anything of the kind. Silver studs traced the curve of her ear, the upper part skewered by a long metal post that pierced her in two places.
Moira wondered how those body-scanning boxes at the airport would react to so much metal in one person.
Tierra cleared her throat. “Sunny, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
Sunny glanced up, and the armful of books clattered to the wood floor at her feet. She looked from Tierra to Moira and back again.
“What the hell?”
“Sunny Brooks, this is my sister, Moira de Mor—”
“Malveaux,” Moira found herself interrupting. “Moira Malveaux.”
“Sister? You never told me you had a sister.” Sunny stood with her back to the bookshelf, pale behind the black rims of her glasses like she had seen a ghost. And a ghost was just about what Moira felt like in this place—a strange echo of someone else’s life, a shade in a world she didn’t belong to.
“I sort of didn’t know,” Tierra said.
Moira heard a lingering trace of resentment in Tierra’s words and felt her aunt’s shadowy presence behind it.
“How do you not know you have a twin?” Sunny stooped to pick up the books piled at her feet.
“Long story,” Tierra sighed.
“Oh.” Sunny nodded knowingly. “One of those super-weird separated at birth sort of things?”
“Something like that,” Tierra said. “I’ll catch you up later.”
“Let me help you with that,” Moira offered, wanting any task that could reasonably be done without the apron still clutched in Tierra’s hand. She felt Sunny’s sharp-eyed gaze trace her profile as she bent to help pick up the books.
“Where you from, anyway?” Sunny asked.
“Louisiana,” Moira said, stacking books on her arm. “Terrebonne Parish.”
“Dig your accent.” A bright pink rhinestone flashed at the corner of Sunny’s nose when she smiled.
“Thanks.” The self-conscious tightness lodged at the base of Moira’s throat eased off a bit.
“Sunny, could you get the teas going? And check to make sure we have enough taro root for today? We’re running a little behind this morning.”
If there was a reproach loaded into Tierra’s statement, Moira chose not to hear it.
“Sure thing, T.” Sunny slid the last of her books onto the shelf and grinned down at Moira. “Nice meeting you, long-lost sibling.”
“Likewise.”
“Apron,” Tierra called, dangling the fabric over the counter.
Sunny paused on her way to the small kitchen. “Don’t bother fighting her on this one,” she said. “Trust me. I’ve been trying for years.”
“See?” Tierra’s smile was brighter than it had been all morning.
“She knows.”
Moira took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “Fine.”
It was the first concession of many she would make that day.
8
Twelve.
The precise number of women in this incense-choked bohemian boutique Nick could fuck if he so chose. They gathered in groups of twos and threes, sipping flowery tea, flipping through tarot cards, and playing at divination.
But of all the mood-ring wearers, crystal consulters, and part-time tourists, his eyes followed only one.
Moira.
She hadn’t seen him yet—and wouldn’t. Subverting the awareness of those around him was so easy, it couldn’t even be considered a game any longer. Not when he could move among them, turning their attentions elsewhere until he decided to be noticeable.
Which wasn’t just yet. Watching her weave through the tables while balancing a tray loaded with heavy, hand-thrown ceramics was a little like observing a canary in the coal mine. A bright, beautiful thing amongst all that shifting gray, the harbinger and oracle of destruction she knew nothing about.
Destruction he would bring.
He swept the crowd once again, dividing them in the ways he found most amusing.
Thirteen.
The number of men he could kill in the space of time it required for Moira to draw a breath and release it again. The number of men who had slid their eyes up the length of her legs not obscured by the apron that he would be burning at the first opportunity. The number of men who had traced the curve of her breasts and tested their weight with phantom hands.
Times like this, he regretted the efficiency of modern weaponry. Hearing their bones yield to the honed edge of an axe would have been far more melodic than the racket oozing out of the speakers to assault his ears. Some kind of wind chime battle someone had slapped with the appellation “new age” and sent out into the world to rob people of their natural inclinations toward violence.
On him, it had precisely the opposite effect.
Like the excess energy gnawing the fraying edges of his awareness, the sounds and smells of this place slipped