Page 75 of Half the Summer's Night
“What do you mean?” I finally say. “That I’m like you?”
Charlotte tilts her head. “You don’t know, do you?”
I hesitate. I certainly have my suspicions about what she means, but I know better than to say it aloud.
Charlotte sighs and rakes her hands through her hair. “Fuck,” she snaps. “Damn it. I figured you already knew, given all your little—activities around town.” She grins up at me. “I’ve never known anyone who makes them look like accidents,” she adds. “That’s clever.”
Immediately, panic tears through me like an out-of-control fire, and my blood pounds like an alarm bell. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do,” Charlotte says affably. “I get why you don’t want to say it, but trust me. I’m about as far from a cop as you can get.”
I curl my hands up, dart my eyes around the bathroom. I can’t let her live, that much is clear. But I need to know who she is first.
“I know a lot of things about you.” Charlotte gives me a sly, knowing look, which I don’t like one bit. “So as a show of good faith, I’ll answer some of your questions to even the score. What do you say?”
I stare at her through my killing face. I’m just going to have to kill her, as quickly and cleanly as I can. Then I’ll figure out the story. Same as what I did with Julian Bernet
“You’re thinking about trying to kill me, aren’t you?”
Charlotte asks the question in a mocking sing-song, and anger seethes in my chest. This is it. Time to act.
“I won’ttry,” I growl, stepping toward her.
“You willtry,” she says with a smile. “And you might even think you succeeded, if I let you. But I don’t feel like dying today.”
Not a single fucking thing she said makes any sense, and I suppose that’s on purpose, because it stops me in my tracks.
Charlotte winks and saunters over to the bathroom door and turns the inside deadbolt. I just stare at her, my heart pounding, and hold Abi’s face in my head. I have to get out of this for her. Charlotte is clearly nuts, and I know she’s not capable of killing me, but she could still ruin my life. Namely, her dead body will go to Abi, and I’ll have to explain to her why I murdered a random attractive woman in a fucking beachside bathroom.
Fuck. I can’t kill her.
“Can we just not do this?” I blurt out.
Charlotte looks over at me. “Do what?” she asks. “Have a conversation?”
“What the fuck do you want?” I snarl, my patience wearing thin. “You said you don’t want to die. Well, locking me in here isn’t going to help with that, so just let me go and pretend you never saw me.”
Charlotte throws back her head and laughs. “I’m not afraid of you, Rowan.”
It’s the second time she’s said my name, and just like the first, it fills my head with a panicked rush of white noise. It’s not just about this woman knowing my secrets. It’s aboutAbi. Because even Abi doesn’t know I’m Rowan, and so this feels like I’ve betrayed her.
“Rowan Hanover,” Charlotte says slowly, her lips curling up even more. “Take off the mask. I know who you are. I knowwhatyou are. And I just want to have a conversation.”
The white noise builds to a heavy, pounding static, and in that static, I hear voices. My mother calling me a monster. Uncle Nash telling me he’s the only thing keeping me from death row.
And then I move without thinking, my vision banded with white. I fling myself at Charlotte, trying to grab at her neck.
She catches me by the wrists and flings me sideways.
For a second, my feet lift off the air. Then I slam into the sink, the ceramic cutting deep enough into my belly that it knocks all the air out of my lungs. I totter sideways, stunned and suddenly cold with something I think might be fear.
“You want to fight?” Charlotte says. “We can fight. Get it out of your system. Then, we’ll talk.”
“How did you do that?” I rasp as I turn toward her. She’s not that small, and she looks strong enough, but I’m still significantly bigger than her.
And yet she threw me into that sink with real force. Not even Uncle Nash was ever able to do that to me.
“That’s what I’m trying to explain to you,” she says patiently. “You and I, we’re not human.”
