Gypsy Moon (All The Pretty Monsters #4)(85)

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, na?ve little monster. Marta’s an alpha. Violet’s not.

But I guess daughter trumps that rule in monster world in a way I never thought possible where Marta Portocale is concerned, because she doesn’t slap Violet to the floor the way she always has omegas or betas who dared to commit lesser offenses in the past.

“What’s…happening right now?” Damien asks as he leans forward.

We all move unconsciously closer in some way, because it looks like Marta Portocale is backing down, as she takes a seat, her aggression almost leaving her stance.

“I’ve never been good at reading lips, but I think she just apologized,” Arion says like he’s now suspicious, eyes warily darting around like he’s waiting for the trap to explode at us at any moment.

Violet’s glare is gone in the next blink, and she smiles over at Marta, as she resumes her task of stitching together the doll. Her lips start moving as she tells her whatever it is she’s telling her.

I think she says something about Anna.