Page 11 of The Wicked

“And now I’m thrilled to announce that dinner is served in the Redwood Room.”

Wait, what? Tobias Carpenter hadn’t made his speech yet, and he was looking, well, mutinous. The guests moved en masse in the direction of food, and Hadley’s father made a beeline for the twins. Oh, I had to hear this.

“Excuse me,” I said to Prince Charming. “I need to…uh, be somewhere else.”

One of the hotel staff was sweeping up a broken glass next to the stage—someone had dropped it in the stampede to the buffet. What was her name? Jeannie? No, Jeannine. She wasn’t a local, and I’d only spoken with her once or twice before, so I headed in her direction on the assumption that she wouldn’t recognise me.

“Excuse me?”

She looked up, her eyes tired. “Can I help you, ma’am?”

“Do you have a lost property office?”

“Did you lose something?”

“My bracelet. I’m not sure when, but I definitely had it when I arrived.”

“What does it look like?”

“It’s silver with blue crystals.”

“We don’t have a lost property office, but if you wait right here, I can go ask the duty manager.”

“I’d really appreciate that.”

“I’ll be back in a moment.”

Staff at the Peninsula went above and beyond, and asking the duty manager about lost property was standard operating procedure. Now I had the perfect excuse to hang around by the stage and listen to Tobias Carpenter berating Kayleigh. Lillian had seen trouble coming and made a hasty exit, the same way she always did. Nothing waseverLillian’s fault.

“What happened to my time slot?”

Kayleigh looked at Mr. Carpenter blankly.

“For my speech,” he prompted.

“The… Oh, yeah, the speech. I, uh…” Forgot it entirely? “I moved it to after dinner.”

“Nobody wants to listen to speeches after dinner. I specifically requested the pre-dinner slot to wish my little girl a happy birthday, and you hijacked my time.”

“Well, when wasIsupposed to wish her a happy birthday?”

Me, me, me.Kayleigh was the most self-centred person I’d ever met. She’d inherited her mom’s ego, while Lillian got the spiteful streak.

“At the end of the night, after you’d run the event to the agreed timetable.”

“It was just a speech. Why don’t you get a drink and loosen up? They’re free.”

“They’re not free. I’m footing the bar bill. And if you think I’m forking out for your unilateral timetable revisions and bad attitude, you can think again.”

Kayleigh stayed silent for a moment as his words sank in. Did she even understand what “unilateral” meant? Finally, it dawned on her that she might not get paid, and she resorted to her default mode: whining.

“Hey, you can’t do that. We signed a contract.”

Tobias Carpenter turned away. “Sue me,” he said over his shoulder.

Did Kayleigh realise he was a lawyer specialising in commercial litigation? I had to assume not. She hurried after him, still complaining and totally unaccustomed to not getting her own way. In the battle of Tobias versus the evil twins, I knew who I’d be cheering for. Hashtag Team Tobias, rah, rah, rah. Okay, so I’d quit the junior cheer squad when I was eight years old to focus on dance, but I’d still be willing to pick up a pair of pom-poms if Tobias followed through on his threat.

I was about to follow and see if I could overhear any other delicious snippets of Kayleigh’s comeuppance when I spotted her cell phone on the edge of the DJ’s makeshift desk—she’d set up a regular table and stacked books from the hotel library under the legs to achieve the required height. Did Nico know about the sacrifices his leatherbound hardcovers were making? I very much doubted it. On impulse, I swiped the phone and hid it in the folds of my dress to pile a little more pressure on my cousin. When she noticed it was missing, she’d freak. She wouldn’t be able to call Lillian, or post to Instagram, or… Hmm, Instagram… All of her #nofilter pictures came courtesy of careful photoshopping—maybe I could add something slightly more realistic? One of her many duck-face selfie outtakes? She always took a hundred shots before she settled on the final version.

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