Mortal Kiss (5 page)

Ahead of him, the man could still see the two girls in their little car. He pulled a cell phone from his pocket and hit the speed dial, listening to it ring in his Bluetooth earpiece. His employer would want to know of his success.

The ringing telephone was answered almost immediately. “Yes?” The voice on the other end of the line was curt and clipped, same as ever.

“Finn has seen the girl.”

“They were in contact?”

“Oh yes. I don’t think either of them will forget the encounter.”

“Excellent. Did you get photographs?”

“I did.”

“Good. Anything else of interest?”

He nodded to himself absently as he watched the red taillights of the car in front blaze into the falling dark of a winter’s night. “I think there may be some tension between our little friends.”

“The bikers?”

“No, the two girls.”

“That could work in our favor.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“So? You are clear on what must be done?”

“Yes. This weekend is all arranged—this party really is perfect for our plans. The only problem we may have is if the enemy chooses to interfere before we are ready for them.”

“They won’t,” drawled the voice confidently. “They know their limitations.”

“But if they do?”

“Then they’ll go ahead and start a war they really can’t win, won’t they?”

It was almost dusk as Lucas Morrow reached the front gate of his new home and started the long walk up the snowy path. He called it home, but it didn’t feel like one. Lucas had moved a lot in his life, and he usually didn’t have much say in where he ended up, but this place had really shocked him. His mother liked rich people and rich places, and that usually meant somewhere a bit busier than Winter Mill.
Winter Mill!
God, even the name sounded rustic. He wondered how long they’d stay. Surely his mother would soon get bored. Of course, that would mean he’d have to change schools again … but he was used to that.

He walked up the front steps and unlocked the imposing front door. Inside, the mansion was as quiet as a tomb. But then, it was so big that you could land a jet plane on the top floor and no one in the rest of the house would even hear it, let alone notice several hundred new arrivals. His mother certainly wouldn’t—she’d be too busy looking at herself in the mirror. With just Lucas, his mom, and Ballard in residence at the mansion, the place was as good as empty.

Lucas walked into the middle of the large marble-floored reception room. More steps curved upward before him, splitting into two stairways as they reached the mansion’s second level. It was cold.

“Hello?” he called, but he got no answer except the echo of his own voice bouncing back at him.

With a sigh, he walked toward the door to the living room, looking for his mother. He figured he should probably speak to her at least once today before heading out to the Thorsson party—as if they were a regular family. He’d almost said no when the girl asked him to go. He didn’t feel like spending a whole evening being
gawped at; it had been bad enough at school. But what else was he going to do? Hang around this place on his own? So in the end, he’d said yes. Who knew, maybe it would be fun. The locals couldn’t be worse than the super-rich fake-tan junkies he usually found himself surrounded by, and maybe he’d meet someone interesting to talk to. That girl Faye—Flash—for example. She seemed smart. She was cute, too.

“Hello?” he said again, pushing open the door. Two lamps were lit, casting a shallow glow over the living room, but there was no sign of his mother.

Lucas looked around the room. He hadn’t been in it before—yet another corner of the house he’d not bothered to explore. Now, though, he noticed the huge, ornate mirror that hung over the disused fireplace. All the furniture was arranged around it, as if it were a TV or a particularly beautiful painting.

“Ah,” he said, “so that’s where she put you. Thought I hadn’t seen your ugly face for a while.”

Lucas moved until he stood in front of the mirror, studying its ancient, intricately carved wooden frame. This mirror featured in so many of his memories. No matter where they went, no matter how far they traveled, this thing always came with them. It must cost his mother a small fortune to transport it, and yet she did it, every time. He’d never asked why, though he assumed it was a valuable family heirloom. On the other hand, his mother never got tired of looking at her own reflection. Maybe she just liked the way this mirror made her look.

Lucas stared into the glass. He realized that although the mirror had been around for as long as he could remember, he had rarely looked at himself in it. It colored everything in a bluish tint, as if each reflection contained within it were farther away than it really was. He regarded himself and wondered if, as everyone was fond
of telling him, his face really was similar to his mother’s. He had her eyes, he knew that, but everything else—his nose, his mouth, his chin … they held nothing of her.

