the trifecta of a masquerade, filled with potential targets, and only a few hours from Amaya Perez is too good to pass up. The last time she helped Amaya, the young woman helped her get rid of a body. Perhaps history will repeat itself.
She opens her email and drafts a message to her assistant.
It’s time to become reacquainted with the one she let get away.
3
Constantine Mansion, 2020
Bishop’s Landing, New York
Hearing her name come out of Noelle’s mouth, Amaya’s body vibrates with adrenaline. Sweat bursts in beads across her forehead, neck, and back. Her emotions are amorphous, shifting between fear, excitement, horror, and glee. She’s here. Her savior is here. What does it mean? Is Noelle the Vagina Vigilante? Amaya can’t reconcile what she knows of both women into a singular person. Noelle is a monster, a pimp!
A firm hand rests on her bare shoulder—another command to be quiet and still. Amaya cannot comply. Her world is going dark at the edges. She needs more air than her outfit allows. She needs to get up. She needs to get out.
The hand on her shoulder drifts under her hair onto her nape. Amaya braces for violence. “Tranquila, Amaya. You’re safe with me,” says Noelle. Her words are like an echo in her skull, bridging the past and present. They bring her comfort she can’t afford to trust but she does anyway. Noelle’s touch is cool against the sweat-soaked heat of her flesh, her fingers inviting in their calculated pressure. Cool air caresses her neck as Noelle gathers Amaya’s hair in one hand to guide her closer. With little effort, Amaya finds herself tilted to one side with her head rested upon the arm of Noelle’s throne.
“How is this possible?” she can’t resist asking.
Noelle’s laugh is low-pitched. “You’ve been leaving me love letters for years. I thought it was about time I answered.”
Heat suffuses Amaya’s face, and she’s again grateful for the mask. Still, something is bothering her. “Are you her, Noelle?”
Noelle strokes her sweat-slick neck with her cool fingertips. “Amaya, por favor.” She manages to imbue her words with an audible eye-roll.
Amaya sucks in a breath filled with relief and pitiful excitement. “Who are you? Tell me, please.” Her hands grip the side of the throne and she leans into the touches on her neck. She’s waited years for answers; she won’t go another night without them.
“Tonight, I’m Noelle.” She withdraws her hand and leans back into her throne, once again looking out over the room. She’s droll when she adds, “I prefer it to The Vagina Vigilante.”
Amaya beams as her chest swells with pride. “You do listen to my podcast! It’s good, right? I did alotta research. I knew I would find you. Eventually it was gonna happen.” Though Noelle can’t see it, Amaya’s smile is wide enough to stretch her scar a glossy pale color.
“Well,” says Noelle. “You’re a lot smarter online than you are in real life.” Amaya can’t tell if she’s being playful or mean. “Why have you been looking for me so thoroughly?”
“To help you, of course! I fucking love you, woman—what you do—the way you don’t take any shit. You’re like a superhero.” She hopes she’s not laying it on too thick, but she can’t help herself. Amaya is obsessed with her angel, her vigilante. She has thought endlessly about the night they came face to face. Her recollection isn’t the best; she’d been high on a cocktail of psychedelics and roofies, but at least once a week, she sifts through the fragments of that night and tries to piece them together. It feels like viewing an edited photograph of a photograph—a manipulated recollection of a half-remembered event. Some things are crystal clear, some dark and murky, and others defy all rational explanation. She knows it’s impossible that she’d seen or heard her dead parents that night—absolutely outside the realm of possibility that they heard her prayers and sent an angel of death to protect her. But she remembers it happening, can’t get rid of the image of her angel swooping in from on high, a ring of light behind her casting her in shadow, as she doused Amaya in her attacker’s blood and God’s mercy. Logically it had to be the drugs, but Amaya prefers to believe it was Divine Intervention.
VV disappeared as swiftly as she’d appeared that fateful night, leaving Amaya on the beach with a patched-up lip and a long t-shirt. She left an indelible mark on Amaya. She’d been transformed in physical,