The Vanishing Season (The Collector #4)(61)

“Huh. It’ll cook the ends better that way,” Inara notes, and hands me another.

When we move the skewers above the flames, Victoria-Bliss lets out a great whooping cheer as the fabric catches on fire.

There are too many layers of dress for one s’more per strip, of course, even with six of us. So, between rounds, we work one of the layers of tulle off, chop it up, and dump it onto the flames. And possibly, at one point, we position Special Agent Ken around a skewer braced between cushions to make it look like he is also making s’mores.

Maybe.

Priya whistles at the sound of a car pulling into the driveway. “Eddison’s home, I’m guessing. So . . . I know I didn’t tell him we were out here. Did anyone else?”

“No,” comes the answer from four mouths. Victoria-Bliss is giggling too hard to say it.

A few minutes later, the back door opens and Bran walks out, holding something in each hand. Eyes dazzled by the flames, I can’t actually make out what he has. He approaches us, then stops a safe distance away, head cocked and a baffled expression on his face. As my sight clears, I can make out the path of his gaze: the girlfriend wearing the tattered wedding dress, the s’mores, the bottles of cider, the one pizza box we didn’t burn because the grease soaked all the way through, and Special Agent Ken, supervising from the arm of a couch. The path repeats. Several times.

“How’s your arm?” he asks eventually.

Even Mercedes and Cass lose it this time.

“It’s doing just fine,” I tell him. “Mercedes checked it again a few hours ago. S’more?”

“Ahh . . . nooo, I think I’ll pass. These are for you, though.” He holds out a bouquet of tiger lilies wrapped in pink tissue. “I have a feeling you’ll have my balls if I apologize for the accident, but I shouldn’t have been yelling at you in the first place. And some of the things I said were over the line.”

“Yes,” I agree simply, “but that doesn’t mean you were wrong.”

He glances at the heap of burning tulle still visible in the pit.

“Thank you,” I add.

Priya’s looking at what’s in his other hand. “Is that . . . did you put a pink glitter bow on a pound of bacon?”

Even with the distortion of the firelight, I can see the fierce blush that flares up his throat and into his face. “I’m going to leave you ladies alone now.” He turns and hurries into The House without even trying to pretend he isn’t retreating.

I smile and bury my face in the tiger lilies. There are three different varieties mixed through, pumpkin-orange and pink, both with the dark spots dotted along the inside of the curled-back petals, but also a variety that’s deep sunset purple edged in spotted orange. They’re gorgeous.

“Are those your favorites?” asks Victoria-Bliss.

“One of them.”

“Her favorites are blue columbines,” Priya tells her, “but Eddison won’t give her those because they’re one of the flowers my stalker used in his murders.”

Cass gives me a jaundiced look. “Really?”

“What? That seems perfectly reasonable.”

“It does, yes. You people have broken me. Broken me, I tell you!”

Eventually, we run out of dress and I have to put my jeans and coat back on or die of shivers. The bolero, like the rest of the lace, is worked over with Extra! and therefore probably unsafe to burn, so Inara asks to keep it. “Sophia’s daughter Jillie is going to prom in the spring, and this seems right up her alley. If it’s paired with a plain dress, it shouldn’t look so Vegas.”

“And if it still does?”

“Jillie likes shiny. She can make it work.”

She takes the bottom half of the skirt, too, to see if she can break it down into useful pieces like a belt or hair ornaments.

We get everything cleaned up and troop back across the grass to Mercedes’s, dropping the garbage and recycling in the appropriate bins by her driveway. Mercedes pokes me in the side as she hands me my bag. “You’re parked behind me, so we’ll wait for you in the morning.”

I grin at her.

Priya gives me a tight hug. “Do you feel any better?”

“I do. Like I had this giant weight sitting on my chest, and now it’s gone.”

We both look at the heavy bodice and my chest spilling out of it, and laugh.

I head back to The House, locking the kitchen door behind me, and make my way down the hall to the living room. Bran is sprawled across the couch, jeans traded for flannel pants, wearing the long-sleeved University of Miami T-shirt Mercedes bought him three years ago to replace the one she was wearing that accidentally got covered in meth. We have weird occupational hazards.

An open box of photos sits on the coffee table in front of him. It’s strange to see him have personal pictures out where anyone else can see them.

I set my bag on the floor at the end of the couch and the bouquet on the coffee table next to the box. “Hey.”

“Hey.” He doesn’t quite manage to sit up, but he gets his elbows under him to prop himself up a little. He looks so far beyond tired he actually looks drained. Like something vital has been taken away.

I shrug out of the coat, then my shoes, and drape myself over him from shoulder to toe. “There’s not a way for you to be okay, but are you doing better?”