It hit me then - the impromptu bachelorette party, there only being the three of us. "She was the lure to get Catherine and me down here."
He nodded, once down, once up.
I wanted to go back out and smash Monica's face in. The more I thought about the idea, the better it sounded. As if by magic, she parted the curtains and came back. I smiled at her, and it felt good.
She hesitated, glancing from me to Jean-Claude and back. "Is everything going according to plan?"
I walked towards her. Jean-Claude grabbed my arm. "Do not harm her, Anita. She is under our protection."
"I swear to you that I will not lay a finger on her tonight. I just want to tell her something."
He released my arm, slowly, like he wasn't sure it was a good idea. I stepped next to Monica, until our bodies almost touched. I whispered into her face, "If anything happens to Catherine, I will see you dead."
She smirked at me, confident in her protectors. "They will bring me back as one of them."
I felt my head shake, a little to the right, a little to the left, a slow precise movement. "I will cut out your heart." I was still smiling, I couldn't seem to stop. "Then I will burn it and scatter the ashes in the river. Do you understand me?"
She swallowed audibly. Her health-club tan looked a little green. She nodded, staring at me like I was the bogey man.
I think she believed I'd do it. Peachy keen. I hate to waste a really good threat.
Chapter 8
I watched Catherine's cab vanish around the corner. She never turned, or waved, or spoke. She would wake tomorrow with vague memories. Just a night out with the girls.
I would like to have thought she was out of it, safe, but I knew better. The air smelled thickly of rain. The street lights glistened off the sidewalk. The air was almost too thick to breathe. St. Louis in the summer. Peachy.
"Shall we go?" Jean-Claude asked.
He stood, white shirt gleaming in the dark. If the humidity bothered him, it didn't show. Aubrey stood in the shadows near the door. The only light on him was the crimson neon of the club sign. He grinned at me, face painted red, body lost in shadows.
"It's a little too contrived, Aubrey," I said.
His grin wavered. "What do you mean?"
"You look like a B-movie Dracula."
He flowed down the steps, with that easy perfection that only the really old ones have. The street light showed his face tight, hands balled into fists.
Jean-Claude stepped in front of him and spoke low, voice a soothing whisper. Aubrey turned away with a jerky shrug and began to glide up the street.
Jean-Claude turned to me. "If you continue to taunt him, there will come a point from which I cannot bring him back. And you will die."
"I thought your job was to keep me alive for this Nikolaos."
He frowned. "It is, but I will not die to defend you. Do you understand that?"
"I do now."
"Good. Shall we go?" He gestured down the sidewalk, in the direction Aubrey had gone.
"We're going to walk?"
"It is not far." He held his hand out to me.
I stared at it and shook my head.
"It is necessary, Anita. I would not ask it otherwise."