Page 187 of Saint Céline
As a memento of my own.
Because that was the night I stopped being merely curious about Céline Martin.
Curiosity has limits. Obsession does not.
I looked up toward the terrace. Empty now. The low ledge dark with rain.
Somewhere beyond Westgrave, Céline was probably running through campus with her sketchbook clutched to her chest, sobbing hard enough to make herself ill, already rehearsing the first careful layer of the lie that would save her. She would call someone. Or not. She would return later, feigning shock. She would let the wordsuicidesettle around Katherine Montgomery—a lonely, brilliant, unstable girl. It would not strain belief.
I could help shape that story.
I had money. A name. Connections. A university that preferred tragedy to scandal. A police department that understood Bellamont’s donors mattered more than dead girls with complicated emotional histories.
By morning, Katherine would be remembered as lonely, brilliant, unstable.
By the end of the week, Céline would be devastated, helpful, saintly.
The story would hold because everyone would want it to.
I stood in the rain with Katherine’s phone in one pocket, her notes in another, her bag at my feet, and my father’s lesson moving through me like blood.
Do not admire damage.
I smiled then, though there was no humour in it.
Too late.
I had found something far more beautiful than broken porcelain.
35
Céline
I thought I had misheard him.
I did.
Two words. Quiet. Almost gentle. The same tone he might have used to say he had finished the last of the wine or turned off a lamp I had forgotten.
I stared at him across the ruined table, my dress still twisted high around my thighs, my body aching in ways that should have felt vulgar after what we had just done. The candle had guttered out when he swept the dishes aside. Pasta, shattered glass, red wine, and water lay pooled across the floor in a grotesque little still life. The apartment smelled of cream sauce, cigarette smoke, rain, and sex.
“You’re lying,” I said.
Vincent did not move.
“No.”
“You are.” My voice cracked despite the rawness in my throat. “You’re lying because you want me to feel indebted to you.”
“I rarely need to lie for that.”
“Do not be clever right now.”
His mouth closed.
That frightened me more than any joke could have. Vincent, without any amusement, was always more dangerous.
Rain traced slow fingers down the windows behind him. Outside, Blackwater blurred into wet darkness, the whole city softened by storm and distance. Inside, Katherine’s name hung between us like a body we had not yet finished burying.
