Page 4 of Kill Me Again: Psychics

“Marie, what?”

“Kondo. You know, the whole if it doesn’t bring you joy, throw it out thing.”

I joined her at the wardrobe. “It must have passed me by.”

“Everything that isn’t at least a hundred years old and dead passes you by.”

“That’s not true,” I argued.

Verity sighed. “So he took your clothes as well?”

“It would seem so.” I plucked a hanger from the rail. It held a pale blue silk shirt patterned with darker blue flowers. “But why only take half of them?”

Verity’s lip curled as she studied it. “I guess because he has better taste than you.”

“Hey!” I said, genuinely hurt. “There’s nothing wrong with this shirt.”

Her lips twitched. “Do you reckon if I called him and offered him money, he’d come back and take it?”

I hung the shirt back and closed the wardrobe doors, the reality of the situation settling in hard enough that even I was struggling to find a bright side. Only a few hours ago, Carl had waved me off and told me to have a good day. Finding him gone would have been a punch in the gut. Finding he’d left with half of my possessions had me not knowing how I was supposed to feel. Upset? Angry? Both? It was going to take more processing to get past the pervading numbness.

“Let’s have a cup of tea,” Verity suggested. “Assuming he hasn’t taken the kettle.”

He had taken the kettle. He’d left some pans, though, so I used one of the biggest to boil water. There was some good news in the kitchen: the washing machine, fridge-freezer, and oven were still in situ. Gone were the microwave, the coffee machine, most of the food, and most of the crockery.

Verity studied the chipped white mug with I heart Majorca printed on the front. “It was that or the one with Henry VIII on it missing the handle,” I said.

She pulled the mug closer and watched the steam rise, worryingly silent. “You have to stop doing this,” she said eventually.

“Doing what?” I sounded defensive.

“Taking in waifs and strays. Believing the best of people just because they’ve got a pretty face.”

“You make me sound like a pervert.”

She steepled her fingers. “Look me in the eye and tell me you and Carl never slept together.”

I kept my expression neutral, though it took effort. “Define sleeping together.”

She leaned forward, her expression so intense I nearly shrank back. She was six years younger than me, but twice as fierce. No one would walk away from Verity Larson with her TV and bed. Not and keep their balls intact, anyway. But her sad sack of a brother was another matter. “Did you have sexual relations with him?”

I pulled a face. “Sexual relations? Am I in court?”

“Answer the damn question.”

I tried to take a sip of tea as a delaying tactic, realized the handle-less mug was still too hot to pick up, and abandoned the idea. “Did you know that during his reign Henry VIII was believed to have executed seventy thousand people?”

“Fascinating.”

“And that his nickname was Old Coppernose because Cardinal Wolsey had coins made of a cheaper metal, and the thin coating of silver wore away just where his nose was.”

“Lake…”

I sat back in my seat with a sigh. “Carl wanted to thank me for giving him a place to stay.”

The look on my sister’s face was so scandalized that for a moment I considered offering her some pearls to clutch. She recovered quickly. “Oh my God. He Pretty Woman-ed you. Only without the happy ending.”

I couldn’t help myself. “Oh, there were definitely some happy endings. He wasn’t a prostitute, though.”