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DIANA
Back off, I tell the little voice. Back off right now. I said I would take care of this.
“You can’t take care of it,” she tells me, speaking out of my mouth as if it is hers. “You don’t even know where his house is.”
She doesn't even bother to keep her voice low, and I am glad I had retreated to beyond the pillars at the edge of the ballroom to make my call to Storm. Fortunately there aren’t any other people in earshot. She had fought me for control the second I’d made my call to Storm, taking me by surprise.
I’m
warning you, I tell her. If you don’t give it up, I’ll force you, and then we’ll both have a headache. Is that what you want?
“Look,” she murmurs reasonably. “You don’t even know where his house is. I do. And you don’t have a way to get there. I do. So just let me take care of this next part, okay?”
How do you know where his house is?
“We’re lucky I’m more observant than you. Trust me, the address is right inside my little head.” She taps my head. “Oops. Your little head.”
You shouldn’t have hung up on Storm, I complain. I wasn’t done talking to him.
“Sorry about that,” she says. “But you were spilling our business. Let him go after his suspect and we’ll go after ours.”
He said he already has the murderer, I mutter.
“Pssht,” she scoffs. “If you’re going to give up at the last hurdle, then it’s just as well I’m taking charge.”
I never said I was going to give up, I snap.
“Excellent. So we both want justice for Raif and Lynesse, and we’re both agreed I should do this next part?”
I’m not fully happy with this arrangement. And yet I know that without her I wouldn’t have gotten this far. She knows she has me in a tough spot.
“Ooh, look who’s coming our way,” she murmurs.
Smithers is stalking towards us, a greasy grin on his face. It is like he thinks he owns me and is coming to claim his prize. I grimace, but she keeps a smile pasted on my face.
Fine, I mutter resentfully. But please don’t kiss him or anything, or I’ll barf.
She struts towards Smithers with that smile on her face. As he gets close, Smithers extends his arms for her to walk into. The thought of dancing with him makes me feel sick. He will probably try to feel me up.
She puts out my arm as if to take hold of his hand, but as she reaches him, she shoves her palm smack into his chest. The impact makes Smithers fall over. She doesn’t pause to check if he is okay. She keeps on walking.
I am aghast. I’ve no love for Smithers but I hadn’t expected that. I don’t know whether to laugh or to tell her off.
“Just thank me,” she says out loud, not caring that people nearby are looking at her. At me. They saw what she did. None of them care enough to confront her about it.
Her eyes, my eyes, are fixed across the room, where Princess Caroline is holding court talking to the diva singer who has just arrived. She is proudly displaying Xander on her arm, as if he is a trophy. The diva is admiring him appropriately, batting her eyelashes, and doing her best not to flirt. Xander has that effect on women.
“You’ll love this,” says the little voice.
Please don’t do anything to make a scene, I beg her. If you touch Caroline, her bodyguards will arrest us on the spot. She’s a princess. It’s probably treasonous. I don’t want to go to jail.
“Relax,” she says, and as she approaches Caroline she calls out loudly, “Hello Caro!”
Caroline’s head turns. When she sees it is me she sneers.
“Caro is right isn’t it?” says the little voice. “It’s what your friends call you? I bet it’s what you made them call you in your teenage years thinking it sounded cool, as if you were anything but a horse-mouthed sloany-pony leeching off the nation’s taxes since her birth.”
Caroline’s mouth drops open, as does the pop diva’s.
