Gypsy Moon (Page 49)

Emit cuts his eyes to Arion, but how…can he be taken seriously right now?

Vance just blinks a few times. “I’ll meet you there,” he decides, eyes flicking to mine briefly.

“I’ll take the clown car with the wolf, the livid Portocale, and the reason we’re all even here right now,” Damien chirps, eyes on mine as his lips tug up in an amused grin.

Mom swings an accusatory glance my way.

“Unbelievable,” is all she mutters.

CHAPTER 24

VANCE

“So that entire hotel is owned by underground shapeshifters, and you didn’t know it?” Emit says to Arion, laughing humorlessly as he shakes his head.

Arion studies the video over and over, or what small clips Marta found of Idun passing through the halls over two months ago.

The clips are brief, just enough to give us an estimate of how long she stayed in one place while we were distracted by Violet these past few active months, as Marta informed us.

“I didn’t know,” Arion grinds out. “I hate this woman with all my heart and soul,” he adds with a firm nod, referring to Marta.

He leans around the corner, watching them argue, as he tosses the phone back to me.

“And Marta hates us just as much. After all she’s done and kept from her daughter, now she’s acting offended because her daughter is hanging with the wrong monster crowd. Violet’s going to better appreciate the ones who don’t make this an issue,” Damien says with a smirk. “I’m the only one in the room capable of not giving a damn about Marta Portocale.”

Emit is perched next to Arion, watching them as well. However, he’s far more conspicuous about it.

I abandon the bare footage and go to join them. Marta rummages in one of the many bags she’s been going through since we showed up, as though she’s searching for something.

She’s yelling in a way that just seems like tense, loud talking, and Violet’s only slightly more animated than usual, as though she’s attempting the same peculiar thing.

It’s like watching the enemy in their natural habitat, and learning you never really knew all you thought you did when they still manage to confuse you.

“I accept that things just blow up around you. I accept that you’ll wear a sheet without shame. I accept that you attract things that like to kill you. But how does something like this just happen, Violet?” Marta asks in that loud, incredulous tone, looking up from the bag as she pauses her rummaging.

It’s going to take some time to get used to this very young version of her.

Violet blinks at a space on the wall, like she’s in her head and trying to figure out a short summary. She finally blows out a long, confused breath.

“They’re monsters, I’m a monster, and we’ve all got monster parts,” she settles on, essentially recycling it as an answer.

Marta’s lips tighten, and she continues staring very expectantly.

“I don’t know. It just did,” Violet says more seriously, throwing her hands up as she keeps her booted feet propped on the table in front of her, leisurely lounging in one of the five chairs around it.

“Do you know what they’re capable of?” Marta snaps.

Just how many bags of shit does this woman have after only being up a short amount of time?

“What happened to all your money? Did someone steal it?” Violet asks her in deflection, though it seems to be something that’s been driving her crazy, given the intent expression on her face.

“Of course you’d ask about my money. I’ve told you before, and I’ll say it again, that’s my money. I hid it so you didn’t bury it in some snow-capped mountain where it’d probably be lost forever,” Marta drones on, not making any sense in the slightest.

“Fair enough,” Violet says with a nod.

“Do you know what they’re capable of?” Marta asks her again.

Damien grins, and I see some flush hit Violet’s cheeks, as her eyes widen. She darts a scolding look his way, while her mother’s head stays focused on the seemingly bottomless bag.

“She knows what we’re capable of,” Damien murmurs, still grinning, as Violet glares at him for whatever image he’s manipulated into her mind.

She finally looks back at her mother when Marta pulls a hideous, cheaply-made, fabric doll out at last.

All that digging for that very anticlimactic, sad, somewhat disturbing little doll?

Violet’s eyes light up, intently devoted to the doll, and Damien shoves by me so he can study her better. There’s a look of pure awe and joy on her face, as though she couldn’t be any happier in this moment.

“Where’s that one from?” Violet asks her.

