost as hideously as the witch with warts. “I let you have your peace and sunshine and rainbows eleven months of the year. October is for me.” She lifts her hands, evil empress style, and cackles. “October is for those of us who descended from the devil.”

“There’s something biologically wrong with you.” Mason pushes Brent aside and leads me to the front of the pack, and as we pass, he scowls at Kallie. Which, of course, hurts her feelings and steals her joy. “Like, deep down, when you were forming in the womb, they messed something up.”

“Now you’re just being mean.” She cuddles into Brent’s side, frowning when his hand goes down to squeeze her ass. “Why do you have to be like that? It’s uncalled for.”

“It’s luck of the draw,” Brent inserts. “You got the evil gene. He got the mean. Nomes got the All-American Ms. Perfect. And I got…” He silences for a beat. Long enough to bring me and Mason to a stop and to look back. Then he smirks and shrugs. “Well, I’m perfect too. Of the four of us, we got a fifty-fifty streak for flawlessness.”

“Aw shucks.” I roll my eyes. “That might’ve been a compliment. Somewhere. Somehow.”

“Well, All-American perfection except for that itty bitty oops pushing your shirt forward,” he teases. “Good girls don’t get pregnant in high school, Wallace.”

I purse my lips and look at Mason, since technically, this is his fault, too. But I wave Brent away, starving the energy-vampire of the supply he so desperately wants. “These things happen.”

“We’ll raise it right.” Mason drags me closer, nuzzling my cheek. “We’ll graduate college. I’ll go pro with the Condors. You’ll start your fashion business and push everyone else off the catwalks. And we’ll have the cutest kid walking the stage with us in four years to get our diplomas.”

“Not all accidents are bad.” My stomach flutters—with nerves, maybe. Or if I believe hard enough, with the baby who knows how loved he or she already is. Maybe we did something kids our age probably shouldn’t do. And now we’re living with the consequences of those actions, warming under the palpable disappointment of grandparents who can’t hide their unhappiness.

His parents.

Not mine.

But it’s gonna be fine. Mason and I aren’t a one-night fling. We were gonna stay together forever, anyway. We would have married. Created a family. All the steps were ahead of us, regardless. It’s just, now, we get to climb them a little sooner than planned. “This baby was an accident,” I murmur. “But not a mistake.”

“Hello, Sidney.”

I jump when Ghostface swoops into the room, his costume reflected a hundred times at a hundred different angles from the mirrors surrounding us. Then I shrink away from his swinging arm, catching the glint of his prop knife as it arcs through the air.

I turn into Mason, shielding my belly from being bumped by the actor’s fist. But when I expect the thud of rubber to hit my ribs, a lance of fire slices through instead.

I gasp at first. Like a soft mewling that tickles the back of my throat. But that softness turns into a scream when blood soaks my cream sweater and the pain from the blade registers in my mind.

Cries echo around me. Then laughter.

Then a mocking, “Hello, Sidney!”

ARCHER

“Detective Archer Malone.” I flash my badge at the officer holding a boundary around a two-story Victorian nestled in a regular residential street a dozen or more blocks from the police precinct I work out of. Then I look at the woman beside me.

The doctor.

“Chief Medical Examiner, Doctor Minka Mayet. I’m primary on this one.”

“Detective.” The uniform lifts the yellow and black tape to allow us to walk beneath. “Chief Mayet.” He has eyes for Minka. A soft blush colors his cheeks despite the slight chill in the air. “Detective Charlie Fletcher arrived about two minutes ago.” He speaks to Minka. Watches her. Fawns over her. Because she’s so fucking beautiful and formidable.

Or maybe I’m just biased, considering she’s my wife—two times over.

“Your assistant, Doctor Emeri, is also here. She arrived about four minutes ago, but she didn’t enter the house until Detective Fletcher arrived.”

“My colleague,” Minka finally speaks. Her lips curl, ever so subtly, higher on the right as she studies the cop’s uniform. “Officer Crane. Doctor Emeri is not my assistant.”

“Oh, well…” His soft blush turns into an inferno when the intimidating Chief Mayet corrects him. “Of course, Chief. My mistake.”

“I don’t think we’re expecting anyone else, are we?” Minka casts her chocolate gaze my way, smirking as I wait for another man to finish ogling the woman I would murder for. In fact, I already have. But that’s a different story. Different day. “Aubs and Fletch are here. That rounds us out, right?”

“Looks that way.” I nod at the officer and enjoy a cheap thrill when he shrinks under my burning stare. Then I extend my hand to Minka. Though of course, she would never dare accept such intimacies at a crime scene. “You don’t wanna touch me, Mayet?”

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