Undercover (Into Shadow collection) by Tamsyn Muir

Author:Tamsyn Muir [Muir, Tamsyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Amazon Original Stories
Published: 2022-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

THE WIFE

There was no way Lucille could leave the club once the doors were barred. The men who unlocked the door for the Widower and herself were paid a grand on the spot and given a month’s holiday. One of them threw up. The Widower took her directly to her study without bothering to get either of them hosed down. The Widower poured them each a brandy without asking, then sat down at her desk chair. She sat, too, and knocked back the brandy in one hit. She needed the blood out of her mouth.

“You did well by me back there, Starr. Don’t you worry. She’ll try to eat too much—eyes bigger than her stomach. Forty minutes to an hour and she won’t even be able to move,” said the Widower.

She said—

“And then I . . . euthanize her, ma’am?”

The Widower’s eyebrows went right up.

“Pardon?”

Her hands burned like liquid fire inside her gloves. She tried to sound reasonable.

“She’s drunk human blood. She’s eaten human meat. All fresh, all live, her own kills.”

“Sure she did—the only reason you and I got out alive, my girl,” said the Widower. “She was in full control by the time she got to you and me. I banked on it. She never did like Charleston Taggart. He’s right; she was a chorus girl when he met her . . . or that’s what he took her for, anyway. Patronized her senseless. I gambled that she’d want him dead first. But she likes you . . . and she’s got a soft spot for me. Push that glass over and I’ll give you a refill. This is good brandy.”

She pushed the glass toward the Widower. It gleamed next to the brass nameplate. CAROL L. P. WIDDENER.

“The L is for Lesley,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

“And the P’s for Petronella,” said the Widower. “Damn stupid if you ask me . . . three whole names and only one I ever liked to hear.”

“‘Lucy and Lesley,’” she quoted. “‘Love endures.’”

“Or so I thought—at the time,” said the Widower. “Oh, something endures, but love doesn’t.”

“That meal’s not going to leave her system in a hurry. I can put her down cleanly now she’s overfed.”

“I’m paying you good money to get Lucille through this, Starr,” the Widower said, “so get her through it. I’m not ready to give her up yet. The Charlies will be telling this story for the next hundred years.”

She said, “You left some of your own inside that club. The orchestra. The backstage crew.”

“If they didn’t get out, they didn’t get out. They were a rotten orchestra anyway.”

The Widower knocked back her brandy. Then she said: “You’re wondering what type of woman keeps her own wife around as a ghoul. I do. Like I said, I’m not ready to give her up yet . . . I’m not finished with her yet.”

She said, “Are you still sentimental?”

The Widower swirled the liquid around in her glass. “Not so much anymore. The clean rules are always the best rules, Starr.

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