“I didn’t have to meddle to get Toren and Luna together. They just needed a shove in the right direction. And I did absolutely nothing with Ash and Ellis.”
“You gave us all the cursed heirlooms! You got them cursed! That’s meddling! You cracked my safe and hired someone, probably a lovely, single young lady, to break in and steal it! THAT’S MEDDLING!” But it does not explain how she got past my freaking security system.
“Why can’t you leave well enough alone?” I hiss in utter despair into the silence of the phone. “Why can’t you just leave us alone to live our lives? Why must you insist on the cursed jewels, crazy schemes, and wild freaking breakneck, daring events? That girl could have been killed! She jumped out of my bedroom window, landed on the roof, jumped that, then leaped off the garage and went tearing down the street! And now she’s in possession of a cursed jewel, and she has no freaking idea! Forcing somebody onto someone doesn’t mean they’re going to be a soulmate. That’s not how soulmates work!”
“Kirian?”
“WHAT?”
“Your home security system sucks. I didn’t give her the password. It’s not unbreachable, and it needs a lot of work. I hate to say I told you, but this was the only way you’d listen. Yeah, that’s right. Guess it wasn’t so much meddling as it was saving your overconfident ass. Double guess I killed two birds with one stone.”
Click.
There’s an actual click, even on a cell phone. I swear I heard a click. At any rate, the line’s dead. Granny hung up on me.
She’s been harping on about the security system for over a month now. I guess this proves I should have listened. I should have known she’d do something wildly drastic to get her point across. This is Granny we’re talking about here, and she’s definitely a wildly drastic kind of person.
Just then, I realize I’m standing here in my gotch, which is a regular boring pair of black boxer briefs, gaping at the dark screen of my phone.
I have to fix this. I have to fix the home security system before it launches and whatever unfortunate woman Granny paid to get her point across. She could have just bloody well hacked into the system herself and appeared at the foot of my bed like a granny monster come to devour my cotton candy soul. Although, that’s taking things a little too far. My granny is a nice lady. Really, she is, and I love her to death. She held this family together after my dad and cousins’ dad left. She loved us and still loves us more than anyone on earth. She also supported both her daughters-in-law when their husbands abandoned them.
Granny is one of my favorite people on the planet. She’s incredibly smart, witty, generous, and talented, and she’s still at the top of one heck of an empire even though she could have retired a long time ago. Also, she has more energy than me and all my cousins put together. And she believes in curses. Oh, wait. I guess that part isn’t cool. On the outside, looking in, and to anyone else, it would be, but not to me.
This brings me to the other thing I have to do, which is to find the hacker lady on Granny’s payroll and get the necklace back before something terrible and horribly cursed happens to her unsuspecting, hapless, roof-leaping, security-hacking, lovely copper-haired bottom. Um, no. Wait. That came out wrong. Anyway, the bottom line is, I need to find her. There, that’s what I meant.
I need to find her immediately.
CHAPTER 3
Lindy
Okay, this should be easy—a piece of double chocolate cake with extra chocolate frosting. One can’t go wrong with chocolate. Chocolate is the cure to all evils.
As soon as I get home, I strip out of my all-black burglar’s uniform and sit down on the only piece of furniture in the living room, which is a beat-up old couch that was left in the house when I moved in. I mean, what can I expect for a place I pay cash every two weeks to rent? Anyway, it’s not broken, it doesn’t have bugs, and even though the leather has peeled off in more than a few spots, it’s still decently comfortable with a quilt thrown over it. It’s good enough for me, especially since I hardly ever sit in here anyway. I don’t do any entertaining, so I have absolutely no need to make the house appear up to par by using other people’s expectations as a guide. For instance, I don’t have a TV because I don’t need one. The table in the kitchen is made of glass, and I happened to find it in the back alley, beside the dumpster. It very obviously belongs outside as the glass is cracked, and the table’s green metal legs are rusted in a few spots. Besides that, I have two mismatched chairs that I also found for free next to a dumpster, but not one near here. They fit in my car—hatchback for the win yet again—so they came home with me.