Page 45 of Wicked Beautiful (Wicked Games 1)
FOURTEEN
I’m awakened by someone tapping me on the forehead. When I crack open an eye, Tabby stands beside my bed, holding a steaming mug of coffee, grinning.
Cheerfully, she says, “Here’s a sight I never thought I’d see: Maleficent switched places with Sleeping Beauty.”
I grumble, “Go away.”
“It’s almost ten o’clock, boss.”
“Maybe I need a day off.”
“You don’t take days off.”
“Maybe I’m sick.”
“Psh. You never get sick. Besides, I know what you were up to last night. Dinner, dancing, and a romantic turn around Central Park with the man you’ve sworn vengeance on?” She makes a clucking noise, like a hen. “No wonder you’re so tired. All that evil-doing must be exhausting.”
Grouchy and grainy-eyed, I sit up in bed and take the coffee from her hands. It’s strong and black, just how I like it. “Please tell me you didn’t attach a GPS device to my shoes.”
She wrinkles her nose. “I’m a hacker, boss, not Jason Bourne.”
“Then how do you know what I was doing last night?”
“Well, if you must know, you had a tail from TMZ the entire time.”
When I nearly choke on my coffee, she calmly adds, “But don’t worry. When I got a ping on your name from their servers, I crashed their system and corrupted about fifty terabytes of data, so that story’s toast. Along with a whole bunch of others.”
“Oh. Good work. But the photographer still has his—”
“No, he doesn’t.” Her smile is sphinxlike.
I stare at her, blinking against the bright light streaming in through the bedroom windows. “How?”
She purses her lips. After a moment, she says, “You know how in House of Cards when President Underwood asks his minion Doug Stamper to do something unsavory, and he does, and then the President asks if it was done, and Stamper says yes, and the President wants details, and Stamper says something to the effect that it’s better if he doesn’t know in case, you know, there are some legal ramifications later on? Like so the President can claim he doesn’t know anything, because he really doesn’t?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s like that. You really don’t want to know.”
I sip the coffee, collecting my thoughts. “That sounds rather ominous.”
She shrugs. “Just another day at work under the Mistress of All Evil.”
“Very funny.” I take a closer look at what she’s wearing. “Dear God, are those Hello Kitty boots?”
She sticks out a slender leg, which is clad in a bubble-gum-pink platform boot made of some kind of shiny manmade material, stamped all over with a white cartoon cat with a bow in its hair, holding a lunchbox.
“Aren’t they adorable? I bought them for the Hello Kitty Con in November. I’ve totally got my whole outfit already planned.”
I could have gone my entire life without knowing there’s a convention devoted to all things Hello Kitty.
“They certainly pair wonderfully with the rainbow leggings and the sequined baby doll dress. You look like you’re ready for the Electric Daisy Carnival.”
The EDC is a giant outdoor concert and festival where twenty-something dance music fans dress in outrageous costumes, get high, and have sex in public. It’s the annual Woodstock for Millennials.
Tabby laughs, tossing her long red ponytail over her shoulder. “That’s not until June, silly!”
Undoubtedly she already has tickets.
