"My sister has gone off the deep end," I whispered into the tailor’s phone, which I had nonchalantly slipped into my back pocket after leaving the fitting room seven hours earlier. "I’ve said it before, Charles, and I know you want more details, but I can’t. You just have to trust me this time. She’s completely lost it."
The silence on the other end stretched so long that I checked to make sure the call hadn’t dropped. The digital timer on the screen continued ticking away: three minutes, seventeen seconds, eighteen seconds, nineteen…
"I need more from you, Aveline," Charles finally responded. "You’re calling from a stolen phone."
I groaned, collapsing onto the nearest rattan sofa and running my hand through my hair. "I’ll return it, okay?"
"That’s not my concern," Charles insisted, he
