The Vanishing Season (The Collector #4)(59)

“Do you feel like it’s enough?”

“Yes.”

“Then fuck them,” Cass replies with a shrug, and laughter ripples around the circle.

Inara grins at her, reaching for the last slice of pizza before tossing the empty box onto the fire. The flames billow briefly, then subside to their normal level. “I see they haven’t sent you running back to your old team yet.”

“Not yet, no,” Cass agrees.

Mercedes turns to her in surprise. “Not yet?” she echoes.

“Okay, you do realize that this team is deeply weird, right?”

Mercedes looks both shocked and offended, her dark eyes shining with righteous indignation, and it sets the girls off into gales of giggles. I just settle back with the last of my cider, one leg hooked over the arm of the couch.

“Yes, I’ve been here almost a year now, but I had twelve years of normal FBI team experience—”

“We’re not normal?” Oh, God, Mercedes looks like someone just killed her puppy.

“—before that,” Cass continues doggedly, “and I am still not fully adjusted. Sterling, here, at least had Vic’s old partner to break her in a little to the weirdness—”

“To be fair,” I interject, “my first team had its own weirdness, in the form of Agent Archer.”

Priya sighs and shakes her head. “Sometimes I still almost feel guilty.”

“Only almost?”

“My plan to catch Chavi’s killer wouldn’t have worked if Archer hadn’t been a complete and utter moron eager to use me as live bait. There’s only so much of that blame I can take. Especially when he did it on another case all on his own.”

“—but you guys are a lot to get used to,” Cass finishes loudly. “It was different when I was on another team. You and I could hang out as friends, and when we worked the occasional case together, we could all laugh at the oddities. Now the oddity is permanent, and I’m worried about things that honestly never occurred to me before.”

“Like what?”

“Like what happens when I have to work with another team again? Like what happens if I get transferred? Like what happens the day I wake up and suddenly realize I have zero boundaries? Like what the hell stray are you all adopting next?”

“We haven’t adopted anyone in years!”

“Her name is Eliza Sterling, and she is sitting right next to you!”

If it weren’t for Inara’s hand in her hair, Victoria-Bliss would be in real danger of pitching forward into the fire. As it is, I don’t understand how she hasn’t passed out yet from lack of oxygen. Priya’s laughing nearly as hard, but then she’s a large part of how I became a Team Hanoverian stray in the first place. She adopted me, so then they did.

Mercedes’s lower lip trembles pathetically.

But then she loses it and cracks up, cackling even louder than the others. Cass stares at her, dumbfounded, and it only makes Mercedes laugh harder.

“You . . .” Cass blinks, her eyes huge with shock. “You . . . you absolute whore! You were teasing me!”

“Watts owes us each fifty bucks,” I tell her. “She thought you wouldn’t give in to that rant until after your one-year anniversary with us. Mercedes and I knew better.”

“You . . .”

Snickering, I ease off the couch and head into the kitchen of The House as Cass explodes with hissing indignation. Stacked neatly on the counter are all the things I asked Priya to grab for me earlier. Which, it just now occurs to me, means that she saw the cabinets before Cass started burning them.

It takes a little juggling to get where I can comfortably carry everything, especially with the need to be careful of the burns. As soon as she sees me come back out, Priya stands to help me drop the items onto the empty couch.

“What the hell is that?” Cass snarls, possibly near her limit for the evening.

“Marshmallows, chocolate bars, graham crackers, and metal skewers,” I inform her. “We’re making s’mores.”

“Okay,” she says slowly, drawing out the vowels. “But what does that have to do with that?”

I follow the line of her finger. “We’re burning my wedding dress.”





20

Victoria-Bliss is flat out wheezing now, clutching her ribs in actual pain.

“We’re . . . we’re burning your wedding dress,” Cass repeats dully.

“Yes. To make s’mores.”

Priya beams at me as she starts opening packages. “You figured out what was holding you back.”

“And that was?” Mercedes asks cautiously.

“I’ve spent four years saying Cliff was a dickhead, he was an asshole, he was a selfish jerk, but I never named the other thing he was.” I take a deep breath. It trembles on the exhale. “He was also abusive.”

Victoria-Bliss abruptly stops laughing, even if her breathing is decidedly weak and shaky.

“I couldn’t see it because he used the exact same tactics my mother does, that she’s used all my life. All this time, I’ve been afraid that I wouldn’t recognize the problems in another relationship because I got so over my head last time. It wasn’t an unfounded fear, but I’m done with that now. I got away from Cliff. I got away from my mother. I’m getting away from The Dress, because it doesn’t matter how many pounds of rhinestones are on it, a leash is still a leash.”