Page 27 of The Wicked

You lost, Garrett.

You lost the first interesting woman to cross your path in years.

I didn’t know Cinderella’s identity, and I was almost certain she didn’t know mine. Women tended to pre-judge when they heard my name. In the circles I ran in, their second question wasn’t “Could I get a glass of water, please?” No, it was either “Oh, are you Ellis Dorsey’s son?” or “Well, aren’t you going to order a bottle of Cristal?”

A thousand crystals glittered under the lights. True, I wasn’t a shoe designer like my sister, but to my eye, the workmanship looked exquisite. This was no amateur job. How long had it taken to glue all those gems in place? Hours? Days? A row of larger jewels sparkled down the back of the heel, cut to look like roses. Were those a specialist design? If they weren’t mass-produced, then maybe they’d be traceable?

Gracie,

Thanks for the info. The girl’s name is Cinderella, and she ditched me at midnight. Any idea where those crystals came from?

The Other G

As soon as I’d sent the email to my sister, a message popped up on my work laptop.

Tawna

Are you coming to the office this afternoon, or should I reschedule your meeting with David Stoker?

Dammit, I’d forgotten all about the meeting with Stoker, not that I’d been looking forward to it in the first place. Telling a man that at least six of his staff would need to lose their jobs was never easy, but Stoker Apparel had been poorly managed for years, and if Dorsey Holdings hadn’t swooped in and bought the company, it would have gone under a month ago when the bank refused to extend the revolving credit facility. At least this way, another thirty jobs would stay in Oregon instead of being shipped overseas.

I’ll be there by 1 p.m.

What would I do without Tawna? She’d been keeping me on the straight and narrow since Dad had a midlife crisis and handed over the reins of Dorsey Holdings to me. And by “midlife crisis,” I mean that he’d had a heart attack followed by a coronary angioplasty, then decided to run for office. Now he was secretary of state for Oregon, and he spent more time with his personal trainer than he did with his family. He’d quit smoking, he’d quit drinking, he’d lost thirty pounds, and last year, he’d run the Portland Marathon in aid of the American Heart Association.

Garrett,

Ha-ha, very funny. Why don’t you try a craft store? What’s really going on?

The Original G

Did I want to give Gracie the details? No, not yet. What if I never found Cinderella? I’d look like a fool, hunting down a mystery woman as if I were a fictional character from a children’s book.

Gracie,

Okay, you got me. Johannes talked me into joining a drag workshop the next time we go to Vegas, and I thought the shoes would look sexy.

The Other G

How much time did I want to spend on this endeavour? A drop in productivity would cost me later in the week, but at the same time, I couldn’t stop thinking about Cinderella. There’d been a connection between us. I’d felt it, and I was sure she had too, which made her disappearing act all the more frustrating. Had she worried about getting revealed as a gatecrasher when everyone removed their masks? She shouldn’t have—if she was with me, nobody would have kicked her out. But I hadn’t explained that, had I? She hadn’t given me the chance. Hell, she hadn’t even hung around long enough to exchange phone numbers.

I typed “rose crystals” into the search bar and scanned through the results. Rose quartz, desert rose… No, those weren’t what I was looking for. I tried “blue rose crystals.” Sheesh, there had to be a hundred different types, but none of them matched the ones on Cinderella’s shoe. Those were better quality, the detail sharper. The fifth entry on the page was a discussion board, and when I clicked on the thread, I found a long-winded discussion on the merits of various crafting techniques, and wow, these people seemed kind of scary. There was a lot of all-caps shouting going on, as well as a bunch of creative emoji use. But they seemed to like sharing their knowledge, so I moved the shoe to the windowsill for better light, snapped a picture, and uploaded it with a plea:Can anyone identify these crystals?

Then I made myself another coffee and waited.

9

SARA

“Is this him?”

Blue showed me a picture on her phone, a still from a security camera by the look of it. I recognised the event bar at the Peninsula in the background. My reaction was visceral. It felt as if a semi had run into my chest and squashed the air out of my lungs. My knees buckled, and I fell backward onto the couch in the pool house.

“I take it that’s a yes?”

“Just give her a minute.” Brooke perched beside me, worried. “Are you okay?”

“How can I be? That monster is here in Baldwin’s Shore.”

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