you to apologize, I’m not interested in hearing it.”
“Apologize for what?” Vivi asked.
“Oh, you know, for being a lying, cheating witch.”
Vivi raised her eyebrows. I pressed my teeth together. We both hated that word. “We’re here because we can’t find Grey,” she said. “We’re worried she might be missing.”
Tyler laughed, though not kindly. “No, she’s not.”
“When did you last see her?” I asked.
“I don’t know. A few days ago, when we broke up. I suppose I haven’t seen her since then.”
“You broke up?” Vivi asked.
“Yes.”
“Why? Did you fight?”
“That’s usually what happens when people break up.”
Vivi’s jaw tilted down. There was still the ghost of a smile on her lips, but her eyes were sharp. Going in for the kill. “Did you get angry?” The way she asked it, it was almost like she was flirting. “Did you hurt her?”
Tyler stirred his drink. “I don’t like where this is going.”
He tried to stand then, but Vivi grabbed him by the collar and pulled him down. She sidled up close to him and hooked her leg over his thigh; to anyone watching, it would look flirtatious, not threatening.
“You’re the first person the police are going to come to after we call them,” said Vivi, her lips close to Tyler’s ear. I sat up straighter at the word police. Vivi was bluffing, surely. It wasn’t that serious yet—was it? “The ex-boyfriend. You know it’s true. So tell us what happened.” She stroked his cheek, but whatever cloying spell she’d used on the hostess, it wasn’t working on him.
He’s quite special, Grey had told me. You’ll know what I mean when you meet him. Is this what she’d meant?
Tyler looked the way I felt: afraid. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Police? Why are you getting them involved?”
“Because we can’t find her, you idiot,” Vivi said. “Grey is uncontactable. The hostess here tonight said a weird dude was looking for her. Something might have happened to her.”
“Grey is always disappearing. That’s nothing new.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“For days at a time, she disappears off the face of the earth, okay? Won’t answer calls, misses work, dates, fittings. Everyone else got used to it. It was part of her mystery. Would she show up or wouldn’t she? All very exciting. But it sucks when you’re dating her. Your sister was a lousy girlfriend.”
Vivi prickled. “Be very careful what you say about her.”
“Why? Would I bad-mouth her if I’d done anything to her? No. I mean it, Grey was a bad girlfriend. There was someone else, I assume. That’s why we broke up. That’s probably who she’s with right now.”
“Grey cheated on you?” I asked. It didn’t sound like her. Grey was wild, sure, but not flippant—especially not with other people’s hearts.
“Well, she didn’t admit it to my face, but what else am I supposed to assume? Where does she go when she disappears? All I know is when she was here, she was only ever here halfway— if I was lucky. We were together for a year and I feel like I barely scratched the surface of who she was. She kept so many secrets, so much of herself compartmentalized. Especially the occult stuff.”
Vivi and I exchanged glances. Tyler had our attention, and he knew it.
“Oh, I suppose you don’t know much about that, do you?” he said. “I don’t either, really. All I know is the one time she let me come to her apartment, it was the creepiest place I’ve ever been. Full of weird shit. Dead things, dark magic. Grey thinks she’s some kind of witch.”
“We were at her apartment tonight,” I said. “There was nothing like that there.”
“Everybody keeps secrets, Little Hollow. Perhaps your big sister has been keeping more secrets from you than you realize.”
It was no surprise to me that Grey was still interested in the occult. It had been that way all her teenage years. Grey liked things that were obscure and dangerous: older men; drugs; séances in graveyards; heavy leather-bound books that smelled of chocolate and promised spells to commune with demons.
“What did you fight about when you broke up?” Vivi asked Tyler.
“I saw a man leaving her apartment,” he replied. Vivi and I shared another look. “That was the final straw.”
“Did he . . . ,” Vivi began. “Uh, how does one phrase this? Was he, perchance, some kind of Minotaur with all the flesh stripped off the bones of his face?”
Tyler stared at her for a few moments, then smiled. “I think we’re done here, Little Hollows,”