Finn eyed me. “Have I mentioned how much I hate it when you’re cryptic?”

I just laughed.

* * *

Finn went over to Bria to see if he could swipe a necklace or two for himself, but I stayed where I was and watched the coroner work. He’d finally gotten around to Jillian. In the chaos and confusion, her body had been rolled over to one side of the rotunda like it was a wad of dirt that needed to be swept up, instead of a beautiful, vibrant woman who’d been alive only a few short hours ago.

My heart ached with sadness, and I couldn’t take my eyes off Jillian’s dress—our dress. The scarlet fabric wrapped around her body like a bloody shroud. That’s what it was now. She’d been killed because of it, because she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time and wearing the wrong damn dress.

And it was all my fault.

Oh, I knew that it was just bad timing, just bad, dumb, stupid luck that Jillian had stepped out of the bathroom before I had. Maybe if it had been me instead, I would have been able to avoid Dixon and the bullets he’d wanted to put in my skull. Maybe I would have been able to use my Stone magic to harden my skin before he pulled the trigger. Maybe I would have been able to kill Dixon and Clementine before they hurt anyone else.

Or maybe I would have been just as dead as Jillian was.

Either way, I’d never know, and an innocent woman had paid the price instead of me.

Owen walked over to me. We stood there and watched while the coroner and one of his assistants carefully loaded Jillian into a body bag.

After a moment, he sighed. “A couple of hours ago, I was talking to her, laughing with her. And now she’s gone. It doesn’t seem possible. It doesn’t seem real.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. We talked a little in the bathroom before . . . it happened. She seemed . . . nice.”

“She was nice,” Owen said. “But I never should have brought her here tonight. And not just because of Clementine and everything that happened.”

“What do you mean?”

He turned to face me. “I mean that Jillian was just a friend. She was in town so we could work out the details of a new business arrangement, and I mentioned the gala in passing to her. She asked if she could come along with me and Eva, and I said yes. She made it clear tonight that she wanted to be more than just friends and business associates, but I didn’t. It didn’t . . . feel right.”