Eva wasn’t the only one who was stunned by my appearance. Clementine blinked and blinked, as if she didn’t believe what she was seeing. No doubt, she’d expected someone clad in black from head to toe, someone suave and confident, someone who looked more like a cat burglar, rather than the victim of some bloody, horrific accident, like I did right now. Her eyes widened as she realized exactly who and what I was.

“You!” she hissed.

“Hello, Clementine,” I drawled.

“You’re supposed to be dead!” she hissed again, then turned and fixed her cold, angry glare on Dixon.

He stared at me in horrified shock for a moment before his gaze snapped over to Clementine. I hadn’t thought it possible, given how much self-tanner had soaked into his skin, but his orange face actually paled and took on a sickly, sallow tint. He swallowed once, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down like a fishing lure that was stuck in his throat.

“But—but you saw her!” he sputtered. “I killed her! I killed the Spider! I blew her face off!”

“No,” I snapped. “You killed a woman who had on the same dress as I did. Nothing more. Her name was Jillian, and she didn’t deserve to die like that.”

Eva sucked in another breath at the revelation of Jillian’s fate. Apparently, so much had been going on in the rotunda that Eva hadn’t realized that Jillian wasn’t there, just like Owen hadn’t.

“She was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” I said, for Eva’s benefit. Then I stared at Clementine. “Your nephew there was just too dumb to realize that he’d killed the wrong woman. Maybe if he hadn’t shot her in the face so many times, he would’ve seen his mistake before now—and you would have too.”

Anger stained Clementine’s cheeks, her hazel eyes narrowed, and even her hair seemed to curl tighter with wrath, but she didn’t respond to my taunts. Instead, she stared at me for the better part of a minute, her sharp gaze taking in my hacked-off ball gown, the belt around my hips, the black boots on my feet, the blood spattered all over me.

“You look like you’ve been rode hard and put up wet,” she said. “Not what I expected from the mighty Spider.”

I shrugged. “Well, I do aim to please, but as you know, my plans for this evening were interrupted. I’ll give you this, you don’t do anything halfway. Robbing the entire Briartop museum and holding Ashland’s finest at gunpoint at the same time is no small feat. You should give yourself a pat on the back. You’ve earned it.”

Clementine grinned. “My mama always said, why steal one million, when you can steal two. Or a hundred, in this case.”