He put his fingers to his face, wondering what his father looked like. Mercy never spoke about him, had never offered Lucas even a hint of who he might be. Maybe she didn’t know—she certainly didn’t want to talk about it. But the older he got, the more Lucas wondered. Was his father out there, somewhere? Did he even know he had a son? There were pictures of Lucas everywhere in the media. Perhaps his father looked at them and wondered too? Perhaps he recognized part of himself in his long-lost son somehow?

The whole of Lucas’s life, it had just been him and his mom. Well, the two of them plus whatever dumb bodyguards were following his mother around like trained animals. Ballard was just the latest. Lucas couldn’t stand them. He’d never felt as if he really knew his mother: not properly, not like other children seemed to know their parents. He put this down, largely, to the constant attention of one idiot employee after another. And even if they hadn’t been there, there was nothing to say that—

Something suddenly skittered at the edge of his vision. It was barely there, a movement deep within the mirror, something scuttling, insectlike, beneath its surface. Lucas stepped back, spooked, and knocked into the occasional table behind him, nearly sending the lamp crashing to the floor.

“Honestly, Lucas,” came his mother’s bored voice. “You really are as clumsy as an ox. At least
try
to be more careful, can’t you?”

Lucas turned to see Mercy Morrow standing in the doorway, one slim and perfectly manicured hand grasping the antique door handle. It was no wonder, he thought, that the rest of the world thought her so beautiful. She
was
beautiful. Her tall figure was a perfect hourglass shape. Her thick blond hair was swept up as usual in
a complicated arrangement of twists and curls that must have taken hours to complete, framing her delicate, pale oval face. Her almond-shaped eyes, bluer even than Lucas’s own, shone in the lamplight, her lashes so long that they cast shadows on her high cheekbones. Her full lips were curved in a smile that Lucas wasn’t sure was reflected in her eyes. She wore a tailored pantsuit of fine, natural-colored linen over a simple white cotton shirt, with strings of baroque pearls at her throat. The light-colored suit served to accentuate the pale serenity of her face, but she wore little makeup, which would probably shock the gossip journalists of the world. Mercy Morrow looked as perfect without cosmetics as she did with them. In her son’s mind, she hadn’t changed since he was a little kid—but then, Lucas supposed, parents always looked the same to their children.

“Hi, Mom. Good day?”

Mercy shrugged. “I went down to the town’s little spa and got a woman to give me a massage. It was … acceptable. Though she did chatter so.”

Lucas gave a derisive snort. “Busy as usual, then, huh?”

His mother narrowed her eyes. “Don’t be flippant, Lucas. It’s boring. Rather like this commonplace little town.”

He sighed, exasperated. “Honestly, Mom—why are we here? This place is like—it’s like the end of the earth! There’s nothing to do, and you know you’re going to get bored in two weeks. Can’t we just go somewhere else? You know—somewhere alive?”

“I wanted us to unwind somewhere quiet,” Mercy said coldly. “Somewhere … with a little history.”

“History? Sure, this place has history—if you count Abe Lincoln staying at the town inn for one night. I guess that was all he could stand too.” Lucas threw up his
hands. “If you wanted to go somewhere quiet, we could have gone to Barbados. You would have gotten an acceptable massage, and I could have gone windsurfing. But instead we come out to the backwoods, where every local wants to peer in our windows and there’s nothing to do but check your toes for frostbite every half hour.”

“Do not take that tone with me, Lucas,” Mercy hissed angrily. “I don’t recall you doing anything to earn your keep, and until you do, we go where I say, when I say. Is that clear?”

“It’s not like I have a choice, is it?”

Mercy smiled before she turned her attention to the mirror behind him, checking her hair. “I’m glad we understand each other.”

“Fine. I’m going out. And I really don’t care if you mind or not.”

Mercy raised one long arm and flicked her fingers impatiently. “Go, do. As long as you’re not skulking around here, whining about your lot in life, I don’t care.”

Lucas pushed past her, angry, slamming the door as he left the room. Feeling someone watching him, he looked up to see Ballard, standing on the other side of the entrance hall, an unpleasant smile on his face.

