It was Maddie’s show. They’d created it for her after she went viral on YouTube with her crafty life-hacks. The video of the race car track she built for her neighbor’s kid out of quick-dry cement and paint alone had gotten over a million hits.
She was the star.
Then she showed up on set and they trotted out Dixie, all tits and teeth with that drawl and trademark big eye-roll when the contestants don’t live up to their potential…How was she supposed to compete with that?
Yesterday had been Maddie’s birthday. Craft-services had brought over a cake and she’d blown out the candle thinking, I wish you’d die as she smiled at Dixie. Dixie smiled back.
Idiot.
And then today, that man who grabbed her. He’d known. Somehow he’d known she wanted Dixie dead. She could feel him pulling the information from her, as if she were reading her own thoughts in his head.
Maddie rubbed her wrist where he’d grabbed her, the faint red impression of his grip still visible on her skin.
And just like that he’d let her go, lunging to grab Dixie instead. Dixie, who had tried to save her, who hadn’t run.
Dixie was brave, too. Good for her.
Look what that got her.
That thing grabbed her and she disappeared as if she were a milkshake and he’d slurped her away until nothing was left but dust.
I really did see that. Didn’t I?
Dixie had turned to dust and blown away. Even her stupid pink tool belt.
Dust.
The man had been pale when he first grabbed her. When he turned back, after poofing Dixie, he was still thin with hollow cheeks and a hawkish nose, but his color looked better...as if he’d been hungry and Dixie was a sandwich.
The look he’d given her then—she could tell he understood. That he wouldn’t hurt her. For a moment she’d been mesmerized by his admiring stare, but she’d snapped to her senses and left. No use pushing her luck with whatever he was.
She’d wished Dixie dead and now she was gone. She assumed. She didn’t imagine she’d be coming back from dust.
It was as if that man had been sent to do her bidding. To make her wishes come true.
Do I have some kind of super power? Can I wish for anything? Or only death?
More importantly...
Who else do I want gone?
Chapter Six
“What are we supposed to do with Fiona?” Catriona asked Sean. She’d called him two seconds after Fiona broke up her ‘honeymoon.’
Ha. Honeymoon. The word in her head made her snicker quietly to herself. Truth be told, she felt a little too...happy?
No. Stop it.
Time to make a concerted effort to tamp down her misplaced giddiness.
Grow up, Cat.
The marriage couldn’t continue. She’d told Broch it was too soon for them to even think about getting married and she’d meant it. The time they’d known each other was practically easier to count in weeks than it was in months. She’d look like an impetuous idiot if she accidentally married Kilty and then actually stayed married to him.
Wouldn’t I?
She sneaked a peek at Broch and bit her lip.
It didn’t help that he looked so good in those boxers.
Did she have to tell him they needed to get the marriage annulled? Bedding him under the false pretense of staying married would be wrong.
Right?
Sean huffed on his end of the phone and Catriona jumped, surprised to find herself still talking to him. She felt her face grow hot. She felt like a little girl whose father had walked in on her while she was building a love shrine to the boy with the floppy hair in fifth period.
Not that she’d ever done that.
“Tell her to stay there,” said Sean. “You’ll be out and busy anyway.”
Her?
Who?
Oh right. Fiona.
Catriona tried to pierce her sister with a glare. Fiona had Broch cornered, trying to snatch the wedding certificate from his hand.
“But I don’t want her to stay here,” whined Catriona.
“What’s that?” Fiona turned at the sound of Catriona’s complaining and Broch followed her gaze, allowing the hand holding their certificate to drop.
Seeing the inevitable, Catriona gasped. “Broch!”
Too late.
Fiona plucked the paper from his grasp and skittered around the sofa as he pawed after her. She slipped behind a chair, nose nearly pressed to the sheet as she tried to read. Before he could snatch back the paper, she’d already lowered it and stood gaping at them.
“You two are married?”
“Who’s married?” asked Sean from his end of the line.
Catriona stared daggers through Fiona. “No one. It’s a mistake.”
“We are,” said Broch, moving to the phone. “Da, Catriona and ah ur merrit.”
“What?”
Catriona strode across the room. “It was a mistake. We had a fake marriage in Vegas when I was all hopped up on pain pills and they misunderstood what I wanted.”
Did they, though?
“But ’tis real, richt?” asked Broch.
“Looks real to me,” said Fiona.
“It’s not. I mean it is but—”
“’Tis it o’ nae?” asked Broch, the spot between his eyebrows beginning to bunch.
Catriona could see he was already planning to withhold the honeymoon.
Dammitdammitdammit.
Almost three decades without a sister and now that she had one, the wench managed to cause thirty years’ worth of trouble every ten minutes.
I’m trapped.
