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CHAPTER EIGHT ᴀ ᴅᴇʙᴛ ʀᴇᴘᴀɪᴅ
☾
In the light of day the radio was not black, but a dull green, highlighting the chips and ageing. In the dark of the garage, it had already seemed broken,even before Violet Green's complaints had interrupted the silence it produced. Now, looking at it from where she lay across the room, Rosalie could see the loose wiring and battered edges. It was a wonder it had ever worked.
What had made her pick the old thing up before leaving, Rosalie didn't know, but in the end, she drew it down to the blunt fact that she did not like owing people. She knew what it felt like, to have people take with no sense of debt, no inclination to repay. It was that sense of entitlement that had led her down this very path of living- one she wished never to relive.
With a sigh, Rosalie pushed herself from the bed and placed two hands around the rickety, metal box, feeling the sides almost crumble beneath her fingers, and took it to the workshop.
The room at the very bottom of the house, which protruded from the ground, slipping from the earth smoothly where the cars were driven from, was not actually a workshop as Rosalie liked to imagine it. It was a garage with room for four cars- two of which were Rose's- with a bench running along the longest of walls, an iron bar hanging above it, strung with ordered tools and scribbles she'd pinned up with hooks. Even with the reems of things she'd collected through the many years, the workshop was organised. It was a stark contrast to the mess of the Greens' garage.
Rose set the radio down on the furthest part of the bench. It was then, that Alice slid through the doorway, her footsteps light against the concrete. She would have been undetectable to any human, perhaps to some vampires too, had they been weak enough in some way. Alice had a unique type of movement, not quite floating but not quite walking either, and Rosalie could recognise her presence anywhere.
"I notice your car is back. Has it been painted?" Alice said as she skipped past the BMW, finger sliding against the hood. She didn't give her sister a chance to respond. "Not by you, of course. There's a scratch."
Rosalie's head lifted at those words, eyes sliding to the point where Alice stood.
"Where?"
"You didn't notice?" Alice said, head cocking to the side as she watched Rose. There was no scratch where she stood. But Rosalie had already given herself away. "Unless you were preoccupied with something else."
Rosalie scowled and threw her gaze back down to the broken radio in her hands.
"If you're going to stand there and tease me, Alice, you may as well be helpful. Pass me the screwdriver."
Alice did as she asked, twirling the tool around in her fingers before she passed it on, standing on the tips of her toes to peer over her sister's shoulder. She smiled lightly as her eyes landed on the thing she was fixing. The radio was definitely not Esme's...
