katherineluttmer

This was it! This was her chance – the girl looking at the display was interested, clearly, in one of them. Glancing at her reflection in the window, she preened. She was beautiful, and knew it. Her pattern was flawless. Her shape, her curves, were perfect. Rounded body, her edges limned in gold in the shop's fluorescent lights. No one could see her scarring from this angle – she just had to be chosen without the girl seeing it. Everyone else who'd noticed had set her straight back down and walked away with someone else from the display. “I've wanted one for ages,” the girl told her companion, longing coloring her to

“No.” It was all I could say, taking in the carnage of what had just last night been my pristine kitchen. I wanted to collapse onto a chair, but they – and our spacious table – were covered in miscellany. Cleaning supplies, random knick-knacks from the living room, a thermometer, a scale. It was all there, strewn about. My legs were shaking, and I fought the urge to cry. So messy. So dirty. No, no, no. I collapsed onto the shoe bench in between the Franco Sarto and the Gucci. I don't know where Giesswein had gone. I wished I could blame it on burglars, but no. “She's doing it again!” I called, and my husb

He was hungry. Starving, really. He hadn't eaten in an entire week. It'd taken him two days of investigation to discover the one behind the disappearances, three days of straight travel to get to the dingy studio with its blacked-out windows, and he'd been sitting in the small office, waiting, for two days; but Bean never ate til a job was finished. Call it motivation. The scrape of his permanent scruff scratched against the back of the velvet seat he reclined against was plenty comfortable as his head lolled, but he had no need to sleep. Not when twenty-seven were gone, according the Lenticular over his left eye – a gift from The Tec