“Something wrong?” the officer asked.
Silence. Bria and I flattened ourselves against the wall, holding our positions.
“Nah,” Emery finally said. “Must just be all the weird echoes down here.”
She moved away from the glass. I waited ten seconds, then looked out through the opening. Emery headed back toward the coroner’s office, threw the door open, and stepped inside. The officer followed her, and the two of them disappeared from view.
Bria and I both let out tense breaths.
“Come on,” I said, stooping to put my heels back on. “Let’s get out of here.”
21
Bria and I slipped out of the police station with no more problems, and she drove me back to Jo-Jo’s house. After that, the next few days dragged by in a slow, morbid blur.
It was hard being dead.
Mostly because I couldn’t go anywhere. I couldn’t go home to Fletcher’s, I couldn’t go back to the Pork Pit to survey the damage, and I certainly couldn’t return to my tree house in the woods outside the Monroe mansion to spy on Madeline.
I couldn’t do anything but hide in one of the bedrooms above Jo-Jo’s salon and plot my revenge. A pleasant enough pastime to be sure, but once my plans had been laid, all I could do was wait and see if they would come to fruition. The lack of activity tested even my patience.
So did the incessant news coverage. Story after story dominated the newspapers and airwaves about me supposedly murdering Dobson, setting fire to my own restaurant, and perishing in the blaze. That was bad enough, but the reporters hounded my friends, constantly calling, texting, and following them around, trying to get exclusive interviews and wanting to know just how shocked they were that I’d turned out to be a stone-cold killer. One of them even had the audacity to book an appointment with Jo-Jo in hopes of picking up a juicy bit of info at the salon. But the dwarf realized what the reporter was up to and dyed her hair a lovely shade of pea green. The reporter never came back after that.
Finally, though, the day of my funeral arrived.
The others protested that it wasn’t safe, that it wasn’t smart, going to my own funeral. They were right, but I was determined to do it all the same. I hadn’t been out of the house in days, but more than that, I wanted to see Madeline and her reactions for myself and not hear about them secondhand from my friends.
So I put on the same blond wig, blue contacts, silver glasses, and black suit that I’d worn to the coroner’s office and sat in Jo-Jo’s house, waiting for everyone else to leave. Once my friends were gone, I peered out through the white lace curtains, but I didn’t see anyone watching the house from the woods or the street outside. There was no reason to spy, now that it was seemingly empty. So I went outside, walked two streets over, slid into the silver BMW that Silvio had rented for me under a fake name, and drove over to Blue Ridge Cemetery.
I’d thought there would be a crowd, given who I was and the messy circumstances of my supposed death, but so many folks had turned out for my funeral that I had to park my car outside the cemetery entrance and walk the rest of the way in.
More than three hundred people clustered around my gravesite, which was right next to Fletcher’s. Given how badly my supposed body had been burned, the silver casket was closed, with a beautiful spray of pink and white roses draped over the top. I wasn’t really a pink-and-white sort of girl, but Jo-Jo had enthusiastically planned my funeral, so I’d gone along with what she wanted.
I maneuvered past the gravestones and slipped into the center of the crowd, where I would have a clear view of my family, who were sitting in folding metal chairs in front of the casket. They all wore somber black suits and jackets and were doing their best to seem composed, although Bria and Jo-Jo kept dabbing at their eyes with black silk handkerchiefs. Before they’d left the salon, Finn had insisted that everyone sniff some menthol to give them watery eyes and runny noses and make it seem like they’d all been crying all day long. I had to admit that it was effective. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought that they were all grieving deeply for me.
The rest of the crowd? Not so much.
Most everyone in attendance wore curious but satisfied expressions, since they hadn’t come to pay their respects so much as make certain that I was dead. I saw several lower-level underworld minions high-five each other as the minister stepped over to the podium to begin the service. For such a somber occasion, the mood was decidedly cheerful.
At least it was until Madeline arrived.
She swept through the crowd like the queen she thought she was, and people hurried to get out of her way. Emery and Jonah flanked her, as was their custom. Murmurs of the acid elemental’s arrival rippled through the crowd, causing my friends to turn around in their chairs. They all shot her drop-dead-bitch looks, but Madeline ignored their heated glares and took up a spot off to the right of my casket so she could have a clear view.
As the minister quieted the crowd and started the service, I studied my enemy. Unlike everyone else, Madeline was not dressed in navy or black but wore her usual white pantsuit. Her only concession to the funeral was her black hat with a matching lace veil and a thin white ribbon around the brim. Through the veil, I could see the bright glitter of her green eyes and the cruel curve of her crimson lips.
She was enjoying this very, very much.
Madeline turned to get a better view of my casket, and the sun caught on her crown-and-flame necklace, as well as the matching ring on her finger. I didn’t know if there were any old sayings about wearing something new to a funeral, but Madeline was, since her jewelry was made out of gold now, instead of the silverstone set she’d worn before. I’d noticed the new bling a couple of days ago in some surveillance photos of her that Silvio had taken for me, and I’d found it extremely interesting for a number of reasons.
I focused on her necklace. In many ways, it was the exact same as Mab’s sunburst rune had been—a thick gold chain with a large gemstone set in the middle—although Madeline had forgone the gaudy, wavy, ostentatious rays that had radiated out of her mama’s necklace.
The longer I looked at Madeline’s baubles, the wider I grinned. I’d been hoping that she would wear them to my funeral. The gold jewelry told me more than anything else that she finally, truly believed that I was dead.
Most of those gathered here might have done everything possible to put me in the ground, but everyone remained quiet, respectful, and solemn during the service. They might all be a bunch of criminals, but even they could behave at a funeral. Us Southerners were quirky like that.