Page 79 of Worse Than Wicked
Before I shift into gear, a voice comes from the back seat. “Did you leave another mess for me to clean up?”
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 humanform. 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.
