Kill Me Softly (10 page)

“Because his mom ran away?”

“I'm not sure how to explain it. Just that, I mean, obviously he likes you, but he doesn't want to, so he's going a little overboard to keep you at bay. But I think he's having a hard time just ignoring you because you genuinely don't like him. Which is strangely attractive to Blue.”

“Like he hates clingy girls, but he gets turned on if he thinks you're playing hard to get?”

“Uh …” Freddie stopped to think about it, then settled on shrugging again. “I don't know, Mira. I don't know how to explain it.”

“You could beat him up for me. That would solve a lot of problems.” She flashed him a coy smile.

“He's my friend. I can't do that.” But he smiled back, not at all offended, like he knew she was kidding.

She was
sort of
kidding.

“I'm going to bring this back now, okay?” Freddie gestured with the starfish, lifting his cupped hands, the muscles in his chest tightening with the motion. She nodded, and he trotted down the beach, relaxed and casual. It didn't take long for the girls to surround him again, and when they did, he sped up; his footsteps got clumsy on the sand, like a bear lumbering away from an upset beehive, paws full of honey. Except Freddie was the honey
and
the bear.

Mira didn't, as a rule, chase after boys. But when she followed Freddie with her eyes, paperback pressed to her brow like a visor, she saw herself reflected on his skin. Her wheel, her wine-red mark, was imprinted on the small of his back. They could have been twins.

Twins.

She shoved up off the ground and ran after him. Pushed through the swarm of admirers and grabbed his shoulders, spinning him around. His face was blank with shock. Sunbaked heat sank into her hands.

“What's going on?” she demanded. “You have to tell me what's going on here.”

Her fingers dug into his shoulders, too hard. He stared mutely back at her, and she felt like she was touching fire.

“If you wanted me, if you loved me,
I could take everything from you.”

“Y
OU ATTACKED FREDDIE
. You scared him,” Blue said.

They sat at an outdoor table at Gingerbread House, the café where she'd thrown the knife at him. Just the two of them. Blue had appeared, dripping wet, while Mira was questioning Freddie, demanding to know what their marks were—and he'd pried her away with hands that were cool from the sea. He'd said that if she wanted to talk about this, they needed to do it elsewhere. He'd looked so serious that she'd agreed.

“I didn't attack him,” Mira said. “I was getting his attention. I needed to talk to him.”

The air outside the café smelled like brine and grill smoke. The sound of flags whipping and dinging against flagpoles mixed with the cries of gulls and the rush of cars. Mira rested her foot against the base of the table, then realized she was touching Blue's leg. She left it there, to see what he would do.

“He said it felt like your hand was on fire. What's that all about?”

“It was hot today,” she said. “I don't know. I told you that.”

Mira lifted her head to study his eyes, but he wouldn't look at her—not directly. He was knocking his wrist against the table, rhythmically, like he was trying to make it bruise.

“I saw that mark on his back,” she said. “You both have one.”

“And you're proving that you're rude enough to keep bringing it up. Maybe he's embarrassed by it. Just drop it.”

“No,” she said. “I'm not being rude.”

The wheel spun slowly in her mind, like a windmill set off by a soft wind. The mark connected them somehow. She wasn't going to just let that go.

“Is Freddie an orphan?” she asked. “Did his parents die?”

“The Knight family is perfectly intact,” Blue said. “He has two older brothers, Wills and Caspian. Loving mother and father. They all live together in a swank mansion. Always have.”

“So he couldn't be my brother?” she forced out, swallowing hard afterward. Her heart thumped in the interim. Blue stared at her, mouth poised open, not understanding. Finally, he said:

“He'd certainly be disappointed if he was. Why would you think that? You don't look alike.”

“I thought maybe we could have been separated. When my parents died. Like we could have been taken away by different guardians.”

She lowered her eyes. Blue finally shifted his leg away from her. He cleared his throat.

“You were taken away? From where—from Beau Rivage?”

