Comfort would be a long time coming. She couldn’t face going back to the empty townhouse, just waiting for Vivian to come home and ruin her life. And it seemed cowardly to go, grab her stuff, and bail to a hotel. She’d return after Vivian was home for the night, and what would be would be.

It just probably wouldn’t be very good, that was all.

* * *

By the time she reached Vivian’s townhouse, Jules’s body was clenched with tension from head to toe.

You were right, she reminded herself, and she was wrong. She should never have said what she said to you. You’ve got a way out. Don’t forget that.

During the past few hours, Vivian hadn’t seen fit to cordon off the place with a chain-link fence, dig a moat, station a guard, or do anything else to signal Jules wasn’t welcome. She took a deep breath, went up the stairs, and turned the key in the lock. Vivian hadn’t thrown the latch. That was something.

Jules crept into the house, taking off her shoes as soon as she gained the hallway, and grabbed her phone from the kitchen counter. The display showed that Vivian had called her once. No voicemail.

She sighed and tiptoed up the stairs. There was no light shining from behind Vivian’s bedroom door, but her coat had been hanging in the hall closet. So she was definitely home, even if she wasn’t emerging from her lair to breathe flames in Jules’s face before putting her onto the first flight out of London.

There was no sticky note on Jules’s bedroom door reading You’re fired. Nor a message written in blood-red lipstick on the bathroom mirror.

That just made it worse somehow. Vivian was just stringing Jules along, making her wait in agony for the final blow. Vivian was good at that kind of thing.

Sleep seemed impossible. Jules was ping-ponging between righteous fury and sheer grief at the probability of exile.

But the bed was soft and the covers warm, and even Jules’s chattering psyche was no match for her weariness tonight. Too much. She’d been through too much today, too much all week, to keep her eyes open for another second. So she closed them and dropped into a deep, though unquiet, slumber.

Unfortunately, although Jules had dodged her earlier, Vivian was waiting for her in her dreams.

“I told you I couldn’t trust you,” she said. “Now I have to fire you.”

She had Jules’s phone in her hand. Jules reached for it, but Vivian pulled it away.

“Don’t fire me,” Jules whispered. “Don’t make me go.”

“I have to,” Vivian said. “Everybody knows that. You knew this couldn’t last. You know you should go.”

“But you can’t send me away! It’s not fair. I didn’t do anything wrong!”

Then Vivian pushed her shoulder.