Vengeful (Villains #2)(13)

Jeannie was home sick with food poisoning.

June was just borrowing her body.

“How much have you missed me?” she asked, trying to sound soft, breathy. The voice wasn’t perfect, it never was. After all, a voice was nature and nurture, biology and culture. June could nail the pitch—that came with the body—but her real accent, with its light musical lilt, always snuck through. Not that Harold seemed to notice. He was too busy ogling Jeannie’s tits through the blue-and-white cheerleading outfit.

It wasn’t really June’s preferred type, but it didn’t have to be.

It just had to be his.

She did a slow circle around him, let her pink nails trail along his shoulder. When her fingers grazed his skin, she saw flashes of his life—not all of it, just the pieces that left a mark. She let them slide through her mind without sticking. She knew she’d never borrow his body, so she’d never need to know more.

Harold caught her wrist, pulling her into his lap.

“You know the rules, Harold,” June said, easing herself free.

The rules of the club were simple: Look, but don’t touch. Hands in your lap. On your knees. Under your ass. It didn’t matter, so long as they weren’t on the girl.

“You’re such a fucking tease,” he growled, annoyed, aroused. He tipped his head back, eyes glassy, breath sour. “What am I even paying for?”

June passed behind him, draped her arms around his shoulders. “You can’t touch me,” she cooed, leaning in until her lips brushed his ear. “But I can touch you.”

He didn’t see the wire in her hands, didn’t notice until it wrapped around his throat.

Harold started fighting then, but the curtains were thick, and the music was loud, and the more people fought, the faster they ran out of air.

June had always liked the garrote. It was quick, efficient, tactile.

Harold wasted too much energy clawing at the wire instead of her face. Not that it would have made a difference.

“Nothing personal, Harold,” June said as he stomped his feet and tried to twist free.

It was the truth—he wasn’t on her list. This was just business.

He slumped forward, lifeless, a thin line of spittle hanging from his open lips.

June straightened, blew out a short breath, put away the wire. She studied her palms, which weren’t her palms. They were marked with thin, deep lines where the wire had bit in. June couldn’t feel it, but she knew that the real Jeannie would wake up with these welts, and the pain to go with them.

Sorry, Jeannie, she thought, stepping through the curtain, flicking it shut behind her. Harold was a big spender. He’d shelled out for a full hour of Jeannie’s teen queen, which gave June a good fifty minutes to get as far from the body as possible.

She rubbed the welts from her hands as she started down the hall. At least Jeannie’s roommates were home—she’d alibi out. No one had seen June go into Harold’s room, and no one had seen her leave, so all she had to do—

“Jeannie,” called a voice, too close, behind her. “Aren’t you on the clock?”

June swore under her breath, and turned around. And as she did, she changed—four years of collecting everyone she touched had given her an extensive wardrobe, and in a blink she shed Jeannie and picked out someone else, another blonde, one with the same shade, same build, but smaller tits and a round face, clad in a short blue dress.

It was a bloody work of art, that shift, and the bouncer blinked, confused, but June knew from experience—when people saw something they didn’t understand, they couldn’t hold on. I saw became I think I saw became I couldn’t have seen became I didn’t see. Eyes were fickle. Minds were weak.

“Only dancers and clients back here, ma’am.”

“Not gunning for a peek,” said June, letting her accent trip rich and full over her tongue. “Just looking for the ladies’ room.”

Max nodded at a door on the right. “Back out the way you came, and across the club.”

“Cheers,” she added with a wink.

June kept her pace even, casual, as she crossed the club. All she wanted now was a shower. Strip clubs were like that. The smell of lust and sweat, cheap drinks and dirty bills, so thick it coated your skin, followed you home. It was a trick of the mind—after all, June couldn’t feel, couldn’t smell, couldn’t taste. A borrowed body was just that—borrowed.

She was halfway there when she knocked into a man, thin, blond, and dressed in all black. Not unusual, in a place like this, where businessmen leered alongside bachelors, but June reeled at the contact—when she’d brushed his arm, she’d seen . . . nothing. No details, no memories.

The man had barely registered her, was already moving away. He disappeared through a red door at the back of the club, and June forced herself to keep walking too, despite feeling like her world had shuddered to a stop.

What were the odds?

Slim, she knew—but not none. There’d been another, a few years ago, a young guy she’d passed on the street one summer night; knocked into, really—she’d had her head tipped back, he’d had his down. When they touched, she’d felt that same flush of cold, the same stretch of black where the memories should be. After months of taking on looks and forms with every touch, the absence of information had been startling, disconcerting. June hadn’t known, then, what it meant—if the other person was broken, or if she was, if it was a feature or a glitch—not until she followed the guy and saw him run his hand along the hood of a car. Heard the sudden rumble of an engine starting under his touch, and realized he was different.