“I was born here. But I didn't stay long. Something bad happened—a fire—and I lost my mom and dad. My godmothers raised me. I'm here to find my parents' graves.” Her throat grew tight. “You'd know that if you did more than fight with me.”

“Sorry,” he said. Then, more quietly, “That sounds … disturbingly familiar. Like a story.”

“Isn't everything a story?”

“Maybe. But that's not what I meant. I mean it sounds familiar. Like a classic tale.”

“I'm an orphan,” she said, a bitter edge to her voice. “That's as classic as it gets—Oliver Twist, Sara Crewe. But being an orphan isn't a fairy tale. It's not romantic; it doesn't make me special. It just means I never had a chance to know my parents, and I never will.”

“So you hoped you had Freddie?” he said, brows dipping as he tried to work it out.

“No, I'm just—I'm trying to make this make sense.
This.
”

Mira rose from her seat and jerked her blouse up from her waist. She turned so he could see the mark, his gaze like needles in her skin, in the vulnerable part of herself she kept hidden.

“I think maybe … I'm cursed, too,” she said.

She shuddered when he touched her, his fingertip tracing the mark at the base of her spine.

Blue uttered a word she'd directed at him under very different circumstances. He whispered it, and his touch was like a whisper, too. She felt a fire more intense than the one she'd felt when she touched Freddie. That had been a surface fire, stinging and hot. This one was deeper, embedded in her core. It ignited something dark and secret within her, and she kept smoldering until he took his hand away.

“Oh,” he said.

“Don't forget I loathe you,” she said shakily.

“I know. Let's keep it that way.”

She sat back down. His eyes ticked across her face like a pendulum.

“Well.” He swallowed. “You're not his sister. For a start.”

Happy birthday. Happy birthday, baby. You only turn sixteen once.

The room was full of balloons, the color of a castle at the bot
tom of the sea, blue and black and silver and green. They were dancing. Jewel was crooning a torch song on a miniature stage, her voice throaty and tender, black pearls dripping from her lips when she stopped to breathe. everyone clapped, ecstatic. An explosion of gratitude, like firecrackers popping.

He was surrounded by everything he loved. everything good.

Couples spun off into dark corners, private shadows. His father encouraged it, treated them like adults. Champagne foamed over bottle tops, and paper came off presents with a giddy ripping sound.

He tried to keep to his kind, he really did. To the girls who knew better. But he got caught up in the moment.

Tonight, her dress and her lips were as cherry red as her hair. And when she smiled at him—like it was time to stop pretending, stop avoiding each other—he felt too good to believe she could be anything but right.

But he should have known.

She led him by the hand to that dark back bedroom, tottering on red heels she could barely walk in, almost tripping over someone's purse, and she laughed and threw her arms around his neck to catch herself before she fell.

They froze for a moment. He felt her body against his, warm and wonderful, and his arms went around her to pull her closer. She kissed him, and he kissed her—

And he kept kissing her until he couldn't breathe. Until she couldn't.

“How old are you?” Blue asked, taking her hand and turning it over, unfolding her pointer finger from where it was curled against her palm, and touching it softly, examining it.

“Almost sixteen,” she said. “My birthday's in a few days.”

“How many days?”

“Four.”

“Oh,” he said, his word cut short by breath. “Do you have any prohibitions on you? Restrictions?”

“What do you mean?” It was a struggle to keep her hand still, to keep from ripping it away or curling her fingers around his and holding them. Her nerves jerked each time he touched her. The softer he was, the nicer it felt, the worse it became.

“Things you've been forbidden to do. Things that have been kept from you.”

“Sure. Lots of things. Everything. My godmothers are the most overprotective people on the planet. I'm not allowed to be here, for one.”

“But anything specific?” he asked.

“I'm not allowed to ride in my friends' cars. I'm not allowed to get my license until I'm eighteen. I'm not allowed to date. Not allowed to watch R-rated movies. Not allowed to go for walks after dark. Not allowed to play with sharp objects. The list goes on and on.”

