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Should I tell her? Should I tell her that Zara might have been an utter bitch to her, but she’d done something that well and truly redeemed herself?
Or should I keep Zara’s secret, just like she was keeping mine?
Before I could decide, Neri grabbed my hand and tugged me toward the outdoor table where Jack, Anna, and Wayne had made themselves comfortable. “Later,” she whispered. “We’ll talk later.”
And that was how I found myself sharing a beer with the goddamn detective hunting for the guy I’d brutally beaten and most likely slaughtered. How that same cop reached across the table and patted my hand, saying, “Welcome to the Taylors, Aslan. Any member of Jack’s family is a good egg. You have nothing to worry about from me, okay?”
I wished I could believe him.
I wished I could shut up those mocking, black whispers.
I wish I could trust that everything would be exactly what the cop said...
Okay.
Chapter Seven
*
Nerida
*
(Love in Greek: Agápi)
“CAN I GO TO THE BATHROOM AGAIN?” Margot’s question ripped me from the past, making me blink with disorientation.
My headache was back, softly pounding in the base of my skull, steadily getting worse the closer I got to the awful crux of our story.
“You went like twenty minutes ago,” Dylan groaned, grabbing another cod slider from the platter of finger food that Tiffany had brought down for us. “Do you have bladder problems?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I have anxiety problems.” Margot stood, brushing away the crumbs from the wedges she’d been snacking on while I spoke. “I can’t take much more of this.” Wincing in my direction, she added, “No offense, Nerida, but...the foreshadowing is turning my stomach into knots, and all the alcohol you’re plying me with is just going right through me.”
I smiled softly. “No offense taken. I feel the same way.” I stood too, pushing aside the blush-coloured blanket Tiffany had brought me. I stretched out the many kinks in my ancient spine.
Seventy-two wasn’t that ancient.
If the genes in my family were to be believed, I could live another twenty years with ease. But just because I could, didn’t mean I wanted to.
“Come,” I said. “I’ll escort you to the pool house. I need to go myself.”
“Fine.” Dylan rolled his eyes. “If you’re going, I might as well join you. I have a feeling once you begin the next part, Nerida, I’ll be suffering enough without needing to piss too.”
I laughed under my breath as Margot drifted to my side and Dylan fell in behind us. The solar lights in the sweeping gardens were so much brighter than the cheap ones I’d had in my family home. These were bright spotlights, angled to spear into the canopy of the many palm trees, stencilling the night sky with ever-watchful sentries, revealing the flitting shadows of moths and other night insects.
“I have a question, if I may.” Margot slipped her hands into the pockets of her pretty burnt-yellow dress.
“Of course.” I moved carefully over the steppingstones that reminded me so much of the garden where Aslan and I had fallen in love. “That’s the whole purpose of this interview, is it not?”
She nodded, nibbling on her bottom lip before blurting, “I’m obviously gleeful that your parents accepted you and Aslan. That speech Aslan gave to your dad was out of this world. So, so romantic. And the fact that he admitted what he did to Ethan? That your father dropped to his knees with gratefulness that Aslan defended and avenged you? That he never revealed Aslan’s secret even though he was friends with the cop searching for Ethan is something you only read about in fairy-tales, but...”
“But?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Well, you were seventeen—”
“Almost eighteen. I turned eighteen on the second of April.”
“And Aslan was twenty-one—”