Finn stared into the fire they’d built to warm the camp, thinking about what had happened at the mall. It wasn’t the incident with the shop owner and the security guard—he was used to attitudes like theirs and had long ago learned that the best way to combat them was to rise above them. Actions spoke louder than words, as the old cliché went, and anyone who really cared to look would soon see that the bikers were not the thieving vagabonds they were so often accused of being. No, what had stayed with Finn was his encounter with the girl. Faye, her friend had called her. But it was another name that haunted Finn’s dreams—another name that also matched that face. He’d glanced through that window, and it had been like seeing a ghost. Even now, he could still feel the shock that had spiked through his heart at the sight of her.

Finn heard the crunch of footsteps behind him and turned to see his dad approaching through the fresh layer of snow. Joe Crowley had been leading the Black Dogs for too many years to count, and the group respected him more than anyone else. He was a big man with broad shoulders, and the leathers that he always wore made him look even bigger. Everyone said that Finn was getting more and more like his father every day, and the boy had no problem with that at all.

“Hey, Dad. Everything all right?”

Joe nodded as he came to stand beside his son, throwing an arm around Finn’s shoulders. “All quiet, at least for the moment. Just thought I’d see how you were doing.”

“I’m fine.”

“Listen—you should probably stay away from the town for a few days. I can send someone else down there for supplies.”

Finn sighed. “I’ve no reason to hide. I did nothing wrong.”

“I know. But they’ll be watching you now.”

Finn shook his head. “I said I’d go back and check on that woman’s heat. In the bookshop. I ought to keep my word.”

“I can get Archie to check on it.”

“I’d rather do it myself. Come on, Dad. You know I’ll be careful.”

Joe was silent for a few moments. Finn glanced up to find his dad watching him closely.

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “Come on, I can’t just sit here until something happens. I’ll go crazy with boredom.”

After another moment, Joe nodded. “All right. But I want you to promise me one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t go looking for her while you’re down there.”

Finn stared at his feet, watching fresh snowflakes settle and then melt on the heavy steel toecaps of his boots. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. That girl. The one you saw in the mall.”

The boy nodded, still not looking at his father. “Did you know? Did you know about her?”

At the edge of his vision, he saw Joe shrug. “Why would I? I don’t even know who she is.”

“She looks so much like—”

“Finn.” His father cut him off, his tone of voice holding an unmistakable order. “You know it’s not her. And if you saw her again, you’d probably realize that yourself, too. You only saw her for a few moments.”

It was enough
, thought Finn. But to his dad he said, “You’re probably right. I know you are. But It’s just … sometimes I feel as if I’m forgetting. Sometimes I think I can’t quite remember what she looked like.”

Joe clasped a big hand over his son’s shoulder and squeezed gently. “That’s just time, Finn. It’s just the way we heal.”

The boy shook his head. He didn’t want to forget, but his dad didn’t seem to understand that. “Is that what it was like with you? I mean, with you and Mom? Can you remember what she looked like?”

A flicker of emotion passed over Joe’s face, and he glanced away, into the dark forest. “No,” he admitted at last. “No, I don’t think I’ll ever forget what your mother looked like. I don’t think I’d be able to. But I wish I could. It … would make things easier.”

Finn smiled grimly. “Don’t be so sure about that.”

Joe looked back toward him, and for a moment Finn thought he was going to say something. But then he shook his head, apparently changing his mind. Joe moved away, heading back toward the ring of tents and bikes. “Come and have some food. Doesn’t that stew smell good?”

Finn smiled slightly. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

His eyes watched his dad walk away, but his mind was full of the girl called Faye.

#

Faye stood in front of her mirror and made a face. She wished Liz were there with her—they always got ready for parties together. For Candi’s birthday, Faye was trying out a really cool new shade of smoky gray eyeshadow. Instead of being a flat color, it had flecks of silver and metallic blue running through it, and Faye had
decided to smudge it beneath her eyes as well as dusting it onto her eyelids. It would have been great to know what Liz thought of the look, but she’d have to wait to find out. Liz’s older sister, Poppy, was home from college for a rare family weekend, and at first Liz had been worried that her mom and dad would insist she ditch the party so they could all spend time together. Instead, she’d been allowed to attend only if she spent all day at home before the party.