Blue nodded grimly, like she'd confirmed something for him. “Okay. Well … I'm going to tell you something. You might not like it.”

“About my … curse?” she said, still hoping that he would tell her no, she was mistaken.

But he nodded instead.

“Mira, you have what's called a märchen mark.
Märchen
is the German word for
tale
. As in
fairy tale
.”

“What do you mean?”

“It identifies you. It places you in a role. It tells you what you're meant to do, or what will happen to you. It's like … your destiny. Your curse.”

Blue laid his hands on the table, a slight tremor running though them. “There are certain places where our kind gathers. Beau Rivage is one of them.”

“So your friends—they're all … cursed.”

Blue nodded. “Yes.”

“What does my mark mean? What's my role?”

“The wheel that you have, and that Freddie has, represents the spinning wheel from ‘Sleeping Beauty.' ”

Mira drew in a breath and held it.
Felix's favorite tale.

Fate.

“You're a Somnolent,” Blue continued. “That means you were cursed, probably when you were a baby; and that there is an object—not necessarily a spindle, since the tales evolve and that would be too archaic now—that is destined to send you into an enchanted sleep if it cuts you or pricks your finger or something. Possibly a very long sleep, depending on where your prince is when it happens. And whether he knows how to find you.”

“My prince?” Mira blinked at him, stunned. “I have a prince?”

“Um, yeah. That would be Freddie.”

Freddie.
Freddie was nice. Freddie was sweet. And a chick magnet—not to mention a bluebird, butterfly, and chipmunk magnet.

But Mira couldn't see him as her boyfriend and curse breaker, the love of her life.

She let out a long sigh and stirred her melting milk shake. So far, fairy tales and happily-ever-after didn't seem to go hand in hand. And being a princess—if that was indeed what she was—wasn't the dream come true she'd imagined back when she was five, dancing around the house in a pink tutu and plastic tiara. If Bliss and Elsa knew the truth about her, she was surprised they hadn't burst out laughing at the sight: a real princess playing princess.

She swallowed a mouthful of runny ice cream, her throat clenching as she put two and two together. Elsa and Bliss.

“I am so dumb.”

Blue arched his eyebrows. “Isn't that my line?”

“My godmothers. Are they
fairy
godmothers?”

“Probably,” Blue said. “If they were entrusted with your welfare. But I guess they
could
be human. Stranger things have happened.”

“Stranger things like us,” she said.

She no longer thought it was cute that the café was called Gingerbread House, or that the walls were decorated with candy. She wouldn't have been surprised to find a boy in a cage in the kitchen, being fattened up by a witch like in “Hansel and Gretel.”

One of the waitresses hovered nearby, wiping down tables that were already clean—she was obviously eavesdropping.
Stupid fairy-tale town.

“Can we talk somewhere else?” Mira asked, nodding toward the nosy waitress.

“Sure,” Blue said, getting up. “I wanted to bring you to Layla anyway. She'll explain this stuff better than I can.”

By three o'clock, Mira and Blue were camped in leather armchairs by the wide front window of The Emperor's New Books used bookstore, waiting for Layla to go on break.

The shelves housed an eclectic assortment of books that Mira doubted anyone would ever buy: acrid-smelling romance novels from the 1970s, crossword puzzle books with half the answers penciled in, travel guides that hadn't been useful in decades. A plastic crate of record albums gathered dust on the floor, and just beyond it stood a wire rack stuffed with well-thumbed graphic novels—the only nod to the current century.

Mira got the impression the store was more of a hobby for the owner than a business. And from what she'd seen so far, the customers treated it like a library. The current sole patron—a young police officer who was flipping through baby name books like his life depended on it—was taking forever to leave.

Layla was sorting through a shipment, looking as effortlessly gorgeous as the last time Mira had seen her. Blue had poured himself iced coffee from the pitcher in the employee fridge and was absorbed in a comic book. And Mira, who normally would have been content in a bookstore, was too antsy to read anything.