Tarnished Read Online Free

swung around to face me. Her face changed. She wasn’t wearing the painted on version of herself that she normally showed to the world. Her expression was rubbed raw. “I traveled the black market,” she said. “But I don’t want to talk about it.”
    The ache in her voice made me regret being so sharp with her. She’d obviously been through a lot to get here.
    “Why are you here?” I asked.
    “I had to come,” she said. “ You made it impossible for me to stay where I was.”
    Her words came out like a hiss and I scooted away from her. “I did?”
    She crowded closer. “You think I could have stayed after what you did?”
    “What are you talking about? I didn’t do anything to you!”
    I hadn’t. Sure, I’d asked her to run away with me, but she’d refused. She was the one who’d rung that bell so her master came running. She was the one who turned me in, who made my life unbearable. If anyone was to blame, it was her.
    “You think your actions don’t have consequences?” Missy asked. “You think your little stunt with your lover boy only affected you?” She threw her hands in the air.
    My back stiffened. “At least I tried,” I snapped. “All you did was sit there. You hated your life, but you were too big of a coward to do anything about it.”
    “Don’t you dare call me a coward,” Missy snapped. “I had to weigh all my options. I had to be smart. I couldn’t afford to make stupid choices just because my heart told me to.” She emphasized the word heart , spitting it out as if it was the ugliest word she’d ever heard.
    I opened my mouth but she narrowed her eyes and the look on her face stopped me from speaking.
    “You don’t have any idea what you’ve done,” she said. “You made my life unbearable . It didn’t make any difference to my master whether I turned you in or not. He wasn’t going to look at things logically. Men like that never do.” She shook her head. “No, from the moment I rang that stupid bell, my world has been tipped on its head. And don’t think it’s just my life you ruined.”
    “You can’t blame me for—”
    “Shut up! Just shut. Up,” she interrupted. “It’s a full-blown disaster to every single pet in the whole state.” She stared off over my shoulder as if she could see something there. Her face was almost red with rage and her fists clenched and unclenched at her sides. “It might have been bearable if I only had to deal with my master,” Missy said, clearly getting some sort of pleasure from not answering my question. “He was suspicious, which was annoying, having to stay close to him all the time, like I was going to run away any second.” She wrinkled her nose, the distaste of his memory so clear on her face. “And after I’d worked so hard to make myself invisible to him. But I could wait that out. Or I could have waited that out if…”
    “If what? Will you please just tell me what’s going on?”
    She glared at me.
    “You can’t just come here and treat me like this,” I said, stomping my foot so hard a spray of loose gravel and dirt skittered past Missy, bouncing noisily into the deep hole of the construction site. “I’m sorry that your master was cruel to you and blamed you for my actions, but it’s not my fault.”
    “Oh…you have no idea.”
    I clenched my fists. “Not if you don’t tell me.”
    She narrowed her eyes.
    “Why did you come here if you hate me so much?” I asked.
    “I don’t hate you,” she said, turning her nose up at me. “I don’t care about you enough to hate you.”
    I didn’t have to stay. I was free to make my own decisions and I didn’t have to listen to Missy if I didn’t want to.
    “Fine.” I snatched my pillowcase off the ground. “I’m sorry coming all this way was such an inconvenience to you, but I’m getting out of here.”
    Her eyes grew wide. “You can’t just leave .”
    “Yes, I can.”
    “But you wouldn’t,” she said.
    I put my hand on my hip. The position