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Moe’s bright blue eyes widened. “How dare Heather lie! Who’s Heather?”
One of the Eclipses from Free Jinx; a teenage vampire whose human family panicked and turned on her when they found out what she had become. She might be dead now, I remembered.
I glanced away from Moe and dodged his question. “Ram is paying, anyway. And expensive is good, very good.” I spotted something bright and pink across the store, and for a moment, I managed to forget my many problems as I was drawn to it like Magnet-Oh to a refrigerator.
It was a bright pink pantsuit but with a crop top instead of a stuffy button-down. It screamed, “I’m here to take over this board meeting” but also “I’m very hot” and “you’re not fucking ready for me.”
A smile spread across my face. “Perfect. Just… perfect.”
The fabric was thick enough for the cool weather but still soft against my fingers. I pulled it from the rack and headed to the changing rooms in the back of the store. It didn’t matter if it was my size or not. I could magic it so that it would fit as though it had been made for me.
A few minutes and a quick resizing spell later, I stepped out of the changing room to admire myself in the mirror on the door. With my magic singing in my blood and this bad-ass outfit, I felt more like myself than I had in years.
It probably helped that I was fully sober for the first time outside of prison since the falling out with Juniper and Ram. Drinking had been a way to drown trauma and beat insomnia, though it had stopped working on both a long time ago.
A changing room door creaked open. Ram strolled out in black slacks and a light green button-up patterned with dark green leaves. He had left the first two buttons open, revealing his collarbone and the top of his chest, just between his pecs.
I couldn’t help but stare. Despite his many faults, he had always been hot.
He unbuttoned and rolled up the sleeves, freeing his forearms and making heat pool deep in my belly. Fucker was probably doing that on purpose, hoping he’d get me all turned on. Well, fuck him… not in that way. In a bad way.
In a good way too,my brain said.
No!I would not get horny for my treacherous ex, even if I could see the brushing of dark hair on his thick arms and a hint of pec when he leaned to the side.
Ram’s gaze found mine, and I looked away quickly. Too quickly. I should have stared at him and scowled; that would cover my ass. Heat flushed up my neck. He knew how to read people and probably knew I had been checking him out.
“That’s not your style,” I said. “You look like a banker having a midlife crisis on a Caribbean island while he tries to hit on women the same age as his daughter.” It wasn’t true. He looked as smoking hot as his dark magic when it flamed in his hands. But that didn’t matter. He was still an asshole.
Ram glanced down at his shirt. “Is it that bad? I was going for something different. You know, I always tried to appear non-offensive with business casual clothes and a friendly smile. That way people might trust me despite my… my dark magic.”
I knew what he meant. People mistrusted us the moment they spotted a hint of purple or black in our magic.
“I thought if I appeared kind of neutral, people might like me. That’s so pathetic. I was like a politician who wears plain colors and tells everyone what they want to hear, even if it’s contradictory.”
“It worked,” I said. “You got dozens of us to enact your vengeance on the world.”
He frowned. “Weren’t you all angry at the world too? Didn’t you want to get back at it?”
I glanced away. “Yes. And there are people out there who deserved that vengeance.”
People like the priests who had tortured Ram as a kid to “release the evil” they claimed was in him. People like my parents who threw me out when I was only a kid. People like the teachers who had tried to use obedience spells on Juniper and me to rob us of free will, so we would stop using dark magic—the only kind of magic we could use.
“But we weren’t targeting the cruel. We were targeting everyone.”
Ram ran a hand along his bare forearm. “I’ve realized that I didn’t make things better for my people or you. I was using all of you to protect myself from the world instead. I’m sorry.”
My heart contracted like it was trying to hide away from his words. A long time ago, I had desperately wanted him to realize he was hurting me. He had refused. So I had learned to hate him because it hurt less than loving him.
Now, years after I stopped caring, he was admitting he had harmed me.
Bastard.
“Why don’t you write your regret in a letter and mail it to seven years ago when I might have cared?” I said.
“I knew you’d say that.”
“You did not! No one could have predicted that clever line.”
