More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
What the hell was he smiling about? Then she realized: he didn’t know she’d discovered he was the one who sold her to the black market. Fabricio was still playing a part, resuming the role of the scared victim.
Fabricio flinched as though she’d hit him. His eyes widened, and something passed across his face, something that looked like it might be guilt or regret. But it was gone in a blink. Nita carefully didn’t mention she’d ended up making an ally of the zannie in her escape. She wanted Fabricio to feel as shitty about what he’d done as possible.
Nita opened her mouth to make another caustic remark, but stopped. Fabricio had specifically said “she” when referring to Nita’s captor. Multiple times. Nita hadn’t mentioned her captor was female.
most people judge you the instant they meet you, if not before. I want to make sure they judge me the way I want them to.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Does Fabricio’s kidnapping have something to do with Dad’s death?” “You think Alberto Tácunan hired the vampire to kill your father?” Nita hadn’t actually thought of it in those specific terms, but it made sense, now that she thought about it. “As retaliation.” “I suppose it’s possible,” her mother admitted. Nita couldn’t believe how calm her mother was. She’d basically started a turf war that had led to Nita’s father dying and Nita sold on the black market. And she didn’t even sound apologetic.
She wondered if the girls-like-bad-boys stereotype was a lie, or if Kovit was so far from bad boy and so deep into straight-up monster that he didn’t count anymore.
She’d burned a whole market full of people alive. A strange emptiness opened inside her when she realized that. It wasn’t that she hadn’t known that she’d done something awful, but she’d always just assumed she wasn’t as evil as Kovit, that she had the moral high ground on him. She wasn’t so sure anymore.
“I’m here, Kovit. I’ve already seen your monster.” She met his eyes. “And I’m not leaving.”
His words rattled around in her head, both fatalistic and undeniably true. What was the point of planning a future if any path you chose ended with you murdered? It was the same thing Nita struggled with now—she couldn’t pursue her own dreams without risking kidnapping and murder. For Kovit, he’d have to literally change INHUP’s laws. They both walked along a high wire, and any false step could send them plummeting to their deaths.
Both of them had always been surrounded by monsters. Perhaps there was no one else they could empathize with, no one else who would empathize with them. Like calls to like, and Nita was beginning to wonder day by day if she wasn’t just as much of a monster as Kovit, but in a different way.
Luring those men in and killing them made her feel powerful, in a twisted sort of way. In control. She wondered if this was how Kovit felt when he hurt people, this feeling of control in a world where they were almost always helpless and tied to other people’s whims. She wondered if that was why he made his own pain rather than take what already existed.
“Marigold is the daughter of the head of the Family.” He grimaced. “You remember the story about tricking a vampire into the sunlight just because she hated him? That was Gold. She’s got a reputation.”
Nita shifted forward so she was inches from his face, her eyes locked on his. “We will never be prisoners again. And we will destroy anyone who tries.” Finally he nodded, his black eyes tracing her face as he whispered, “Never again.”
“So, we make our own labels.” Nita shrugged. She knew there were movements online, people who were trying to change the language, but it never really concerned her. Just because other people said unnatural like a slur didn’t mean Nita had to stop using it. Why should she let other people change the way she referred to herself?
Everyone had a doppelgänger, or more than one. In a city as big and diverse as Toronto, there was bound to be a twin or two of Nita’s. There were. And they were disappearing. According to the story, the wave of disappearances had started yesterday, shortly after Nita had come to Toronto.
He was right. If she saw, she would run. In all those stupid movies she’d watched as a kid, couples shared every dark secret, friends promised nothing hidden between them. They understood. They exposed each other, stripped each other bare, and loved even the ugly. Nita was not those people. If she saw this ugly, she would run. She would run far, and she would run fast, and she wouldn’t look back. She didn’t want to know the darkest part of Kovit’s soul. Didn’t want to strip him of his secrets. His secrets were his to share or not. And sometimes people didn’t need to know every part of each
...more
She had spent her whole life looking away from her mother’s crimes. If I didn’t see it, I couldn’t have stopped it. She’d ignored her mother, and by ignoring, she’d enabled who knew what kind of hideousness. She’d refused to face any of the truths until she was forced. Until there was a boy chained in her room and her mother was standing over him hacking his ear off. How was ignoring what Kovit did any different from with her mother? Wasn’t she just enabling him by pretending not to see his crimes? For the first time, she let herself consider: was she just replacing one monster with another?
“You know, Nita, murder doesn’t solve every problem.” “But it will solve this one.” “Just like it solved your problems earlier today?”
Nita tried to pull up the memory again. Had it been Fabricio who injected her? She remembered a boy and a smile and Reyes’ shoes. But nothing else. Or had it just been some random lackey hired by Reyes?
“But I can’t pick and choose what aspects of a person I want and make a new person for myself. That’s not how it works.”
And even though she was sure everyone in the world would think they were so wrong, right there, at that moment, with his mouth against hers and her body humming with electricity, everything felt just right.
