I could.

It’s an astonishing thought. It should scare me, but it doesn’t. I catch myself smiling in the side-view mirror.

A feeling floods me like smoke through a burning building. My grip around a living thing, the easy squeeze, the swift crack of its neck. The red glaze of blood on my fur, shimmering in the moonlight. My rough tongue sweeping across the jagged edges of my teeth. So sharp. And my nails. So sharp. Lethal.

My eyes close, and it’s here. The transcendent knowledge that nothing can touch me. That I’m not in danger, because I am danger.

I take a deep, gasping breath and accidentally graze the horn. It gives a short, startling beep that snaps me out of it. Brings me back into reality.

I throw myself out of the car and into the soberingly cold morning. I go get the fucking balloons.

—

I don’t so much help Ashley decorate as I watch her decorate while eating breakfast sausages like they’re potato chips. Luca is with her in-laws, and though I do find him exceptionally entertaining, it’s nice to have a reprieve from his tyranny.

Ash made multiple quiches and a fruit tart, and set up an impressive mimosa bar. She also bought a cake shaped like a rattle, which I think looks vaguely phallic, an observation I choose to keep to myself.

“You think she’ll like it?” Ash asks. “I incorporated as much black as possible.”

She went for a bumblebee theme, pale yellow and black. There are adorable little bumblebees all around. The balloons I picked up are yellow and black, with some helium bees mixed in.

“It’s different,” I say. “I think she’ll like it.”

I do not think she will like it.

A few of Scarlett’s friends arrive shy of one o’clock. Some I’ve met before, people she’s known since college and coworkers. The people I haven’t met marvel at how alike we look.

I get the sense that everyone is nervous. There’s tension in the room. Usually, I’m impervious to tension. I’ve been known to enjoy watching people squirm. But this is different.

I get a whiff of something, and it clicks.

I can smell it. I can smell their sweat. Their uneasiness. Their dread.

I sniff.

Yep. It’s so pungent, I can almost taste it.

These people all know Scarlett, and they know. This isn’t her kind of thing.

“Kill me now,” whispers a voice at my ear.

It takes me a second to identify the voice as something outside of myself, to distinguish it from my own cynical inner monologue.

It’s Mia. She wears a zebra-print miniskirt and a low-cut white blouse that ties up the front. Her hair is pulled back in a high ponytail that falls straight down her back, sways as she moves, a swish of bright blond. She looks both stunning and stunningly out of place.

Bet Scarlett will be thrilled.

“Hey,” I say. “What are you doing here?”

I don’t mean it the way it sounds. She takes it in stride.