Page 32 of Shadow Dance

“I bet I can make you love it,” she says, arching an eyebrow in challenge.

“Go for it,” I say, smirking. “You won’t catch me turning down a free meal.”

Scoffing, she marches over to the counter and orders enough fish for a small village. Which is usually necessary for Callum and whoever he has at the house on any given night. It’s no mystery why this poor girl’s tired of living there. She’s a good cook, though. I’ll give her that. Their housekeeper used to handle dinner most of the time, but Maeve’s taken over, either because she was bored, or Callum didn’t like Yelena hanging around so late in the day.

We check out, loading the groceries into the trunk. Maeve returns the cart while I start the car and check my phone. Callum hasn’t sentany follow-up messages yet, but there’s plenty for me to see on the video feeds I installed at the house. There’s a dark SUV in the driveway beside Mac’s ride, a Lexus maybe. I pinch my fingers on the screen, looking for identifying factors like a license plate or cosmetic upgrade, but none are visible from this angle.

I glance up. Maeve’s on her way back, so I quickly navigate to the living room. Cal knows about the cameras near the front and French doors, but he doesn’t know about the tiny one I installed into one of his gaming consoles or the invisible ones built into the sockets.

Cal, Griffin, and Mac are in the living room, talking around the coffee table with four guys I don’t recognize. Two Black, two white. All dressed well, in button-downs and slacks. I screenshot a closeup of their faces so I can look into them later. My car door opens, letting in a rush of fresh air. I exit the surveillance app and open Spotify, scrolling to a mix of old hip-hop songs I grew up listening to.

“You want to go over the Golden Gate Bridge?”

Maeve frowns in confusion. “Right now?”

“Yeah.” I reverse out of our parking spot, keeping my eye on the backup cam. “You ever been?”

“A couple times,” she says, frowning. “Haven’t you?”

I nod, pulling onto the road. “It’s one of the few touristy places that’s worth the hype.”

“Yes,” she says slowly, glancing down at her phone. “It is. But why do you want to go now, all of a sudden?”

I might as well be honest. Maeve’s not dumb, and I hate playing games. I have to lie about enough shit on a daily basis. “Cal’s got some stuff going on at home. He asked if we could stay gone awhile.”

“Of course, he did.” She makes a derisive sound. “Sometimes I wonder why I ever moved out here.”

“We can do something else if you’d prefer.”

“It doesn’t matter. Golden Gate sounds good,” she says, settling back in her seat.

We drive in silence for a few moments, the hum of the engine and the soft beats of the hip-hop mix filling the space between us. Maeve scrolls through her phone, pausing to type every now and then.

“What’s with all the sighing?” I half-tease.

“I miss my friends,” she says. “I miss home.” It’s so honest, sonormal. Reminds me that before Maeve got sucked into all of this, she was just a girl living her life.

“So go home and see everybody.”

“I might,” she says. “For Christmas.”

“Why wait?” I ask, but I know before she answers what she’s going to say.

“I think you know by now how Callum is,” she says softly, gazing out the window. “He hates when I leave. It always leads to bickering. He thinks I might just not come back one day.”

“Is he right?”

She shrugs silently.

“Why do you stay?”

Maeve looks away, her fingers slipping off her phone screen as if the answer is too heavy to type, too delicate to articulate. I let her ignore my question for the rest of the A Tribe Called Quest song. But when it ends, I turn down the volume. “You ignoring me?”

“Why would you ask me something like that?” she asks, bitterness lacing her quiet words as she frowns at the passing scenery. “Talk about inappropriate.”

“Come on,” I say, although I guess I should’ve known she’d get prickly about it. “I?—”

“You work for him, Jaime,” she says with a humorless chuckle. “Anything I say can be used against me, right?”

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