Page 134 of Gilt

“Maybe it’s Maddox. Probably wants to go on a caffeine run.” I hop up and go to the window, but it’s not Maddox’s familiar black sedan parked out front. It’s a tiny, gold convertible. The kind of ostentatious car that only one person I know could pull off driving.

“If I were you I’d hide,” I tell Josie. “The Wicked Bitch of the West has come to call.”

“Life was so much simpler six months ago,” Josie says with a sigh, scrambling off the couch to seek sanctuary in her room.

“And yet you’re the one who wants me to call Jameson.”

“If you call him maybe my house won’t be Grand Central Station,” she yells before she shuts the door.

“Hormones much?” I say to the now empty living room.

I save Monroe the humiliation of having to come inside a 2-bedroom house and meet her outside. Judging from the fact that she hasn’t gotten out of the car she already views this as a self-service errand. Her worst half, Sabine, glowers at me from the passenger seat.

“I see you’re back from LA,” I say, conversationally. Sabine doesn’t reply.

She doesn’t talk. She just exists.

Monroe pushes her Louis Vuitton sunglasses to the tip of her nose and looks me up and down. “You’re alive.”

“Thanks for the info.” Whatever tenuous truce that Monroe and I had managed earlier this summer is fraying at both ends. She’s never liked me, and I have the kind of dirt that could destroy her. She’s not ready to let the cat out of the bag on her escort empire. What she doesn’t know, though, is what I found out about who killed Nathaniel West. The information Mackey gave me points suspicion for the murder at Nathaniel’s own daughter.

Since I know it wasn’t me, she’s the next possible suspect. The trouble is that the evidence doesn’t match up. If Monroe really has been passing her free time working as an escort for an exclusive Las Vegas agency, then it doesn’t seem likely that she had any remnants of virginity to shed on a towel after the murder. But this is a city based on illusion. One where you can win big, play with magic, and live without consequence. Have I ever seen the real Monroe West?

“Paging Emma Southerly,” Monroe says. “My brother requests that you turn your cell phone on.”

“My cell phone is on,” I tell her dryly.

“Then unblock him.” She smacks her steering wheel so hard that the horn honks.

“I don’t see why it matters to you. I’d think you’d be glad to be rid of me.”

“I like to keep my frenemies close,” she informs me. “Plus he’s impossible to live with. He’s either moping or throwing shit. There is literally no in-between. He broke mom’s Baccarat vase yesterday. She’s going to have him arrested. Call him.”

She flicks a platinum blonde strand of hair over her shoulder.

“I’ll think about it,” I tell her.

“He doesn’t like you staying here,” she continues, “and I can see why.”

“Not enough room for the servants?”

Monroe’s eyes narrow into slits. “He requests that you stay at one of our other residences.”

“Our?” I repeat. When did I get inducted into the West hall of infamy? “I’ll think about it, sis.”

“Whatever. I’m just the messenger.” Apparently, this is the new form of passing notes in class. Send your bitchy sister to handle the situation.

“It must’ve taken a lot for you to lower yourself to that position.” I lean down on the door and drop my voice to a whisper. “Then again, you know all about lowering yourself into positions, don’t you?”

“Come home,” she says, with a wicked smile that displays two rows of sparkling white teeth, “so I can teach you to fight like a West. You need practice.”

She throws the car into reverse, barely giving me enough time to jump back before she peels out of the driveway, leaving nothing but the glimmer of a Mercedes logo in her wake.

I go to the only place where I know I’ll never be judged. The graveyard is silent. The grounds-keeper must have been through recently, because the stones are swept free of dead grass clippings, artificial flowers are tucked neatly into their urns, and the whole place feels more like a museum of the dead than a cemetery. I sit at the end of Becca’s grave and stare at her stone. Even now, those dates don’t make sense to me.

“It doesn’t feel real,” I say to the wind. “How can I be 18? How can I be older than you?”

The brutality of that fact is one reason why I’m glad my birthday has been overshadowed by other events this year. Josie is busy weighing her options. Mom is focused on the divorce proceedings. On the off chance that Jameson remembers, his call can’t get through to me anyway.