“I found it in a boutique just north of here after I came to,” Marta says, pausing her harsh tone and the palpable tension like it’s easy to do, as she puts the doll down on the table.

It has button eyes. It’s been a while since I saw a doll with button eyes—

I see the glint of a knife, and just barely stop myself from throwing a sword at Marta’s neck. Because her knife doesn’t threaten Violet; it stabs the…doll.

Violet gasps, eyes widening on the doll. I scratch my head, because this is becoming akin to some tragically degrading parody of Marta Portocale.

“They’re insane,” Marta says, using her loud tone.

Stuffing tumbles out of the doll, and Violet grimaces, as Marta rips it from stem to forehead, using the knife.

“Bit of a pot-to-the-kettle thing to say while gutting an unsuspecting doll,” Damien quietly points out, drawing a glare from Marta.

“Let’s go to the cellar for some privacy,” she growls, while Violet starts digging in the same bag Marta pulled the doll out of.

“Like the cellar is going to deafen us to you,” Emit states with a roll of his eyes.

Violet shoots an oddly apologetic look toward him, but he ignores it. She quickly returns to rummaging through Marta’s bag.

“You did a zigzag. You know I hate the zigzags,” Violet tells her, even though I’m so lost by this point I don’t really know what’s going on.

Is this how Violet feels around us when we’re talking?

The normalcy Violet uses to pull out a peculiar sewing kit, that she quickly examines, is unnerving, as she stuffs all the loose stuffing back into the doll.

“Follow me,” Marta says to Violet, who is collecting the sewing kit and doll, as she nods in compliance, distracted more by the doll now.

“I feel like I’m missing something,” I confess.

“She has a collection of stitched up dolls very similar to that one,” Arion tells me, as daughter and mother head down to the cellar. “They’re tucked away in one of the spare closets. Girl’s a bloody hoarder. She has storage sheds at the edge of town for a whole mess of other random childhood toys.”

“Bobo and Caroline always had toys in their rooms,” Emit says very quietly.

“In other words, I should have been buying out toy stores instead of chocolate and flower shops. Duly noted,” Damien states with a frown. “Why can’t I hear or smell them anymore?”

Arion is out of the room in the next instant, and we all quickly follow down the stairs to find a glass box at the back of the unusually large cellar. Not one sound escapes it as Marta’s lips move as animatedly as her hands.

“This is new and intriguing,” Arion murmurs just as I reach his side.

Damien and Emit move to take a seat on a covered, dusty, wretched sofa that has clearly been here for much longer than Marta.

“After being back for a very short amount of time, Marta Portocale—the most paranoid of us all—has a soundproof box, more information on Idun’s rising than us, and is mother to the forbidden fruit we’re all stalking,” Damien states idly.

“I’m still processing what all this changes,” Emit says in a register barely above a whisper.

Violet is sitting at one of the two chairs inside the box, her feet once again propped on a table, as she focuses the vast majority of her attention on hand-stitching the doll back together instead of using her Portocale threading gifts.

“Until you’re man enough, you’re simply irrelevant, at current. Take all the time you need to process, mongrel,” Damien says in an amused tone to Emit.

Leave it to the deviant to finally come to life when there’s something fucked up going on all around us.

Violet carefully continues stitching in a perfect, deliberate pattern, her spacing almost exact, as she uses the thicker, multi-colored threading. It’s as though she’s purposely adding character, instead of simply mending the doll.

Or maybe I’m simply reading into everything right now because even I find this…weird, for a lack of a better word to encompass this surreal, maddening moment.

Marta is talking with her whole body, and I don’t need the volume turned on to know she’s still very loud.

Violet is nodding absently, and I half worry the doll was a tactic to somehow stun Violet’s weaker mind, in order to make her compliant with everything—”

Violet’s eyes come up, silencing my thoughts, as the delicate creature casts a cold, somewhat alarming look toward Marta. We all forget she’s a new, naïve little monster. Marta’s an alpha. Violet’s not.